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Among the customs of the ancient Germans, which are noticed by Tacitus, and in which may be discovered the germs of chivalry, are the remarkable deference paid to women, attendance of the aspiring youth on a military superior, out of which vassalship arose, and the formal receiving of arms on reaching manhood. At the outset, knighthood was linked to feudal service: the knights were landholders.
Thrown out along the front in a loose order that alone showed their vigour and self-dependence, the bowmen faced and riddled the splendid line of knighthood as it charged upon them. The galled horses "reeled right rudely." Their riders found even the steel of Milan a poor defence against the grey-goose shaft. Gradually the bow dictated the very tactics of an English battle.
"A churl will savour of churl's kind," said the haughty Douglas, turning his horse aside; "the proffer of knighthood from the sword of Douglas had recalled him from death's door, had there been a drop of gentle blood in his body." Disregarding the taunt of the mighty earl, the Knight of Kinfauns dismounted to take Henry in his arms, as he now sunk back from very faintness.
We shall see at a later time the measures which were the issues of this policy, but in the very opening of his reign a significant step pointed to the king's drift. In the summer of 1278 a royal writ ordered all freeholders who held lands to the value of twenty pounds to receive knighthood at the king's hands.
How redolent it was with recollections of King Harry, in all his gaiety and grace, ere the shock of his brother's death had fallen on him! At Thirsk, Malcolm told of the prowess and the knighthood of honest Trenton and Kitson, to somewhat incredulous ears.
Here, too, the Exhibition bore its fruit in the honour of knighthood conferred on the Lord Provost. On the third morning the travellers left again at eight o'clock, and journeyed as far as Stonehaven, where the royal carriages met them, and conveyed them to Balmoral, which was reached by half-past six.
And there she told him why and wherefore, and how for his goodness King Mark slew him with his dagger afore mine own eyen. And therefore this shall be your charge that I shall give thee. NOW I require thee, and charge thee upon my blessing, and upon the high order of knighthood, that thou be revenged upon King Mark for the death of thy father. And therewithal she swooned.
But no adulation could blind him to the real weakness of his position: he keenly felt the injurious consequences of his proclamation, revoked it, and endeavoured to remove the impression he had made, by conferring knighthood on the Prestons, Talbots, Cusacks, De la Hydes, and members of other families, not immediately connected with the Palatine Earls.
"Here, brother Sancho Panza," said Don Quixote when he saw it, "we may plunge our hands up to the elbows in what they call adventures; but observe, even shouldst thou see me in the greatest danger in the world, thou must not put a hand to thy sword in my defence, unless indeed thou perceivest that those who assail me are rabble or base folk; for in that case thou mayest very properly aid me; but if they be knights it is on no account permitted or allowed thee by the laws of knighthood to help me until thou hast been dubbed a knight."
The only occasion on which I meet at your Court any representatives of literature, or art, is when popular authors and dramatists have come among a miscellaneous gathering of pork butchers, politicians, stock-brokers, bankers, and other prosperous tradesmen to receive at your hands the now somewhat tarnished honor of knighthood.
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