'_As women succeeding to peerages_ had, notwithstanding their sex, the
right to assist and give their votes in the causes that appertain to
the jurisdiction of peers; so the ecclesiastical peers,
_notwithstanding their profession_, were obliged to _assist our kings_
in their wars, not only with their friends and servants, but in their
own persons. And he instances the Bishop of Beauvais, who took a
gallant share in the battle of Bouvines, but did not think it _fit for
him to participate in the fruit and glory of that violent and bloody
trade_. He, with his own hand, reduced several of the enemy that day
to his mercy, whom he delivered to the first gentleman he met, either
to kill or to receive them to quarter, _referring that part to another
hand_. As also did William, Earl of Salisbury, to Messire John de
Neale, with a like subtlety of conscience to the other, he would KILL,
_but_ NOT WOUND _him_, and _for that reason_, fought only with a
_mace_. And a certain person in my time, being reproached by the king
that he had _laid hands_ on a _priest_, stiffly and positively denied
it. The case was, he had cudgelled and kicked him.' And there the
author abruptly, for that time, leaves the matter without any allusion
to the case of still another kind of combatants, who, fighting with
another kind of weapon, might also, from similar subtleties of
conscience, perhaps think fit to devolve on others the glory of their
successes.
But in a chapter on _names_, in which, if he has not told, he has
_designed to tell all_; and what he could not express, he has at least
pointed out with his finger, this subject is more fully developed. In
this chapter, he regrets that such as write _chronicles in Latin_ do
not leave our names as they find them, for in making of _Vaudemont_
VALLE-MONTANUS, and metamorphosing names to dress them out in Greek or
Latin, we know not where we are, and with the _persons_ of _the men,
lose_ the _benefit_ of the _story_: but one who tracks the inner
thread of this apparently miscellaneous collection of items, need be
at no such loss in this case. But at the conclusion of this apparently
very trivial talk about _names_, he resumes his philosophic humour
again, and the subsequent discourse on this subject, recalls once
more, the considerations with which philosophy sets at nought the loss
of fame, and forgets in the warmth that prompts to worthy deeds, the
glory that should follow them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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