After being a squire, the next thing was to be a knight. It was not every man who could be a knight. A man must have done some brave deed, or shown himself very faithful, or be the son of a powerful noble, or something of that kind; but when it was decided that a young man might be made a knight, he had to watch his armour alone all night in a church, and pray to be made worthy, and then in the morning he vowed always to help the weak and avenge them, and never to draw back or be afraid, and never to use his sword except for the right. Then the King received him, and he knelt down, and the King gave him a light blow on the shoulder with the flat side of the sword, and this made him a knight and gave him the right to use the title 'Sir' before his name. The knights used to have games that you and I would think were more like real fighting than play. They put on armour and mounted their horses, and then met to try to knock one another off. These fights were called tournaments, and all the ladies came to watch them as nowadays they go to watch men play at polo or cricket. The chief place in London for tournaments was a place we have been to already, called Smithfield. That is where the meat market is now, and it is still a wide, open square. A great many things happened at Smithfield, and we shall hear of it again before this book is finished. On the day of a grand tournament everything was made ready very early. There were high wooden seats arranged all round, covered with scarlet or purple cloth, and there were special seats like thrones for the King and Queen; and people came flocking up as if to a fair, dressed in crimson and gold and blue and green, with clothes made of velvet and silk, much brighter than anything we have now, and the men were quite as gay as the ladies. Before the time for the tournament, the knights who were going to take part in it would ride up on their prancing horses; some came from the Tower of London, and there is a street not far from St. Paul's Cathedral still called Knightrider Street, because the knights used to come riding up there to the tournaments at Smithfield.