. At the solicitation of his relatives, the monks of
the Abbey of Reading were allowed to remove the body for interment, and
Montfort was declared the victor. Essex, however, was not dead, but
stunned only, and, under the care of the monks, recovered in a few weeks
from his bodily injuries. The wounds of his mind were not so easily
healed. Though a loyal and brave subject, the whole realm believed him a
traitor and a coward because he had been vanquished. He could not brook to
return to the world deprived of the good opinion of his fellows; he
therefore made himself a monk, and passed the remainder of his days within
the walls of the abbey.

Du Chastelet relates a singular duel that was proposed in Spain.[57] A
Christian gentleman of Seville sent a challenge to a Moorish cavalier,
offering to prove against him, with whatever weapons he might choose, that
the religion of Jesus Christ was holy and divine, and that of Mahomet
impious and damnable. The Spanish prelates did not choose that
Christianity should be compromised within their jurisdiction by the result
of any such combat; the Moorish cavalier might, perchance, have proved to
be the stronger, and they commanded the knight, under pain of
excommunication, to withdraw the challenge.

[57] _Histoire de Messire Bertrand du Guesclin_, liv. i. ch. xix.

The same author relates that, under Otho I., a question arose among
jurisconsults, viz. whether grandchildren, who had lost their father,
should share equally with their uncles in the property of their
grandfather, at the death of the latter. The difficulty of this question
was found so insurmountable, that none of the lawyers of that day could
resolve it. It was at last decreed that it should be decided by single
combat. Two champions were accordingly chosen; one for, and the other
against, the claims of the little ones. After a long struggle, the
champion of the uncles was unhorsed and slain; and it was therefore
decided that the right of the grandchildren was established, and that they
should enjoy the same portion of their grandfather's possessions that
their father would have done had he been alive.

Upon pretexts just as strange, and often more frivolous that these, duels
continued to be fought in most of the countries of Europe during the whole
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A memorable instance of the
slightness of the pretext on which a man could be forced to fight a duel
to the death, occurs in