And also moreover for the greater defence of
your realms and safeguard of your countries in time of necessity, also to the
advancement and increase of chivalry and worship in arms, command . . . that
the sons of princes, lords and most of those that are descended of noble blood,
as of ancient knights, squires, and other ancient gentle men, while they are of
green age, be exercised in . . . usage of a school of arms, as using jousts, to
learn to run with a spear, and handle an axe3, sword, dagger, and all other
defensible weapons, wrestling, skipping, leaping, and running, to make them
hardy, free, and well-bred, so that when you and your realm in such time of
need have their services in enterprises of deeds of arms, they may by
expereince be more apt and more enabled to do you honourable service. . . . And
this was the custom in the days of your noble ancestors, both of kings of
France as of England. In example whereof, King Edward III, that exercised his
noble son, Edward the prince in right green age and all his noble sons . . .
and the chivalrous knight Henry Duke of Lancaster, which is named a chief
author and founder in law of arms, had sent to him from princes and lords of
foreign regions, as out of Spain, Aragon, Portugal, Navarre, and out of France,
their children, young knights, to be taught . . . and brought up in his noble
court in school of arms . . . whereby their honour spread and increased in
renown in all lands to which they came. And after him, in the days of your
ancestors, other noble princes and lords of great birth were accustomed to
exercise skills appropriate to the pursuit of arms and to the possession of
gentility. But now of late, more the pity, many who are descended from noble
blood and are born to arms . . . set themselves to singular practice . . . to
learn the practice of law or customs of land, or of civil matter, and so waste
greatly their time in such needless business as to hold courts, to keep and
bear out a proud countenance at the holding of sessions and shires, also there
to embrace and rule among your poor and simple commons of bestial countenance
that wish to live in rest. And he who
can be a ruler and put himself forward in such matter is, as the world goes
now, more esteemed among all estates than he who has spent 30 or 40 years of
his days in great jeopardy in your ancestors' conquests and wars. . . . And
such singular practice ought not to be accustomed and occupied unduly with such
men that come of noble birth, unless he be the younger brother, having not the
livelihood wherein to live honestly.
[Worcester
concludes that the invasion of France has been delayed by the waste of money on
extravagant clothing, the failure of the Lancastrian government to repay loans,
and the covetousness of the rich.
Therefore let the government make sumtuary laws, pay its debts promptly
and restore those who have lost their livelihood in the wars, and appeal to the
well-to-do for voluntary gifts to the common cause.]
[Compare William Caxton's lament for the decay
of chivalry in his Epilogue to The Book of the Ordre of Chivalry, translated
and printed by him in 1484, ed. A. T. P. Byles (E.E.T.S., 1926), 121-5.]