THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS; FROM THE NORMANS TO THE STUARTS 329 “THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN” 351 THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS; THE STUARTS 358 THE SPANISH MATCH 364 THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS; FROM STUART TO BRUNSWICK 375 RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD 388 RICHARD CARR, PAGE, AND GUY FAUX, ESQUIRE 410 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 420 SHAM KNIGHTS 439 PIECES OF ARMOR 455 THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. “La bravoure est une qualité innée, on ne se la donne pas.” NAPOLEON I. Dr. Lingard, when adverting to the sons of Henry II., and their knightly practices, remarks that although chivalry was considered the school of honor and probity, there was not overmuch of those or of any other virtues to be found among the members of the chivalrous orders. He names the vices that were more common, as he thinks, and probably with some justice. Hallam, on the other hand, looks on the institution of chivalry as the best school of moral discipline in the Middle Ages: and as the great and influential source of human improvement. “It preserved,” he says, “an exquisite sense of honor, which in its results worked as great effects as either of the powerful spirits of liberty and religion, which have given a predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind.” The custom of receiving arms at the age of manhood is supposed, by the same author, to have been established among the nations that overthrew the Roman Empire; and he cites the familiar passage from Tacitus, descriptive of this custom among the Germans. At first, little but bodily strength seems to have been required on the part of the candidate. The qualifications and the forms of investiture changed or improved with the times. In a general sense, chivalry, according to Hallam, may be referred to the age of Charlemagne, when the Caballarii, or horsemen, became the distinctive appellation of those feudal tenants and allodial proprietors who were bound to serve on horseback. When these were equipped and formally appointed to their martial duties, they were, in point of fact, knights, with so far more incentives to distinction than modern soldiers, that each man depended on himself, and not on the general body. Except in certain cases, the individual has now but few chances of distinction; and knighthood, in its solitary aspect, may be said to have been blown up by gunpowder.