the rump, and thrown on a dunghill. The death-bell tolled, and the funeral service was said for a knight thus degraded as for one dead to knightly honour. And if he fell in the appeal to the judgment of God, the same dishonour was done to his senseless corpse. If alive, he was only rescued from death to be confined in the cloister. Such at least were the strict rules of Chivalry, though the courtesy of the victor, or the clemency of the prince, might remit them in favourable cases.'
For illustration of forms observed at such contests, see Richard II, i. 3.
l. 524. Each knight declared on oath that he 'had his quarrel just.' The fall of an unworthy knight is referred to below, VI. 961.
Stanza XXIX. l.545. This illustrates Henry's impulsive and imperious character, and is not, necessarily, a premonition of his final attitude towards Roman Catholicism.
l. 556. dastard. (Icel, doestr = exhausted, breathless; O. Dut. dasaert = a fool) is very appropriately used here, after the description above, st. xxii, to designate the poltroon that quails only before death. Cp. Pope's Iliad, II. 427:
'And die the dastard first, who dreads to die.'
Stanza XXX. l.568. Cp. Julius Caesar, ii. 2, 35:—
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.'
Stanza XXXI. 1.573. the fiery Dane. See note on l. 10 above. Passing northwards after destroying York and Tynemouth, the Danes in 875 burned the monastery on Lindisfarne. The bishop and monks, with their relics and the body of St. Cuthbert, fled over the Kylve hills. See Raine, &c.
l.578. the crosier bends. Crosier (O. Fr. croiser; Fr. croix = cross) is used both for the staff of an archbishop with a cross on the top, and for the staff of a bishop or an abbot, terminating in a carved or ornamented curve or crook. The word is used here metaphorically for Papal power, as Bacon uses it, speaking of Anselm and Becket, 'who with their crosiers did almost try it with the king's sword.' Constance's prophecy refers to Henry VIII's victorious collision with the Pope.
Stanza XXXII. ll. 585-91. It is impossible not to connect this striking picture with that of Virgil's Sibyl (Aeneid, VI. 45):—
Tempus,' ait; 'dens, ecce, dens.' Cui talia fanti
