with awe the solemn mind of Don Diego de Vera, on the occasion of his visit to Hunscrit. A passage in the _Faits de Bouciquaut_ seems to imply that holding a Round Table meant a hastilude in which the challengers kept open house: "Ainsi fit là son appareil moult grandement et très honnorablement Messire Bouciquaut, et fit faire provisions de très bons vins, et de tous vivres largement et' à plain, et de tout ce qu'il convient, si plantureusement _comme pour tenir table ronde à tous venans_ tout le dict temps durant, et tout aux propres despens de Bouciquaut[446]." If the nobles of the land retained their fondness for the military pastimes of their order, the commonalty were not less attached to the cognate sports of their class. Indeed, their enthusiasm sometimes led them to an excess of ambition which resulted in an armed contest between the two bodies of knight and craftsman: they dared to practise the exercise of the quintain for the prize of a peacock! the peacock, that noble bird, every feather in whose tail was an eye of disdain contumeliously glowering upon the whole generation of plebeians. The inexhaustible Matthew Paris again furnishes us with an illustration:--"In the first fortnight of Lent (1253), the young men of London tested their own powers and the speed of their horses in the sport which is commonly called the Quintain, having fixed on a Peacock as the prize of the contest. Some attendants and pages of the king's household (he being then at Westminster) were indignant at this, and insulted the citizens, calling them rustics, scurvy and soapy wretches, and at once entered the field to oppose them. The Londoners eagerly accepted their challenge, and, after beating their backs with the broken spear-shafts till they were black and blue, they hurled all the royal attendants from their horses or put them to flight. The fugitives then went to the king and with clasped hands and gushing tears besought him not to let so great an offence go unpunished; and he, resorting to his usual kind of vengeance, extorted from the citizens a large sum of money." Figures of the quintain and the tilters may be seen in Strutt's Sports: the manuscripts he has used are of a somewhat later date, (that is, fourteenth century,) but the forms of the quintains may be fairly taken as similar to those of the preceding age. In the thirteenth century we first obtain a pictorial representation of the LEGAL DUEL, or wager of battle: rude, it is true, but curiously confirming the written testimony that has come down to us of the arms and apparel of the Champions. [Illustration: No. 88.]