Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/226

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the forms of the law of right. The standard of the good knight, the rule of good faith, respect, and courtesy, as due from one knight to another, displaces the higher standard of the man, the citizen, and the Christian. There are perhaps whole ages, there certainly are particular men, in which this lower standard has its use. Any check, any law, is better than no check and no law. He who cannot rise to the higher rank of an honest man had better be a knight and gentleman than a mere knave and ruffian. If a man cannot be kept back from all crimes by the law of right, it is a gain that he should be kept back from some crimes by the law of honour. It was better that William Rufus should show mercy and keep his word in some particular kind of cases than that he should never show mercy or keep his word at all. But the very fact that such an one as Rufus could feel bound by the law of honour shows how feeble a check the law of honour is. And we must remember that the very feeling of courtesy and deference towards men of a certain rank led only to more reckless and contemptuous oppression of all who lay without the favoured pale. And, at least as regards particular men, the beginning of the days of chivalry was the falling back from a higher standard. We have come across men in our own story who showed that they obeyed a better law than that of honour. It was not at the bidding of chivalry or honour, it was not in the character of knight or gentleman, that Herlwin made light of his own wrongs by the side of those of his poor peasants, or that Harold refused to harry the lands of the men who had chosen him to be their king. But the law of honour and chivalry was most fully obeyed, the character of knight and gentleman was shown in its full perfection, when the Knight without Fear and with-*