Jeremy Taylor denounced this practice with great earnestness, and with due balancing of the claims of honor and of Christianity. “Yea; but flesh and blood can not endure a blow or a disgrace. Grant that too; but take this into the account: flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” What man could endure for honor’s sake, however, is shown in the Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis, who, in the seventeenth century, was asked to be second to a friend, when duels were punishable by death to all parties concerned in them. The friend of De Pontis pressed it on him, as a custom always practised among friends; and his captain and lieutenant-colonel did not merely permit, but ordered him to do what his friend desired. Boldly as many knights met death, there were not a few who did their best, and that very wisely, to avoid “the inevitable.” Valorously as some chevaliers encountered deadly peril, the German knights, especially took means to avoid the grisly adversary when they could. For this purpose, they put on the _Noth-hemd_ or shirt of need. It was supposed to cover the wearer with invulnerability. The making of the garment was a difficult and solemn matter. Several maidens of known integrity assembled together on the eve of the Nativity, and wove and sewed together this linen garment, in the name of the devil! On the bosom of the shirt were worked two heads; one was long-bearded and covered with the knightly helmet, the other was savage of aspect, and crowned like the king of demons. A cross was worked on either side. How this could save a warrior from a mortal stroke, it would be difficult to say. If it was worn over the armor, perhaps the helmeted effigy was supposed to protect the warrior, and the demoniacal one to affright his adversary. But then, this shirt similarly made and adorned, was woven by ladies when about to become mothers of knights or of common men. What use it could be in such case, I leave to the “_commères_” to settle. My own vocation of “gossip” will not help me to the solution. But if chivalry had its shirts of need in Germany, to save from death, in England and France it had its “mercy-knives” to swiftly inflict it. Why they were so called I do not know, for after all they were only employed in order to kill knights in full armor, by plunging the knife through the bars of the visor into the eye. After the battle of Pavia, many of the French were killed with pickaxes by the peasantry, hacking and hewing through the joints of the armor.