Chivalry was a thing of French creation, and throve naturally on French soil. It is principally the French and Provençal troubadours who have celebrated it by their song. In England it never developed so freely. It seemed like a thing imported, foreign in its very nature to English simplicity and English bluntness. Still throughout the Middle Ages the chivalric spirit ruled supreme all over Europe, in England and France alike. When chivalry ceased to be an enthusiasm it became a fashion, and lingered on as a fashion till Cervantes heaped ridicule upon it in his _Don Quixote_; till its absurdities became so manifest that it faded away amid the scorn and laughter of mankind. Edward III. aimed at being a type of fashionable knighthood. In his day chivalry had not yet become an absurdity. It had lost much of its early simplicity and elevation, but still in the Black Prince and some of his knights, such as Sir John Chandos, Sir Walter Manny, and Sir James Audeley, we find all the nobleness and greatness of early chivalry. Let us look a little closer at this chivalry, and see what it meant and what was the ideal which it held up to its followers. It had no artificial origin, but sprang up as a natural outcome of feudalism, and so of early Teutonic manners. A feudal vassal owed certain definite duties to his superior. Knighthood was the formal act by which the fitness of a young man to take upon him these duties was recognised, and he was declared worthy to enter the rank of warriors.