Great care was taken that they should be well-bred, chivalrous, courteous, neatly clad, and clean. Along with this, the boys learned to fence, shoot, fight with sword and shield, joust, play quintaine, tennis, palm-play, chess, draughts, and tric-trac. They were taught to ride, climb, leap, swim, and to perform all these feats in heavy armour and handicapped by difficult conditions. In a word, they were trained to amuse themselves, to exert themselves, and to endure. The _Livre des Faiz de Jean Bouciquaut_ shows the great stress laid upon physical education; but it also shows that physical education was not all. Boys who would grow into knights, and pass through many courts and countries, had to learn several languages. French, of a sort, was taught in all European countries--often, no doubt, it was of the kind of Stratford-atte-Bowe--for French then, as now, was the language of diplomacy and courts. And some lads then, as now, acquired a little Greek and Latin; but so much learning was rarely encouraged save in the future Churchman. All noble children, boys and girls, learned to read and write, though frequently in after-life the warrior’s remembrance of these arts was no more precise than the knowledge possessed by our average country squire of the _Iliad_ he used to parse at school. The women kept up their accomplishments: most noble women in England and Italy, as in France, could read, play some musical instrument, embroider, speak a little French, bind a wound and tend a fever, if comparatively few could wield the pen.