KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES
"'But teach me,' quoth the Knight; 'and, by Christ, I will assay!'
'By St. Paul,' quoth Perkin, 'ye proffer you so fair
That I shall work and sweat, and sow for us both,
And other labours do for thy love, all my lifetime,
In covenant that thou keep Holy Church and myself
From wasters and from wicked men, that this world destroy;
And go hunt hardily to hares and foxes,
To boars and to badgers that break down my hedges;
And go train thy falcons wild-fowl to kill,
For such come to my croft and crop my wheat.'"
"Piers Plowman," B., vi., 24
The theory of chivalry, which itself owes much to pre-Christian morality,
lies at the roots of the modern conception of gentility. The essence of
perfect knighthood was fearless strength, softened by charity and
consecrated by faith. A certain small and select class had (it was held) a
hereditary right to all the best things of this world, and the concomitant
duty of using with moderation for themselves and giving freely to others.
Essentially exclusive and jealous of its privileges, the chivalric ideal
was yet the highest possible in a society whose very foundations rested on
caste distinctions, and where bondmen were more numerous than freemen. The
world will always be the richer for it; but we must not forget that, like
the finest flower of Greek and Roman culture, it postulated a servile
class; the many must needs toil and groan and bleed in order that the few
might have grace and freedom to grow to their individual perfection. In
its finest products it may extort unwilling admiration even from the most
convinced democrat--
"Often I find myself saying, old faith and doctrine abjuring, ...
Were it not well that the stem should be naked of leaf and of tendril,
Poverty-stricken, the barest, the dismallest stick of the garden;
Flowerless, leafless, unlovely, for ninety-and-nine long summers,
So in the hundredth, at last, were bloom for one day at the summit,
So but that fleeting flower were lovely as Lady Maria?"[182]
When, however, we look closer into the system, and turn from theory to
practice, then we find again those glaring inconsistencies which meet us
nearly everywhere in medieval society. A close study even of such a
panegyrist as Froissart compels us to look to some other age than his for
the spirit of perfect chivalry; and many writers would place the palmy
days of knighthood in the age of St. Louis. Here again, however, we find
the same difficulty; for in Joinville himself there are many jarring
notes, and other records of the period are still less flattering to
knightly society. The most learned of modern apologists for the Middle
Ages, Leon Gautier, is driven to put back the Golden Age one century
further, thus implying that Francis and Dominic, Aquinas and Dante, the
glories of Westminster and Amiens, the saintly King who dealt justice
under the oak of Vincennes, and twice led his armies oversea against the
heathen, all belonged to an age of decadence in chivalry. Yet, even at
this sacrifice, the Golden Age escapes us. When we go back to the middle
of the 12th century we find St. Bernard's contemporaries branding the
chivalry of their times as shamelessly untrue to its traditional code.
"The Order of Knighthood" (writes Peter of Blois in his 94th Epistle) "is
nowadays mere disorder.... Knights of old bound themselves by an oath to
stand by the state, not to flee from battle, and to prefer the public
welfare to their own lives. Nay, even in these present days candidates for
knighthood take their swords from the altar as a confession that they are
sons of the Church, and that the blade is given to them for the honour of
the priesthood, the defence of the poor, the chastisement of evil-doers,
and the deliverance of their country. But all goes by contraries; for
nowadays, from the moment when they are honoured with the knightly belt,
they rise up against the Lord's anointed and rage against the patrimony of
the Crucified. They rob and despoil Christ's poor, afflicting the wretched
miserably and without mercy, that from other men's pain they may gratify
their unlawful appetites and their wanton pleasures.... They who should
have used their strength against Christ's enemies fight now in their cups
and drunkenness, waste their time in sloth, moulder in debauchery, and
dishonour the name and office of Knighthood by their degenerate lives."
This was about 1170. A couple of generations earlier we get an equally
unfavourable impression from the learned and virtuous abbot, Guibert of
Nogent. Further back, again, the evidence is still more damning; and
nobody would seriously seek the golden age of chivalry in the 11th
century. It is indeed a mirage; and Peter of Blois in 1170, Cardinal
Jacques de Vitry in 1220, who so disadvantageously contrasted the
knighthood of their own time with that of the past, were simply victims of
a common delusion. They despaired too lightly of the actual world, and
sought refuge too credulously in an imaginary past. Even if, in medieval
fashion, we trace this institution back to Romulus, to David, to Joshua,
or to Adam himself, we shall, after all, find it nowhere more flourishing
than in the first half of the 13th century, imperfectly as its code was
kept even then.
