won, when the royal tower of his father was in jeopardy or in hostile hands, then the heart of Rufus never waxed weak in counsel, his arm never faltered in the fight.
His chivalrous spirit.
Chivalry a new thing.
But one form of words which I have just used opens
to us one special side of the character of the Red King
which is apt to be overlooked. I have spoken of the
point of honour. I am not sure that, in the generation
before Rufus, those words could have applied in all their
fulness either to Harold of England or to William of
Normandy, either to Gyrth of East-Anglia or to Roger
of Beaumont. But to no man that ever lived was the
whole train of thoughts and feelings suggested by
those words more abidingly present than they were to
the Red King. It might be going too far to say that
William Rufus was the first gentleman, as his claim to
that title might be disputed by his forefather Duke
Richard the Good.[1] But he was certainly the first
man in any very prominent place by whom the whole
set of words, thoughts, and feelings, which belong to
the titles of knight and gentleman were habitually and
ostentatiously thrust forward.
True character of chivalry.
The knight and the monk.
We have now in short reached the days of chivalry,
the days of that spirit on which two of the masters of
history have spoken in words so strong that I should
hardly venture to follow them.[2] Of that spirit, the
spirit which, instead of striving to obey the whole law
of right, picks out a few of its precepts to be observed
under certain circumstances and towards certain classes
of people, William the Red was one of the foremost
models. The knight, like the monk, arbitrarily picks
out certain virtues, to be observed in such an exclusive
and one-sided way as almost to turn them into vices.
