d.

The place of Coeur de Lion in popular fable and gossip is far more
like his place in true history than the place of the mere denationalized
ne'er-do-weel given him in our utilitarian school books. Indeed the
vulgar rumour is nearly always much nearer the historical truth than the
"educated" opinion of to-day; for tradition is truer than fashion. King
Richard, as the typical Crusader, did make a momentous difference to
England by gaining glory in the East, instead of devoting himself
conscientiously to domestic politics in the exemplary manner of King
John. The accident of his military genius and prestige gave England
something which it kept for four hundred years, and without which it is
incomprehensible throughout that period--the reputation of being in the
very vanguard of chivalry. The great romances of the Round Table, the
attachment of knighthood to the name of a British king, belong to this
period. Richard was not only a knight but a troubadour; and culture and
courtesy were linked up with the idea of English valour. The mediaeval
Englishman was even proud of being polite; which is at least no worse
than being proud of money and bad manners, which is what many Englishmen
in our later centuries have meant by their common sense.

Chivalry might be called the baptism of Feudalism. It was an attempt to
bring the justice and even the logic of the Catholic creed into a
military system which already existed; to turn its discipline into an
initiation and its inequalities into a hierarchy. To the comparative
grace of the new period belongs, of course, that considerable cultus of
the dignity of woman, to which the word "chivalry" is often narrowed, or
perhaps exalted. This also was a revolt against one of the worst gaps in
the more polished civilization of the Saracens. Moslems denied even
souls to women; perhaps from the same instinct which recoiled from the
sacred birth, with its inevitable glorification of the mother; perhaps
merely because, having originally had tents rather than houses, they had
slaves rather than housewives. It is false to say that the chivalric
view of women was merely an affectation, except in the sense in which
there must always be an affectation where there is an ideal. It is the
worst sort of superficiality not to see the pressure of a general
sentiment merely because it is always broken up by events; the Crusade
itself, for example, is more present and potent as a dream even than as
a reali