By the end of that century, however, two great causes were at work which
made for the decay of chivalry. Before Dante had begun to write, the real
Crusades were over--or, indeed, even before Dante was born--for the two
expeditions led by St. Louis were small compared with others in the past.
In 1229 the Emperor Frederick II. had recovered from the infidel by
treaty those holy places which Coeur-de-Lion had in vain attempted to
storm; and this had dealt a severe blow to the old traditions. Again,
during the years that followed, the Pope did not hesitate to attack his
enemy the Emperor, even in the Holy Land; so that, while Christian fought
against Christian over Christ's grave, the Turk stepped in and reconquered
Jerusalem (1244). Lastly, his successors, while they regularly raised
enormous taxes and contributions for the reconquest of Palestine,
systematically spent them on their own private ambitions or personal
pleasures. Before the 13th century was out the last Christian fortress had
been taken, and there was nothing now to show for two centuries of
bloodshed. Under these repeated shocks men began to lose faith in the
crusading principle. A couple of generations before Chaucer's birth,
Etienne de Bourbon complained that the upper classes "not only did not
take the cross, but scoffed at the lower orders when they did so" (p.
174). In France, after the disastrous failure of St. Louis's first
expedition, the rabble said that Mahomet was now stronger than
Christ.[183] Edward III. and his rival, Philippe de Valois, did for a
moment propose to go and free the Holy Land in concert, but hardly
seriously. Chaucer's Knight had indeed fought in Asia Minor, but mainly
against European pagans in Spain and on the shores of the Baltic; and,
irreproachable as his motives were in this particular instance, Gower
shows scant sympathy for those which commonly prompted crusades of this
kind.[184]
A still more fatal cause of the decay of chivalry, perhaps, lay in the
growing prosperity of the merchant class. Even distinguished historians
have written misleadingly concerning the ideal of material prosperity and
middle-class comfort, as though it had been born only with the
Reformation. It seems in fact an inseparable bye-product of civilization:
whether healthy or unhealthy need not be discussed here. As the Dark Ages
brightened into the Middle Ages, as mere club-law grew weaker and weaker,
so the longing for material comforts grew stronger and stronger. The great
monasteries were among the leaders in this as in so many other respects.
In 12th-century England, the nearest approach to the comfort of a modern
household would probably have been found either in rich Jews' houses or in
the more favoured parts of abbeys like Bury and St. Albans. Already in the
13th century the merchant class begins to come definitely to the fore. As
the early 14th-century _Renart le Contrefait_ complains--
"Bourgeois du roi est pair et comte;
De tous etats portent l'honneur.
Riches bourgeois sont bien seigneurs!"[185]
Italy and the south of France were particularly advanced in this respect;
and Dante's paternal house was probably richer in material comforts than
any castle or palace in England, as his surroundings were in many other
ways more civilized. Even the feudal aristocracy, as will presently be
seen, learned much in these ways from the citizen-class: and, meanwhile, a
slow but sure intermingling process began between the two classes
themselves. First only by way of abuse, but presently by open procedure of
law, the rich plebeian began to buy for himself the sacred rank of
Knighthood. Long before the end of the 13th century, there were districts
of France in which rich citizens claimed knighthood as their inalienable
right. In England, the order was cheapened by Edward I.'s statute of
_Distraint of Knighthood_ (1278), in which some have seen a deliberate
purpose to undermine the feudal nobility. By this law, all freeholders
possessing an estate of L20 a year were not only permitted, but compelled
to become knights; and the superficiality of the strict chivalric ideal is
shown clearly by the facts that such a law could ever be passed, and that
men tried so persistently to evade it. If knighthood had been in reality,
even at the end of the 12th century, anything like what its formal codes
represent, then no such attempt as this could have been made in 1235 by a
King humbly devoted to the Church--for, as early as that year, Henry III.
had anticipated his son's enactments.
Where Royal statutes and popular tendencies work together against an
ancient institution, it soon begins to crumble away; and the knighthood
which Chaucer knew was far removed from that of a few generations before.
