of the knife a little entered into his throat, into a certain vein of
his throat; and so [he] fell down suddenly _and died_!”
The rascally sire was as jolly after the deed as before it; but he
too one day “fell down suddenly and died.” He had overheated himself
with hunting, and in that condition bathed in cold water as soon as he
reached home. The description of the whole of this domestic scene is
one of the most graphic in Froissart, but it is too long for quotation.
It must suffice that the vast possessions of the count fell into the
hands of that villanous illegitimate son, Sir Jenbayne de Foix. The
latter was one of the six knights who, with Charles VI., entered a
ball-room disguised as satyrs, and fast chained together. Some one, who
is supposed to have owed no good-will to the king, flung a torch into
the group. Their inflammable dresses immediately caught fire, and Sir
Jenbayne de Foix was one of those who was burned to death. The king
himself, as is well known, had a very narrow escape.
Perhaps one of the chief home pleasures enjoyed by knights when not
engaged in war, was the pleasure of the chase. Idle country gentlemen
now resemble their chivalrous ancestors in this respect, and for want
of or distaste for other vocations, spend three fourths of their
rural time in the fields. In the old days too, as ever, there were
clerical gentlemen very much addicted to hunting and moreover not
less so to trespassing. These were not reverend rectors on their
own thorough-breds, or curates on borrowed ponies, but dignified
prelates--even archbishops. One of the latter, Edmund, archbishop of
Canterbury, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, presumed to
hunt without permission, on the grounds of a young knight, the Earl
of Arundel, a minor. On the day the Earl came of age, he issued a
prohibition against the archiepiscopal trespasser, and the latter in
return snapped his fingers at the earl, and declared that his way
was as legally open to any chase as it was free into any church.
Accordingly, the right reverend gentleman issued forth as usual, with
hounds and horses, and a “numerous meet” of clerical friends and
other followers, glad to hunt in such company. Their sport, however,
was spoiled by the retainers of the young earl. These, in obedience
to their master’s orders, called off the dogs, unstopped the earths,
warned off the riders, and laughed at the ecclesiastical thunder of the
prelate, flung at them in open field. Edmund, finding it impossible
to overcome the opposition of the men, addressed himself to the
master, summarily devoting him _ad inferos_ for daring to interfere
with the prelatic pastimes. Nothing daunted, the young earl, who
would gladly have permitted the archbishop to hunt in his company,
whenever so disposed, but who would not allow the head of the church
in England to act in the woods of Arundel as if he were also lord of
the land, made appeal to the only competent court--that of the Pope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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