Tournament (medieval)

This article is about the tournaments of the Middle Ages. For the general article on tournaments, see tournament. See also jousting.

Pageantry

The 15th century had seen the mingling of the tournament and the pageant. Adventurous knights would travel far afield in time of peace to gain worship in conflicts that perilled life and limb, as when the Bastard of Burgundy met the Lord Scales in 1466 in West Smithfield under the fair and costly galleries crowded with English dames. On the first day the two ran courses with sharp spears; on the second day they tourneyed on horseback, sword in hand; on the third day they met on foot with heavy pole-axes. But the great tournament held in the market-place of Bruges, when the jousting of the Knights of the Fleece was part of the pageant of the Golden Tree, the Giant and the Dwarf, may stand as a magnificent example of many such gay gatherings. When Henry VIII was scattering his father's treasure the pageant had become an elaborate masque. For two days after the crowning of the king at Westminster, Henry and his queen viewed from the galleries of a fantastic palace set up beside the tilt-yard a play in which deer were pulled down by greyhounds in a paled park, in which the Lady Diana and the Lady Pallas came forward, embowered in moving castles, to present the champions. Such costly shows fell out of fashion after the death of Henry VIII; and in England the tournament remained, until the end, a martial sport. Sir Henry Lee rode as Queen Elizabeth's champion in the tilt-yard of Whitehall until his years forced him to surrender the gallant office to that earl of Cumberland who wore the Queen's glove pinned to the flap of his hat. But in France the tournament lingered on until it degenerated to the carrousel, which, originally a horseman's game in which cavaliers pelted each other with balls, became an unmartial display when the French king and his courtiers pranced in such array as the wardrobe-master of the court ballets would devise for the lords of md and Africk.

Related Topics:
15th century - 1466 - Pole-axes - Henry VIII - Masque - Westminster - Queen Elizabeth - Carrousel - Ballet

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