alerie, a long metrical romance published in Barbazan's
Fabliaux, t. i. p. 59 (edit. 1808).

[766] Y eut huit cens chevaliers seant a table; et si n'y eust celui qui
n'eust une dame on une pucelle a son ecuelle. In Launcelot du Lac, a
lady, who was troubled with a jealous husband, complains that it was a
long time since a knight had eaten off her plate. Le Grand, t. i. p. 24.

[767] Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. iii. p. 438; St. Palaye, t. i. p. 41. I
quote St. Palaye's Memoires from the first edition in 1759, which is not
the best.

[768] Statuimus, quod omnis homo, sive miles sive alius, qui iverit cum
domina generosa, salvus sit atque securus, nisi fuerit homicida. De
Marca, Marca Hispanica, p. 1428.

[769] Le Grand, t. i. p. 120; St. Palaye, t. i. p. 13, 134, 221;
Fabliaux, Romances, &c., passim.

[770] St. Palaye, p. 222.

[771] Froissart, p. 33.

[772] St. Palaye, p. 268.

[773] The romances will speak for themselves; and the character of the
Provencal morality may be collected from Millot, Hist. des Troubadours,
passim; and from Sismondi, Litterature du Midi, t. i. p. 179, &c. See
too St. Palaye, t. ii. p. 62 and 68.

[774] St. Palaye, part ii.

[775] Non laudem meruit, sed summae potius opprobrium vilitatis; nam idem
facinus est putandum captum nobilem vel ignobilem offendere, vel ferire,
quam gladio caedere cadaver. Rolandinus, in Script Rer. Ital. t. viii. p.
351.

[776] Froissart, 1. i. c. 161. He remarks in another place that all
English and French gentlemen treat their prisoners well; not so the
Germans, who put them in fetters, in order to extort more money, c. 136.

[777] St Palaye, part iv. p. 312, 367, &c. Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. i. p.
115, 167. It was the custom in Great Britain, (says the romance of
Perceforest, speaking of course in an imaginary history,) that noblemen
and ladies placed a helmet on the highest point of their castles, as a
sign that all persons of such rank travelling that road might boldly
enter their houses like their own. St. Palaye, p. 367.

[778] Fabliaux de Barbasan, t. i.

[779] Joinville in Collection des Memoires, t. i. p. 43.

[780] St. Palaye, part i.

[781] Du Cange, 5me Dissertation sur Joinville. St. Palaye, t. i. p.
87, 118. Le Grand, t. i. p. 14.

[782] St. Palaye, t. i. p. 191.

[783] Godfrey de Preuilly, a French knight, is said by several
contemporary writers to have invented tournaments; which must of course
be understood in a limited sense. The Ger