[Sidenote: Singular effect of chivalry in his reign.]
Though the chivalric character was only for one moment of his life sustained by Edward II., yet it was too deeply fixed in the national mind to die on account of its neglect by any particular monarch. There is a singular circumstance on record illustrative of the power of this feeling. During his war with the barons, which his system of unprincipled favouritism had provoked, one of the lords refused the Queen the hospitality of his castle. This act of individual insult had general consequences. Disgusted with a cause which was blended with so much uncourtesy, barons and knights immediately flocked round the standard of the King; his arms completely triumphed, and the Spencers were recalled.[424]
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[1] The History of Italy, from the Fall of the Western Empire to the Commencement of the Wars of the French Revolution. By George Perceval, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. 1825.
[2] A third volume was added in the year 1781, which also bears the title "Mémoires sur l'ancienne Chevalerie;" though more than half of the volume relates to the sport of hunting, which is a baronial or feudal rather than a chivalric subject.
[3] The Troubadour, &c. By L. E. L., author of The Improvisatrice. 12mo.
[4] Jean Froissart, called Sir Jean Froissart, (the title, Sir, being in the middle ages common to all who were either in the holy orders of the church or in the holy order of knighthood,) was born at Valenciennes in the year 1337, and died in 1397.
[5] The Prologue of Froissart--Lord Berners' translation.
[6] I subjoin Schultens' Latin version of the Arabic passage in Bohadin, vita et res gestæ Saladini, c. 127. p. 209. "Cupere Anglum ut Almalichus Aladilus sororem ipsius in matrimonium duceret (eam e Sicilia cujus functo domino nupta fuerat, secum avexerat frater, quum insulam illam trajiceret)."
[7] Reiske's Latin version of Abulfeda is this:--"Illuc commeabant Francorum pacis causa legati, eam offerentes conditionem, ut Malec-al-Adel, frater Sultani sororem Regis Angliæ in matrimonium, et Hierosolymas in regnum acciperet." Abulfeda, vol. iv. p. 111.
[8] Tacitus Germania, sec. 6. Cæsar de Bello Gallico, lib. i. s. 48.