preliminaries, the challenge and the entrance of the knights into the lists, that the decorative fancy of the Renaissance gave itself free play. The double appeal of vigorous exercise and sumptuous spectacle was irresistible to the youthful temperament of Henry VIII, and the pages of Halle gleam with his tiltings as Cœur Loyal in 1511, of which a fine heraldic record is preserved, and with the international splendours of the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520.[1] It was largely to a desire to maintain the tradition of the spear that the existence of the Pensioners as an element in the royal household must be ascribed. Elizabeth had much of her father's blood in her, and to the end took delight in the strength of a man and a horse, so that it was still possible for an aspiring youth, such as Sir Henry Lee or Sir Robert Carey, to win his way to Court favour by the accuracy of his seat or the appropriateness of his trappings, no less than by his proficiency in the gentler antics of the mask. The rules for courtly combat had been laid down by John Tiptoft, Earl of Warwick and Constable of England in 1466, and revised for Elizabeth in 1562.[2] The generic term 'jousts of peace' covered three distinct varieties of exercise. The most important was the tilt, in which horsemen met in the shock of blunted spears across the 'tilt' or toile, a barrier covered with cloths, which ran longitudinally down the centre of the 'lists' or space staked out for the encounter. A record was kept of the courses run, in which marks were credited to the competitors for spears fairly broken or for 'attaints' on the head or body, and corresponding deductions made for spears ill broken. The tourney was also on horseback, with swords instead of spears; while in the foot-tourney or 'barriers' the assailants were dismounted and fought alternately with push of pike and stroke of sword across a wooden obstacle.[3]
- ↑ Halle, i. 22, 189; Cripps-Day, 118 (misdated 1510). The illuminated roll of 1511 is engraved in Vetusta Monumenta, i, pll. xxi-xxvi. Some interesting documents on early Tudor tilting are given in Cripps-Day, xliii, from Harl. MS. 69 (The Book of Certaine Triumphes).
- ↑ The rules are extant in Heralds' College MSS. I. 26, M. 6; Harl. MSS. 69, 1354, 1776, 2358, 2413, 6064; Bodl. Ashm. MS. 763; versions are printed in Vetusta Monumenta, i; Grose and Astle, Antiquarian Repertory, i. 144; Meyrick, Antient Armor, ii. 179; Harington, i. 1; Cripps-Day, xxvii. Viscount Dillon prints (Arch. lvii. 29) an illuminated fifteenth-century collection of ordinances of chivalry which belonged to Prince Henry.
- ↑ Dillon, An Elizabethan Armourer's Album (Arch. Journal, lii. 113), Tilting in Tudor Times (A. J. lv. 296), Barriers and Foot-Combats (A. J. lxi. 276), Armour and Arms in Shakespeare (A. J. lxv. 270); C. ffoulkes. Jousting Cheques of the Sixteenth Century (Archaeologia, lxiii. 31), W. Segar, Honor, Military and Ciuill (1602), iii. 54, records a number of Elizabethan jousts, or, as he calls them, 'triumphs'. Dillon (A. J. lv. 303) reproduces drawings of a tilt, tourney, and barriers by William Smith (c. 1597).
