Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/81

] more vehemently than Burke in our times: "The days of chivalry are gone." "Oh, ye knyghtes of Englande!" he exclaimed, "where is the custome and usage of noble chivalry that was used in those days? What do ye now but go to the baynes and play at dyse? How many knyghtes bea ther now in England, that have thuse and thexercise of a knyghte? That is to wite, that he knoweth his horse and his horse him."

And honest William Caxton hoped to re-inspire them with the dying fires of chivalry by reading the romances which he printed. "Love this, leve it, and rede the noble volumes of St. Graal, of Lancelot, of Galaad, of Trystram, of Perse Forest, of Percyval, of Gawayn, and many mor: ther shall ye see manhode, curtosye, and gentylness."



But though the spirit of chivalry was gone, the forms of it still lived, and tournaments were still celebrated when actual war did not present more serious exercise of arms. Henry V. of England and James I. of Scotland were renowned for their skill in tilting, and in all knightly arts. The great Earl of Warwick was not less so. The kings still granted royal protections to foreign princes and nobles to come hither and joust with our knights. Thus, the Bastard of Burgundy came over and tilted with Anthony Wydville, Earl Rivers, in Smithfield, before the court and public. Sometimes there was a general tournament, in which as many as thirty or forty knights of a side attacked each other with spears and battleaxes, and it became a real battle.

Our great barons still kept up their huge retinues and huge houses, as we have stated. There they kept up a rude state, like kings. They had their privy councillors, marshals, treasurers, stewards, secretaries, heralds, seneschals; their pursuivants, pages, guards, trumpeters; their bands of minstrels, their jesters, buffoons, tumblers, and all sorts of ministers to their amusement. In their style of living there was a rude abundance, a prodigality far from refined. They had four meals in the day: breakfast at seven, dinner at ten, supper at four in the afternoon, and a meal called the "livery," which was taken just before going to bed. The common people were much later in their hours of eating. They breakfasted at eight, dined at twelve, and supped at six. The fashionable hours of the present day are almost precisely those of the common people then, if we call the twelve o'clock dinner a luncheon, and the supper at six dinner. So does one age reverse the habits of another.

The account which we have of supplies of the table of the nobility of this century as presented in the Household Book of the Percys, is something startling. The breakfast of the Earl and Countess of Northumberland was "first a loaf of bread in trenchers, two manchetts, a quart of beer, a quart of wine, half a chyne of mutton, or a chyne of beef boiled." The livery, or evening collation for the lord and