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624 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
pur amurs* to present themselves and the prize was to be the land
and the love ofa lady. The tournament opened with the sound
of
trumpets and horns; there is much hitting about with swords,
knights were thrown from their chargers, the ladies watch from
a tower. This continued till
nightfall. The next morning a joust
was proclaimed and the hero entered the lists. After
unhorsing
three knights with his lance, the lady 'sent him her glove and
begged him to defend it*; this he did clad in scarlet armour and
successfully, and 'the great lords, the heralds, and the arbiters*
awarded him the prize 'and with great joy he took her and the
damsel him. So they sent for the bishop who married them/ 1
This savours more of romance than history, of troubadours
and courtly love, but the picture ofthe tourneying and jousting
may
well be realistic.
By the end of the thirteenth century
the tournament had
assumed the form it was to retain till the end. There is, how
ever, an increasing emphasis on the pageantry and the social
aspect and less perhaps on the skilled action ofthe combatants.
The climax is reached with the fantastic
display exhibited on
the occasion ofthe meeting ofthe kings ofEngland and France
in 1520 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. This sumptuous
parade of magnificent folly with its prefabricated palace, its
towers and battlements, its decorative statuary representing
classical
antiquity, and its rich hangings ofcrimson and gold;
with its
feasting and dancing and fountains spouting malmsey
and claret into silver cups; and with its
jousting according to an
elaborate code ofrules drawn up for the event at which the two
monarchs entered the lists against all comers, marks the
apx
in the art
proaching end of long/decaying chivalry. Changes
of war, among other things, had made the tournament an
anachronism.
6. Athletic Games
Authorities on folk-lore see the origin ofsome modern games
in very remote antiquity, in primitive pagan cults and seasonal
1 Printed with the Cbronicon Anglicanum of Ralph of Coggeshall, ed. J. Stevenson
(Rolls Series), pp. 289-93.