Tales from Froissart

edited by Steve Muhlberger, Nipissing University

King Richard's tournament is a failure (1399)

The English king seeks to increase his renown by sponsoring a great tournament.

Book IV, ch. 150 (Johnes, v. 2, p. 681). Soon after the return of the earl of Salisbury from France to England, king Richard had proclaimed throughout his realm and in Scotland, that a grand tournament would be held at Windsor, by forty knights and forty squires, clothed in green, with the device of a white falcon, against all comers, and that the queen of England, well attended by ladies and damsels, would be at this feast. The queen was indeed present at the tournament in magnificent array, but very few of the barons attended: the greater part of the knights and squires of England were disgusted with the king, for the banishment of the earl of Derby, the injuries he was doing the earl's children, the murder of the duke of Gloucester, that had been committed in the castle of Calais, the death of the earl of Arundel, whom he had beheaded in London, and the perpetual exile of the earl of Warwick. None of the kindred of these lords came to the feast, which was of course very poorly attended.
 

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