banniere. This difference is more fully explained by Daniel, Hist. de
la Milice Francoise, p. 116. Chandos's banner was unfolded, not cut, at
Navarette. We read sometimes of esquire-bannerets, that is, of bannerets
by descent, not yet knighted.

[791] Froissart, part i. c. 241.

[792] Mem. sur la Chevalerie, part v.

[793] The prerogative exercised by the kings of England of compelling
men sufficiently qualified in point of estate to take on them the honour
of knighthood was inconsistent with the true spirit of chivalry. This
began, according to Lord Lyttelton, under Henry III. Hist. of Henry II.
vol. ii. p. 238. Independently of this, several causes tended to render
England less under the influence of chivalrous principles than France or
Germany; such as, her comparatively peaceful state, the smaller share
she took in the crusades, her inferiority in romances of
knight-errantry, but above all, the democratical character of her laws
and government. Still this is only to be understood relatively to the
two other countries above named; for chivalry was always in high repute
among us, nor did any nation produce more admirable specimens of its
excellences.

I am not minutely acquainted with the state of chivalry in Spain, where
it seems to have flourished considerably. Italy, except in Naples, and
perhaps Piedmont, displayed little of its spirit; which neither suited
the free republics of the twelfth and thirteenth, nor the jealous
tyrannies of the following centuries. Yet even here we find enough to
furnish Muratori with materials for his 53rd Dissertation.

[794] The well-known Memoirs of St. Palaye are the best repository of
interesting and illustrative facts respecting chivalry. Possibly he may
have relied a little too much on romances, whose pictures will naturally
be overcharged. Froissart himself has somewhat of this partial tendency,
and the manners of chivalrous times do not make so fair an appearance in
Monstrelet. In the Memoirs of la Tremouille (Collect. des Mem. t. xiv.
p. 169), we have perhaps the earliest delineation from the life of those
severe and stately virtues in high-born ladies, of which our own country
furnished so many examples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and which were derived from the influence of chivalrous principles. And
those of Bayard in the same collection (t. xiv. and xv.) are a beautiful
exhibition of the best effects of that discipline.

It appears to me that M. Gui