For Honour and Fame: Chivalry in England, 1066-1500 [Hardcover]

So we all think we know a bit about chivalry don't we? But if anyone asks you what it was, well, that's not so easy. Myself I was quite clear about it as a predominantly fourteenth century construct which kept people occupied during Edward III's excessively long reign - "honi soit qui mal y pense" and all that. Now I know better.
What Nigel Saul has done brilliantly in this book is a twofold job. Firstly he traces the genesis of the concept of chivalry back to the "might is right" chevallerie of the Normans, through its development while knights turned into an administrative as well as a fighting class under that great fighter/adminstrator Edward I and into the full flowering of the concept (with bells on) in the fourteenth century - and explains how some of these developments were brought about by political or economic imperatives.
Secondly however he takes the various bits and bobs that one associates with chivalry - yes, the fighting (particularly tournaments and crusading), but also the literature (the Arthurian industry in particular is fascinating), women, fortification, religion etc and explores what they meant within the world of chivalry - and how this changes at different periods.
Particularly fascinating is the way one can see, through Saul's exemplary scholarship and beautifully clear writing, how those spin merchants Richard I, Edward I and Edward III harnessed the concept to their needs - and gave it strength by their own use of it. Richard needed crusaders - so chivalry is an order whose role is to defend Christendom. Edward I needed more knights and better adminstration both - he glamorises and remythologises knighthood and ties his knoghts both to fighting and to parliamentary roles and pay. Edward III wanted eager participants in his external wars, and boosted the prestige of the knightly class to get it (via "honi soit..." and other things). Perhaps Edward I had the last word in the long run, as Saul notes that the death of chivalry can be tied to the knights' ultimate preference for the administrative side of the role. When the tournaments were over those magistracies had a longer term charm ....
All in all a really excellent book. Maybe not a summer beach read, but all the better for that. I keep wanting to go back to it and re-read bits - which amongst all the books calling out to be read, is pretty high praise!

It was Edmund Burke, in his `Reflections on the Revolution in France' of 1790, who wrote that `the age of chivalry is gone'; but even he may have spoken too soon, for there was a revival of interest in it in the nineteenth century (see Tennyson's `Idylls of the King'), and the family of every British soldier killed in the First World War received a commemorative plaque, recording that their loved one had died `For Freedom and for Honour'.

Professor Saul's history of chivalry in England may be read as a companion to Maurice Keen's `Chivalry', to which Saul pays fulsome tribute. It is a very comprehensive treatment of the subject, less detailed than Keen's work in relation to chivalric culture, but fuller when it comes to the effect of chivalry on society. It is also, of course, much more up to date, containing the fruit of copious recent research on many topics. For example, it discusses the theory that castles were as much the product of changes in artistic and architectural taste, as they were of the need for defence.

Chivalry was originally concerned with horses, as the word suggests; and the author begins by reminding us that it was imported into England after 1066, since the Normans fought on horseback, while the Anglo-Saxons fought on foot. In the twelfth century, the activities of the individual knights were central, and Saul tells how William Marshal became an elder statesman, though he had started life as a poor knight and tournament champion. It is rather as if a professional wrestler were to become Prime Minister nowadays.

It was in the twelfth century that Geoffrey of Monmouth's `History of the Kings of Britain' first appeared, and the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table was born. If he existed at all, Arthur had originally been British or Welsh; but as a result of Geoffrey's work, he now become an English hero. The Second Crusade (1145-49), championed by St Bernard of Clairvaux, coincided with the foundation of the Knights Templar. The Third Crusade (1189-92) saw what might be regarded as the apogee of heroic chivalry, and the career of King Richard the Lionheart.

In the thirteenth century, the number of English knights declined; but the monarchy succeeded in exploiting chivalry as never before. Edward I was regarded as a `new Richard'. He again went crusading and it was he who gave a significant boost to the cult of Arthur, when he allegedly discovered the King's body in Glastonbury. In the fourteenth century, Edward III founded the Order of the Garter, modelled on the Round Table, and promoted St George as the patron saint of England. In the fifteenth, Sir Thomas Malory's `Morte d'Arthur' again perpetuated the myth of Arthur, while Henry V and Edward IV each promoted the cult of chivalry, using it to heighten the prestige of the monarchy and create propaganda for the interminable war between the English and French Crowns.
There may not be much that is new here to the specialist, but given the inevitable tendency to write about individual centuries, periods or reigns, it is refreshing to read how Saul manages to link Richard I and Edward I, Edward I and Edward III and Henry V and Edward IV, over a period of almost 300 years.

When did chivalry finally decline and die out? Saul shows how it was, like Charles II, an unconscionable time a-dying. It survived the pacific inclinations of Richard II and Henry VI, and it is arguable that, despite the demilitarisation of society after the Hundred Years War, and the arrival of modern methods of warfare, it did not expire until the French Revolution; or even until the bloody battles of the First World War in France and Flanders.

Stephen Cooper

The other two glowing reviews here leave me rather reluctant to state my own feeelings as I'm no historian. Yet overall I found this book less than wholly satisfying even if still fascinating and interesting. It seemed to me that at times it lacked a full sense of coherence and unity, occasionally to be repetitive, at a few times to seem a touch confused (or at least, for me, confusing), occasionally even a touch wordy or 'waffly' and rather subjective. Compared, say, with the writing of Hobsbawn or even Ferguson, it felt a touch lacking overall.