year Lennox was at the head of a plan to honour the visit of King Christian by a challenge to be issued by certain knights of the Fortunate Island, who fabled themselves to be inspired by the adventure of the Lucent Pillar, foretold by Merlin, and declared their intention to joust on behalf of certain amorous propositions in the valley of Mirefleur. The original idea was to publish the challenge in the courts of Europe, but this feature was dropped, somewhat to the relief of the French ambassador, who had received instructions from Paris to discourage it, as a coming royal baptism there would make sufficient demands on shrunken French pockets, and feats of arms had, moreover, fallen into disuse in France since the days of Henri II. A challenge was in fact proclaimed, for England only, in the royal presence and the public places of Greenwich, on 1 June. Then the death of the child-princess Mary supervened, and although there was a tilt, in which Christian took part, on 5 August, it does not appear that the romantic setting was used.[1] Merlin, however, was utilized by Jonson, some years later, when Prince Henry, to whom knightly exercises were as congenial as they were repugnant to his father, made his first public appearance in the barriers of 6 January 1610.[2] He issued his challenge under the name of Meliadus, Lord of the Isles, and Jonson's device, in which Merlin and the Lady of the Lake hail him as the awakener of Chivalry from her cave, reflects something of the enthusiasm with which Englishmen were beginning to look forward to the future of the high-spirited prince.[3] There was a joust on 6 June 1610, after Henry's creation as Prince of Wales, although Henry did not himself take part in it.[4] He was tilting daily in January 1612, and a challenge by Lennox, Southampton, Pembroke, and Montgomery is dated
- ↑ W. Drummond of Hawthornden, Works (1711), 231; Boderie, i. 58, 105, 136, 173, 185, 260. The challenge of the Knights Errants, who were the Earls of Lennox, Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery, is sent by Drummond to a correspondent, with a reply in the same vein, but there is nothing to suggest that he was the author. Ford's (q.v.) Honour Triumphant (1606) is addressed to the four Earls.
- ↑ There are several extant portraits of Henry in tilting armour; one is engraved in Drayton's Polyolbion (1613). Dillon (A. J. lii. 125; lx. 132) notes that he had five suits of tilting-armour. One, given him by Lee, cost £200. Another, given by Prince de Joinville, is in the Tower. A third, at Windsor, was made by William Pickering at Greenwich, apparently on one of the designs by Jacobe now at South Kensington. As early as 18 Aug. 1604, when he was ten years old, the Constable of Castile saw Henry at pike and horse exercise, and gave him a pony (V. P. x. 178).
- ↑ Cf. ch. xxiii (s.v. Jonson, Prince Henry's Barriers).
- ↑ Nichols, ii. 361.
