old knight made their appearance at the torchlight tourney for the Duc de Montmorency in 1572.[1] In 1579 Oxford and his fellow challengers prepared a device, 'prettier than it happened to be performed', the nature of which is not specified.[2] In 1581 Arundel issued a challenge on 6 January, under the name of Callophisus, for a tilt which took place on 22 January, and there were 'devices in the mean season', to which some documents in a romantic vein amongst the Lansdowne MSS. probably belong.[3] The coming of the French commissioners in 1581 was the occasion of spectacular entertainments on an elaborate scale. There appear to have been two distinct jousts. One, at Hampton Court, probably on 6 and 7 May, is described in a French report. An antique tower with a triangular lantern at the top was rolled forward. Out of this issued a snake, which endeavoured to climb fruit-laden trees. Then followed six eagles, concealing musicians, and two Irish youths dressed in floating robes of silver tiffany, with long gilded hair and mounted on gilded horses. Finally came a triumphal car moving backwards, on which were the Fates, holding prisoner in a golden chain a knight in brown velvet and golden armour. The next day furnished new devices, including little coaches drawn by asses sewn up in white satin.[4] The second, at Whitehall on 15 and 16 May, is the famous triumph in which Sir Philip Sidney tilted before 'that sweet enemy, France'. The royal gallery was transformed into a Fortress of Perfect Beauty, and the four challengers, Arundel, Windsor, Sidney, and Fulke Greville, besieged it before each day's tilting as the Four Foster Children of Desire, finally making their submission, through a boy clad in ash-colour and bearing an olive-branch, to the unconquerable occupant. Each of the twenty-one defendants also had his 'invention' and speech, including Sir Thomas Perrot and Anthony Cooke, 'both in like armour, beset with apples and fruit, the one signifying Adam, the other Eve, who had hair hung all down her helmet'. In the midst of the first day's tilting came in Sir Henry Lee as an unknown
- ↑ Nichols, ii. 335, from Segar.
- ↑ Lodge, ii. 146.
- ↑ Nichols, ii. 334, from Segar; M. S. C. i. 181, from Lansd. MS. 99, f. 259.
- ↑ Von Raumer, ii. 431, from a letter of M. Nellot of the French Embassy in Dupuy MS. xxxiii. I do not feel sure that the writer is really describing a distinct joust from that of Whitehall, although he certainly locates it at Hampton Court, and the French commissioners certainly visited Hampton Court, with Leicester and Pembroke, on 6 May (Walsingham's Journal). He gives Arundel and Windsor as challengers, and the two 'Irish youths' might be Perrot and Cooke. Tilney only charged in the Revels Account (Feuillerat, 341) for one challenge and two days' triumph.
