Richard I. has a brilliant reputation as a knight, and if valor were the only virtue required, he would not be undeserving of the pre-eminence which is claimed for him. But this was his sole virtue. Of the other qualifications for, or qualities of chivalry, he knew nothing, or little cared for them. He was faithless in love; regardless of his pledged word; cruel, extravagant, dishonest; and not even always brave, when away from the clamor and excitements of war. But John lacked the one rough quality of Richard, and was not even brave--that is to say, he was not distinguishedly brave. When he stole away Isabella of Angoulême from her first lover, Sir Hugh de Lusignan, it was not done with the dashing gallantry of Young Lochinvar. John, in fact, was a shabby and recreant knight; and when stout Sir Hugh challenged him to single combat, because of his crime of abduction, John offered to accept it by deputy, and to fight also by deputy. Sir Hugh knew the craven prince thoroughly, and truly enough remarked that the deputy would be a mere assassin, and he would have nothing to do with either principal or representative. John kept the lady; and, if there be any persons curious to see how niggardly he kept her, they are referred to the duly-published chronicles wherein there are full details. Henry III. was the most pacifically-minded of the kings of England who had hitherto reigned. He had little of the knight about him, except the courtesy, and he could occasionally forget even that. Devotion to the fair, too, may fairly be reckoned among his knightly qualities; but he lacked the crowning virtue of fidelity. He wooed many, was rejected by several, and jilted the few who believed in him. He exhibited, it must be allowed, a chivalrous generosity in at last marrying Eleanor of Castile, without dowry; but he was not the more true to her on that account. Mild as he was by nature, he was the especial favorite of the most warlike of the orders of knighthood--the Templars. They mourned for him when dead, as though he had been the very flower of chivalry, and the most approved master of their order. They buried him, too, with a pomp which must have drawn largely even on their well-lined purses, and the Knights of the Temple deposited the king in the tomb of the most pious of monarchs--Edward the Confessor. It is difficult to say why the Templars had such love for the weak king, for he was not an encourager of knightly associations and observations. At the same time he may be said to have lowered the estimation in which knighthood had been held, by making the honor itself cheap, and sometimes even less than that--unwelcome. Henry III. issued a writ in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, summoning tenants in chief to come and receive knighthood at his hands: and tenants of mesne lords to be knighted by whomsoever they pleased. It may be believed that this last permission was abused, for soon after this period “it became an established