We read in "Piers Plowman" that, while "poor gentle blood" is refused,
"soapsellers and their sons for silver have been knights." An Italian
contemporary, Sacchetti, complains that he has seen knighthood conferred
on "mechanics, artisans, even bakers; nay, worse still, on woolcarders,
usurers, and cozening ribalds"; and Eustache Deschamps speaks scarcely
less strongly.[186] Several 14th-century mayors of London were knighted,
including John Chaucer's fellow-vintner Picard, and Geoffrey's colleagues
at the Customs, Walworth, Brembre, and Philipot.
But Brembre and Philipot, Sir Walter Besant has reminded us, were probably
members of old country families, who had come to seek their fortunes in
London.[187] True; but this only shows us the decay of chivalry on another
side. Nothing could be more honourable, or better in the long run for the
country, than that there should be such a double current of circulation,
fresh healthy blood flowing from the country manor to the London
counting-house, and hard cash trickling back again from the city to the
somewhat impoverished manor. It was magnificent, but it was not chivalry,
at any rate in the medieval sense. Gower reminded his readers that even
civil law forbade the knight to become merchant or trader; but the
movement was far too strong to be checked by law. The old families had
lost heavily by the crusades, by the natural subdivision of estates, and
by their own extravagance. Moreover, the growing luxury of the times made
them feel still more acutely the limitation of their incomes; and the
moneylenders of Chaucer's day found their best customers among country
magnates. "The city usurer," writes Gower, "keeps on hire his brokers and
procurers, who search for knights, vavasours and squires. When these have
mortgaged their lands, and are driven by need to borrow, then these
rascals lead them to the usurers; and presently that trick will be played
which in modern jargon is called the _chevisance_ of money.... Ah! what a
bargain, which thus enriches the creditor and will ruin the debtor!"[188]
In an age which knew knight-errantry no longer, nothing but the most
careful husbandry could secure the old families in their former
pre-eminence; and well it was for England that these were early forced by
bitter experience to recognise the essential dignity of honest commerce.
Edward I., under the financial pressure of his great wars, insisted that
he was "free to buy and sell like any other." All the Kings were obliged
to travel from one Royal manor to another, as M. Jusserand has pointed
out, from sheer motives of economy.[189] We have already seen how Edward
III., even in his pleasures, kept business accounts with a regularity
which earned him a sneer from King John of France. The Cistercians, who
were probably the richest religious body in England, owed their wealth
mainly to their success in the wool trade. But perhaps the most curious
evidence of this kind may be found in the invaluable collections from the
Berkeley papers made in the 17th century by John Smyth of Nibley, and
published by the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society. We there
find a series of great barons, often holding distinguished offices in
peace or war, but always exploiting their estates with a dogged unity of
purpose which a Lombard might have envied. Thomas I., who held the barony
from 1220 to 1243, showed his business foresight by letting a great deal
of land on copyhold. His son (1243-1281) was "a careful husband, and
strict in all his bargains." This Thomas II., who served with distinction
in twenty-eight campaigns, kept in his own hands from thirteen to twenty
manors, farming them with the most meticulous care. His accounts show that
"when this lord was free from foreign employment, he went often in
progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another, scarce two
miles asunder, making his stay at each of them for one or two nights,
overseeing and directing the above-mentioned husbandries." Lady Berkeley
went on similar rounds from manor to manor in order to inspect the
dairies. Smyth gives amusing instances of the baron's frugalities, side by
side with his generosity. He followed a policy of sub-letting land in tail
to tenants, calculating "that the heirs of such donees being within age
should be in ward to him, ... and so the profit of the land to become his
own again, and the value of the marriage also to boot": a calculation
which the reader will presently be in a better position to understand. He
"would not permit any freeman's widow to marry again unless she first made
fine with him" (one poor creature who protested against this rule was
fined L20 in modern money); and he fixed a custom, which survived for
centuries on his manors, of seizing into his own hands the estates of all
copyholders' widows who re-married, or were guilty of incontinence. He
vowed a crusade, but never performed it; his grandson paid a knight L100
to go instead of the dead baron. Lady Berkeley's "elder years were weak
and sickly, part of whose physic was sawing of billets and sticks, for
which cause she had before her death yearly bought certain fine hand-saws,
which she used in her chamber, and which commonly cost twopence a piece."
[Illustration: SIR GEOFFREY LOUTERELL WITH HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER
(LOUTERELL PSALTER. EARLY 14TH CENTURY.)]
