When he was neither engaged in his country's wars, nor errant in quest of adventures, the knight fought among the chivalry of foreign princes. This was a matter of daily occurrence; the English knights obtaining licences from the king on their pledging the honour of their chivalry not to disclose the secrets of the court, nor to fight on the side of the nation's enemies. It is curious to observe that the service of France was always preferred by the English adventurers to that of Spain or Portugal. France, they said, was a good, sweet country, and temperate, possessing pleasant towns and fair rivers, but Castile was full of barren rocks and mountains, the air was unwholesome, the waters were troubled, and the people were poor and evil arrayed. The wines of Spain formed, however, the principal grievance. The English complained that they were so strong and fiery as to corrupt their heads, dry their bowels, and consume their very livers; and what with hot suns and hot wines Englishmen, who in their own country were sweetly nourished, were in Castile burnt without and within. There is another passage of Froissart which I shall lay before the reader in the right genuine and expressive old English of John Bourchier, knight, Lord Berners. "The Englishmen ate grapes (in Spain) when they might get them, and drank of the hot wines, and the more they drank the more they were set on fire, and thereby burnt their livers and lungs; for that diet was contrary to their nature. Englishmen are nourished with good meats and with ale, which keep their bodies in temper." In Spain the nights were hot because of the great heat of the day, and the mornings marvellously cold, which deceives them; for in the night they could suffer nothing on them, and so slept all naked, and in the morning cold took them ere they were aware, and that cast them into fevers and fluxes without remedy, and as well died great men as mean people.[163] [Sidenote: Principles of this active conduct.] All this adventurousness proceeded from the principle, that the life of a knight was not to be regarded as a course of personal indulgence. His virtues were of an active, stirring nature, and he was not permitted to waste his days in dark obscurity, or to revel in ease. Like falcons that disdained confinement, he could not remain long at rest without wishing to roam abroad. "Why do we not array ourselves and go and see the bounds and ports of Normandy?" were the words of war by which our English knights and squires would rouse one another to arms. "There be knights and squires to awake us and to fight with us."[164] And Honour was always the quest of the true knight.