The real mediæval coat of chain-mail was probably somewhat of a rarity in the tenth century, but that it was in general use by the greater knights late in the eleventh is clear from the testimony of the Princess Anna Comnena, daughter of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, who says, in describing the body armour of the knights of the first crusade, “it was made entirely of steel rings riveted together.” She further remarks that this kind of armour was unknown at Byzantium up to the time of the first crusade. Mail armour is mentioned by a monk of Mairemoustier (temp. Louis VII., a contemporary of Stephen, 1137), in a description of the armament of Geoffrey of Normandy.[7] The inception and principles of chivalry were the romantic outcome of the lessons of Christianity as taught in the earlier “middle ages,” though confined to a narrow and privileged class; which class assumed a concrete form under Charlemagne, who did his best to divide society into “the noble” and “the base”; thus promoting the feudal system, the symbol of which became the sword. The earlier stages of the movement were characterised by great fervour and self-abnegation, operating in various ways according to the modes of thought of the different nations brought under its domination. It gradually declined, and by the end of the thirteenth century had degenerated into a fantastic fashion rather than a principle; and culminated, like the church of the period, in licentiousness and frivolity. Froissart alludes to it in this sense. The influence exercised by the laws of chivalry was on the whole beneficent in subjugating the rude passion of combat to some of the limitations of Christian ethics; and the knightly watchword “God and his lady” raised the social status of women of the privileged class. The conquest of England by the Normans, the stirring incidents of the first crusade, when we have the shrewd account of the arms and armour of the crusaders by the Byzantine Princess Anna Comnena, and the general martial spirit of the age, lent an immense impetus in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to warlike equipment of all kinds; but this was more in the direction of improving old forms, rather than in the introduction of new ones.