Maurice III. (1321-1326) continued, or rather improved upon, his father's
exact methods. Thomas III. (1326-1361) was almost as great a warrior as
his grandfather, though less fortunate. Froissart tells in his own
picturesque style how he pressed so far forward at Poitiers as to get
himself badly wounded and taken prisoner, and how the squire who took him
bought himself a knighthood out of the ransom. (Globe ed., p. 127). Even
more significant, perhaps, are the Royal commissions by which this lord
was deputed to raise men for the great war, and to which I shall have
occasion to refer later on. But, amidst all this public business, Thomas
found time to farm himself about eighty manors! Like his grandfather, he
was blessed with an equally business-like helpmeet, for when he was abroad
on business or war, "his good and frugal lady withdrew herself for the
most part to her houses of least resort and receipt, whether for her
retirement or frugality, I determine not." The doubt here expressed must
be merely rhetorical, for Smyth later on records how she had a new gown
made for herself "of cloth furred throughout with coney-skins out of the
kitchen." Indeed, most of the cloth and fur for the robes of this great
household came from the estate itself. "In each manor, and almost upon
each farmhouse, he had a pigeon-house, and in divers manors two, and in
Hame and a few others three; from each house he drew yearly great numbers,
as 1300, 1200, 1000, 850, 700, 650 from an house; and from Hame in one
year 2151 young pigeons." These figures serve to explain how the baronial
pigeons, preying on the crops, and so sacred that no man might touch them
on pain of life or limb, became one of the chief causes which precipitated
the French Revolution. Like his grandfather--and indeed like all feudal
lords, from the King downwards--he found justice a profitable business. He
"often held in one year four leets or views of frankpledge in Berkeley
borough, wherefrom, imposing fourpence and sixpence upon a brewing of ale,
and renting out the toll or profit of the wharfage and market there to the
lord of the town, he drew yearly from that art more than the rent of the
borough."[190] Again, he dealt in wardships, buying of Edward III. "for
1000 marks ... the marriage of the heir of John de la Ware, with the
profits of his lands, until the full age of the heir." He carried his
business habits into every department of life. In founding a chantry at
Newport he provided expressly by deed that the priest "should live
chastely and honestly, and not come to markets, ale-houses, or taverns,
neither should frequent plays or unlawful games; in a word, he made this
his priest by these ordinances to be one of those honest men whom we
mistakenly call _puritans_ in these our days." The accounts of his
tournaments are most interesting, and throw a still clearer light on King
John's sneer. Smyth notes that this lord was a most enthusiastic jouster,
and gives two years as examples from the accounts (1st and 2nd Ed. III.).
Yet, in all the six tournaments which Lord Thomas attended in those two
years, he spent only L90 18_s._, or L15 3_s._ per tournament; and this at
a time when he was saving money at the rate of L450 a year, an economy
which he nearly trebled later on.[191] He evidently knew, however, that a
heavy outlay upon occasion will repay itself with interest, for we find
him paying L108 for a tower in his castle; and, whereas the park fence had
hitherto been of thorn, new-made every three years, Lord Thomas went to
the expense of an oaken paling.
Maurice IV. (1361-1368), "in husbandry his father's true apprentice," not
only made considerable quantities of wine, cider, and perry from his
gardens at Berkeley, but turned an honest penny by selling the apples
which had grown under the castle windows. Warned by failing health, he
tried to secure the fortune of his eldest son, aged fourteen, by marrying
him to the heiress of Lord Lisle. The girl was then only seven, so it was
provided that she should live on in her father's house for four years
after the wedding. Maurice soon died, and Lord Lisle bought from the King
the wardship of his youthful son-in-law for L400 a year--that is, for
about a sixth of the whole revenue of the estates. This young Thomas IV.,
having at last become his own master (1368-1417), "fell into the old
course of his father's and grandfather's husbandries." Among other thrifty
bargains, he "bought of Henry Talbot twenty-four Scottish prisoners, taken
by him upon the land by the seaside, in way of war, as the King's
enemies."[192] He left an only heiress, the broad lands were divided, and
the long series of exact stewards' accounts breaks suddenly off. The heir
to the peerage, Lord James Berkeley, being involved in perpetual lawsuits,
became "a continual borrower, and often of small sums; yea, of church
vestments and altar-goods." Not until 1481 did the good husbandry begin
again.
