8. Charny asks: A knight sallies out all armed without any covering as above to tourney on a beautiful destrier. And when it comes time to ride out to the attack, this knight mounts a different horse. And an unarmed man mounts the horse he has got down from. And an unarmed man mounts the horse he has got down from. And during the tourney, while he is struggling against that knight, that horse that the knight rode on and dismounted follows into the middle of the field, completely beyond the stakes. So some others catch the horse and take it to their boundary of the field and knock down the unarmed man who was on it and they say that they have won it. The knight says no. How should it be according to the law of arms for tourneys?
From Will McLean May 20, 2011:
ReplyDeleteHere's my reading: the unarmed man rides into the middle of the field, completely beyond the stakes. (Perhaps he is unable to control the horse). The men that take the horse are taking the legalistic position that anyone on the field is fair game.
There's a somewhat similar dispute in the 1380 judicial duel between Katrington and Anneslie in Holinshed:
He being thus called thrise by an herald at armes, at the third call did come ar|med likewise; and riding on a courser trapped with traps imbrodered with his armes, at his approching to the lists he alighted from his horsse, lest according to the law of armes the constable should haue cha|lenged the horsse if he had entered within the lists. But his shifting nothing auailed him, for the horsse after his maister was alighted beside him, ran vp & downe by the railes, now thrusting his head ouer, and now both head & breast,The earle Bucking [...] claimeth [...] horsse. so that the earle of Buc|kingham, bicause he was high constable of Eng|land, claimed the horsse afterwards, swearing that he would haue so much of him as had appeared ouer the railes, and so the horsse was adiudged vnto him.