In the last chapter I spoke about the young nobles who played with the little princes, and of their sports. In this chapter I will try to explain how very different the lives of boys were then from what they are now.

It was the fashion then for the sons of nobles to be taken from their homes when they were about twelve and sent to some other nobleman's house, to be brought up there and educated. These boys were called pages, and there were a great many of them about the Court. At the palace of Westminster especially there would be many, for it was considered a great thing for a boy to be noticed at Court. Every noble who came to see the King would bring with him some of these pages. The life must have been on the whole very pleasant for the boys, but there were many things in it that were disagreeable. For instance, it was one of the duties of the pages to wait at table and to carve the dishes on the sideboard, and they were taught to be very particular, and always to wash their hands before carving. We are told of one boy that his gentility was so great that he would not wipe his hands like the others, but waved them about in the air until they were dry! I think this must have made them red and rough, which would not be very genteel.

The pages were gaily dressed, with short doublets of velvet and fur, and little daggers, and caps with a feather in them, and often they were much petted by the ladies, and were much spoilt in consequence.

The boys joined in all the sports of the time, and there were many more sports then, when England was a wild country without many towns in it, than there are now. The chase of the wild boar or the wolf was a favourite sport, and stag-hunting was very popular. It was part of the duty of pages to know how to skin and cut up the stag. Can you fancy a refined boy of twelve enjoying that? The pages had to ride with their masters and lead an extra horse if it were wanted, and they were supposed always to be bright and courteous. This training served instead of going to a public school, as boys do at present. As for games, they had as many as the boys of the present time. One was the quintain. This was an upright post with two arms at the top, that swung round very easily. Tied to the end of one was a bag of sand and to the other a shield. The boy had to run up and hit the shield, and if he did not get out of the way very fast the bag of sand swung round and hit him on the back. Probably they played this in the courts of the palace, where are now the Houses of Parliament, and where one of the yards is still called New Palace Yard. Other old games of which we know only the names were 'Hoop and Hide,' 'Harry Racket,' 'Hoodwink Play,' 'Loggats,' and 'Stooleballe,' which was like our cricket. These were all very much liked in the days about the time that Edward's sister Elizabeth married Henry VII. and became Queen.

When a boy grew older he ceased to be a page, and became an esquire. Nowadays everyone puts esq., meaning esquire, on letters in an address, but at that time a man had really to be an esquire before he could be called so. He served some knight and rode with him to the wars, or attended him at home. While he had still been a page he had waited on the ladies and played to them on the harp, or read to them while they embroidered; but when he became esquire he very seldom saw the ladies, and was taught to consider them almost as far above him as angels. For the next few years he had a great deal to do. He had to dress and undress his master as if he had been a servant. He had to look after his master's horse, and when there was any fighting he had to carry a shield and ride beside his master, ready to die for him if necessary.

Among the games he played indoors were chess and draughts, both of which people still play. One knight had perhaps many squires, and they were all supposed to love him very much, and to be perfectly obedient to him. The young squires had games among themselves, and the squires of two different knights had little contests, each trying to beat the others. The squires were able to run and jump straight on to a horse even when they were covered all over with heavy armour. They danced and turned somersaults, and performed many other exercises to make them strong and agile. Even princes had to be squires before they could be knights, and, if you remember, when Edward the Black Prince was fighting the French at Crecy, he was not then a knight, but was made a knight because he had been so brave on that occasion. He took King John of France prisoner, and brought him to London to a great castle called the Savoy; and when he had brought him there he did not treat him as a prisoner at all, but himself took the part of a humble squire, and waited on the French King while he had supper. Very few princes would have done that; they would rather have gloried in showing their superiority to their captive. The palace of the Savoy was in London, further down the river than Westminster. It is all gone now except the chapel, where people still go to church on Sundays.

Down beside this part of the river now runs a street with houses and shops on each side, and it is called the Strand. I wonder if you have ever heard of the strand at the seaside? It is an old word, meaning the beach beside water, and the Strand in London reminds us of the time when there was no embankment, but the houses were right on the edge of the water. Great palaces most of them were, where all the haughty nobles with their following of squires lived. They have all gone now, these great palaces, but one gate remains, a very handsome stone gate with steps, and this was the gate of a great palace belonging to the Duke of Buckingham, and here boats could come up so that the Duke could step into one from his stairs at the water gate; but when the embankment was made the river was hemmed in, and could not come so far up, and now the gate stands back a long way from the river in the middle of a green garden. The people used the river a great deal then, going by water as we go by land, and the water was covered with gaily-coloured barges and boats.

After being a squire, the next thing was to be a knight. It was not every man who could be a knight. A man must have done some brave deed, or shown himself very faithful, or be the son of a powerful noble, or something of that kind; but when it was decided that a young man might be made a knight, he had to watch his armour alone all night in a church, and pray to be made worthy, and then in the morning he vowed always to help the weak and avenge them, and never to draw back or be afraid, and never to use his sword except for the right. Then the King received him, and he knelt down, and the King gave him a light blow on the shoulder with the flat side of the sword, and this made him a knight and gave him the right to use the title 'Sir' before his name.