It is probable that these Berkeleys were an exceptionally business-like
family; but there is similar evidence for other great households, and the
intimate history of our noble families is far from justifying that
particular view of chivalry which has lately found its most brilliant
exponent in William Morris. The custom of modern Florence, where you may
ring at a marble palace and buy from the porter a bottle of the marquis's
own wine, is simply a legacy of the Middle Ages.[193] The English nobles
of Chaucer's day were of course far behind their Florentine brethren in
this particular direction; but that current was already flowing strongly
which, a century later, was to create a new nobility of commerce and
wealth in England.
The direct effect of the great French war on chivalry must be reserved for
discussion in another chapter; but it is pertinent to point out here one
indirect, though very potent, influence. Apart from the business-like way
in which towns were pillaged, the custom of ransoming prisoners imported a
very definite commercial element into knightly life. In the wars of the
12th and early 13th centuries, when the knights and their mounted
retainers formed the backbone of the army on both sides, and were
sometimes almost the only combatants, it is astounding to note how few
were killed even in decisive battles. At Tinchebrai (1106), which gave
Henry I. the whole duchy of Normandy, "the Knights were mostly admitted to
quarter; only a few escaped; the rest, 400 in all, were taken
prisoners.... Not a single knight on Henry's side had been slain." At the
"crushing defeat" of Brenville, three years later, "140 knights were
captured, but only three slain in the battle." At Bouvines, one of the
greatest and most decisive battles of the Middle Ages (1214), even the
vanquished lost only 170 knights out of 1500. At Lincoln, in 1217, the
victors lost but one knight, and the vanquished apparently only two,
though 400 were captured; and even at Lewes (1264) the captives were far
more numerous than the slain.[194] It was, in fact, difficult to kill a
fully-armed man except by cutting his throat as he lay on the ground, and
from this the victors were generally deterred not only by the freemasonry
which reigned among knights and squires of all nations, but still more by
the wicked waste of money involved in such a proceeding. "Many a good
prisoner" is a common phrase from Froissart's pen; and, in recounting the
battle of Poitiers, he laments that the archers "slew in that affray many
men who could not come to ransom or mercy." Though both this and the
parallel phrase which he uses at Crecy leave us in doubt which thought was
uppermost in his mind, yet he speaks with unequivocal frankness about the
slaughter of Aljubarrota: "Lo! behold the great evil adventure that befel
that Saturday; for they slew as many prisoners as would well have been
worth, one with another, four hundred thousand franks!"[195] In the days
when the great chronicler of chivalry wrote thus, why should not Lord
Berkeley deal in Scottish prisoners as his modern descendant might deal in
Canadian Pacifics?
It is, indeed, a fatal misapprehension to assume that a society in which
coin was necessarily scarce was therefore more indifferent to money than
our own age of millionaires and multi-millionaires. The underlying fallacy
is scarcely less patent than that which prompted a disappointed mistress
to say of her cook, "I _did_ think she was honest, for she couldn't even
read or write!" Chaucer's contemporaries blamed the prevalent
mammon-worship even more loudly and frequently than men do now, with as
much sincerity perhaps, and certainly with even more cause. Bribery was
rampant in every part of 14th-century society, especially among the
highest officials and in the Church. Chaucer's satire on the Archdeacon's
itching palm is more than borne out by official documents; and his
contemporaries speak even more bitterly of the venality of justice in
general. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, in an age when the right of
holding courts was notoriously sought mainly for its pecuniary advantages?
In "Piers Plowman," Lady Meed (or, in modern slang, the Almighty Dollar)
rules everywhere, and not least in the law courts. Gower speaks no less
plainly. The Judges (he says) are commonly swayed by gifts and personal
considerations: "men say, and I believe it, that justice nowadays is in
the balance of gold, which hath so great virtue; for, if I give more than
thou, thy right is not worth a straw. Right without gifts is of no avail
with Judges."[196] What Gower recorded in the most pointed Latin and
French he could muster, the people whose voice he claimed to echo wrote
after their own rough fashion in blood. The peasants who rose in 1381
fastened first of all upon what seemed their worst enemies. "Then began
they to show forth in deeds part of their inmost purpose, and to behead in
revenge all and every lawyer in the land, from the half-fledged pleader to
the aged justice, together with all the jurors of the country whom they
could catch. For they said that all such must first be slain before the
land could enjoy true freedom."[197]