Thomas Harpingham and sir John de Barres, says, “As me thought the usage was thanne, their helmes wer tied but with a lace, to the entente the spere should take no hold; " by which it seems the trick became more common afterwards.'

Below is a representation of the just, taken from a manuscript in the Royal Library,2 of the thirteenth, or early in the fourteenth century, where two knights appear in the action of tilting at each other with the blunted spears.3

This delineation was made before the introduction of the barrier, which was a boarded railing erected in the midst of the lists, but open at both ends, and between four and five feet in height. In performing the justs, the two combatants rode on

Froissart, vol. iii. chap. cxxxiii. fol. 148, lord Berners' translation.

2 No. 14, E. iii.

3 [In the original engraving the knights are opposed to each other on the same line: in the present they are separated, and one placed below, in order to represent them within the octavo page of the size is the quarto.]

separate sides of the barrier, and were thereby prevented from running their horses upon each other.

XXVIII-JUSTS, PECULIARLY IN HONOUR OF THE LADIES.

We have seen that the privilege of distributing the prizes and remitting the punishment of offenders, was by the laws of the tournament invested with the fair sex, but at the justs their authority was much more extensive. In the days of chivalry the justs were usually made in honour of the ladies, who presided as judges paramount over the sports, and their determinations were in all cases decisive; hence in the spirit of romance, arose the necessity for every "true knight" to have a favourite fair one, who was not only esteemed by him as the paragon of beauty and of virtue, but supplied the place of a tutelar saint, to whom he paid his vows and addressed himself in the day of peril; or it seems to have been an established doctrine, that love made valour perfect, and incited the heroes to undertake great enterprises. “Oh that my lady saw me,” said one of them as he was mounting a breach at the head of his troops and driving the enemy before him. The French writer St. Foix, who mentions this,' says in another place, "It is astonishing that no author has remarked the origin of this devotion in the manners of the Germans, our ancestors, as drawn by Tacitus, who," he tells us, "attributed somewhat of divinity to the fair sex.2" Sometimes it seems the knights were armed and unarmed by the ladies; but this, I presume, was a peculiar mark of their favour, and only used upon particular occasions, as, for instance, when the heroes undertook an achievement on their behalf, or combating in defence of their beauty or their honour.3

XXIX.-GREAT SPLENDOUR OF THESE SPORTS ATTRACTIVE
TO THE NOBILITY

At the celebration of these pastimes, the lists were superbly decorated, and surrounded by the pavilions belonging to the champions, ornamented with their arms, banners, and banerolls. The scaffolds for the reception of the nobility of both sexes who came as spectators, and those especially appointed for the royal family,

1 Essais Hist. sur Paris, vol. iii. p. 263.

Ibid. vol. i. p. 327.

3 As the ladies, say some modern authors, were l'ame, the soul of the justs, it was proper that they should be therein distinguished by some peculiar homage; and, accordingly at the termination of a just with lances, the last course was made in honour of the sex, and called the lance of the ladies. The same deference was paid to them in single combats with the sword, the axe, and the dagger. Encyclop. Fran. article joute.

were hung with tapestry and embroideries of gold and silver. Every person, upon such occasions, appeared to the greatest advantage, decked in sumptuous array, and every part of the field presented to the eye a rich display of magnificence. We may also add the splendid appearance of the knights engaged in the sports; themselves and their horses were most gorgeously arrayed, and their esquires and pages, together with the minstrels and heralds who superintended the ceremonies, were all of them clothed in costly and glittering apparel. Such a show of pomp, where wealth, beauty, and grandeur were concentred, as it were, in one focus, must altogether have formed a wonderful spectacle, and made a strong impression on the mind, which was not a little heightened by the cries of the heralds, the clangour of the trumpets, the clashing of the arms, the rushing together of the combatants, and the shouts of the beholders; and hence the popularity of these exhibitions may be easily accounted for.

The tournament and the just, and especially the latter, afforded to those who were engaged in them, an opportunity of appearing before the ladies to the greatest advantage; they might at once display their taste and opulence by the costliness and elegancy of their apparel, and their prowess as soldiers; therefore, these pastimes became fashionable among the nobility; and it was probably for the same reason that they were prohibited to the commoners.

XXX.-TOYS FOR INITIATING CHILDREN IN THESE SPORTS.

Persons of rank were taught in their childhood to relish such exercises as were of a martial nature, and the very toys that were put into their hands as playthings, were calculated to bias the mind in their favour. On the opposite page the reader will find two views of a knight on horseback, completely equipped for the just; four wheels originally were attached to the pedestal, which has a hole in the front for the insertion of a cord. The knight and his horse are both made with brass; the spear and the wheels are wanting in the original, but the hole in which the spear was inserted, still remains under the right arm, and it is supplied upon the print by something like it placed in the proper situation. This curious figure, which probably was made in the fifteenth century, is in the possession of sir Frederic Eden, with whose permission this copy, about the same size as he original, makes its appearance here.

The man represented by the figures in the preceding engraving may be readily separated from the horse, and is so contrived as to be thrown backwards by a smart blow upon the top of the shield or the front of his helmet, and replaced again with much ease: two such toys were requisite; each of them having a string made fast in the front of the pedestal, being then placed at a distance in opposition the one to the other, they were violently drawn together in imitation of two knights tilting; and by the concussion of the spears and shields, if dexterously managed, one or both of the men were cast to the ground. Sometimes, as we may see by the subjoined figure from a curious engraving on wood by Hans Burgmair, which makes one of a series of prints representing the history and achievements of the emperor Maximilian the First, in the possession of Francis Douce, esq. these toys were made without wheels, and pushed by the hand upon a table towards each other; but in both cases the effect was evidently the same.

44. TOYS, REPRESENTING KNIGHTS JUSTING.

XXXI.-BOAT JUSTS, OR TILTING ON THE WATER.

It has been previously observed, that all persons below the rank of an esquire were excluded from the justs and the tournaments; but the celebration of these pastimes attracted the common mind in a very powerful manner, and led to the institution of sports, that bore at least some resemblance to them: tilting at the quintain was generally practised at a very early period,1 and justing upon the ice by the young Londoners.2 The early inclination to join in such kind of pastimes is strongly indicated by the two boys represented on the next page: the place of the horse is supplied by a long switch, and that of a lance by another. See sect. vii. p. 118. 2 See book ii. chap. ii. sec. xviii. p. 87.