The knights used to have games that you and I would think were more like real fighting than play. They put on armour and mounted their horses, and then met to try to knock one another off. These fights were called tournaments, and all the ladies came to watch them as nowadays they go to watch men play at polo or cricket. The chief place in London for tournaments was a place we have been to already, called Smithfield. That is where the meat market is now, and it is still a wide, open square. A great many things happened at Smithfield, and we shall hear of it again before this book is finished.

On the day of a grand tournament everything was made ready very early. There were high wooden seats arranged all round, covered with scarlet or purple cloth, and there were special seats like thrones for the King and Queen; and people came flocking up as if to a fair, dressed in crimson and gold and blue and green, with clothes made of velvet and silk, much brighter than anything we have now, and the men were quite as gay as the ladies. Before the time for the tournament, the knights who were going to take part in it would ride up on their prancing horses; some came from the Tower of London, and there is a street not far from St. Paul's Cathedral still called Knightrider Street, because the knights used to come riding up there to the tournaments at Smithfield.

Cannot you imagine how a young knight's heart would beat when he first took part in a tournament? Perhaps he was just one-and-twenty, and still only a boy in heart, and when he rode into that great open space everyone cheered him, and he saw the ladies rising, sitting on tiers of seats that rose higher and higher, making a beautiful mass of colour, like a bed of flowers; and there was one there who he knew would see him, a girl only seventeen, very sweet and fair and shy, who was among the Queen's maids-of-honour, and the young knight could not see her just then for the crowds of other people there. But he knew that she would be watching, and that he was to fight for her. For the glove he wore fixed on to his helmet was hers: she had given it to him the day before; no one else knew it was hers. But if he fell off his horse and rolled in the mud, that glove would be rolled in the mud too, and then he would be so much ashamed he would never dare to look her in the face again.

So he plucked up his courage, and looked round as if he were not at all nervous, and he saw the man he had to fight come riding toward him, a big strong man on a great black horse. The two knights held up their long lances to salute the King and Queen and ladies, and bowed to each other. A trumpet sounded, and the two horses rushed toward one another, the lances came against the strong armour with a crash, and the young knight felt a wrench, for his horse was thrown back on its haunches; but it recovered itself and dashed on, passing the other knight, until he wheeled it round and came to meet his opponent again. This time, just as they were going to meet, the horse of the older knight swerved, and his lance, striking crossways, broke in two, and the young knight could easily then have knocked him off his horse. But it was considered disgraceful to strike an unarmed man, so he lowered his lance and rode past without touching him, and all the people cheered. There was one more meeting to be faced, only one, and if he could manage to distinguish himself then, that fair girl would be proud of him, and perhaps smile sweetly when he met her again, and allow him to kiss her hand. The thought so fired the young knight that when his opponent had obtained a new lance and was awaiting him, he came on with such a pace and such a rush that he carried the other man clean out of his saddle, and laid him full length on the ground, where he lay helpless in his heavy armour until his squires ran across the field and raised him up. Then all the people shouted wildly, and the young knight rode modestly off the field feeling very happy.

If you saw Smithfield now you would not think such things could ever have happened there, for it is so bare and dull, and it was then so magnificent.

Besides the tournaments, the people of London had many other shows. When Queen Elizabeth was crowned there was a wonderful procession. We all heard a great deal about the coronation of King George V. Well, it is rather interesting to think that about three and a half centuries before, Queen Elizabeth, when crowned, had a grand ceremony, and afterwards made a tour round the city, as the King of England always does to this day after the ceremony has taken place. We have accounts of Elizabeth's procession that tells us exactly what it was like. The Queen went very slowly and stopped very often, and whenever she stopped a child came forward and recited dull verses to her. It must have taken a long time and been rather tiresome. But there were all sorts of beautiful things to look at in the meantime. In one place there was a high wooden scaffolding built up, and on it figures of Henry VII. and his Queen Elizabeth, who was the grandmother of the real Queen Elizabeth. You remember how Henry VII. married her because she was the sister of Edward V., and so the York and Lancaster sides were joined in one? Well, to show this there sprouted out of the hands of these two wax figures great boughs of roses, red and white mixed together, as a sign that the red and white roses of York and Lancaster were joined. At one place a child came forth and handed Elizabeth a copy of the Bible in English, the first copy that the English people had ever had in their own language; for, you know, the Bible was not written first in English, but in Hebrew and Greek, and up to this time no one had translated it into English. And everywhere children came out of odd places and said curious verses. I have heard one story, though I do not know if it is true, that a little child had been covered all over with gold paint, and was to be let down in a swing to greet the Queen as she passed underneath; and when the time came, and the little gilt child was lowered, it was found to be quite dead, stifled by the gold paint.

That was a sad thing, and I did not want this chapter to be sad, because history is too full of sad things, and tournaments and games ought to be gay.