1215: The Year of Magna Carta Ebook by Danny Danziger Page B

opportunity to impress. When the sixteen-year old hero of The Romance of Horn served as cup-bearer,
    ‘his well-cut tunic was of fine cloth, his hose close-fitting, his legs straight and slender. Lord! how they noticed his beauty throughout the hall! How they praised his complexion and his bearing now. No lady seeing him did not love him and want to hold him softly to her under an ermine coverlet, unknown to her lord, for he was the paragon of the whole court.’
    A popular twelfth-century work listed the seven spheres in which a well-taught knight was expected to shine: riding, swimming, archery, combat, falconry, chess and song-writing. Other similar lists include dancing. His sister would learn chess, music and dancing as well as the more specifically feminine accomplishments of embroidery and weaving. She, too, would learn to read, since as a wife or widow she might be expected to manage a household, and in that case it would be useful to be able to read documents and understand accounts. Many romances include scenes in which a daughter is shown reading to her parents and siblings.
    In the character of Horn we have a portrait of the model product of late twelfth-century household education – the kind of training John himself received. ‘No one could equal Horn when it came to handling a horse or a sword. He was similarly talented at hunting and hawking. No master craftsman was his equal; no one matched him in modesty. There was no musical instrument known to man in which he did not surpass everyone.’ In this period, the accomplished young aristocrat was expected not just to appreciate music but to perform. In one scene in The Romance of Horn the king’s sister played the harp, and the instrument was then passed to everyone in the room in turn. When the harp came to Horn, he sang a lay said to have been the work of a royal composer, Baltof of Brittany.
    Then Horn made the harp strings play exactly the melody he had just sung. Having played the notes, he began to raise the pitch and made the strings give out completely different notes. Everyone was astonished at his skill with the harp, how he touched the strings and made them vibrate, at times causing them to sing, at times making them join in harmonies. Everyone there was reminded of the harmony of heaven!
    John’s elder brother, Richard I, was a celebrated song-writer – and at least one of his songs, Ja nus hons prins , ‘No man who is in prison’, the song he is supposed to have composed while a prisoner in Germany, can still be bought in music shops today.
    The fashionable indoor game during John’s lifetime was chess. It had been introduced into western Europe from the Arab world, and into England after 1066. As both men and women played chess, a quiet game in the corner of a room or in a window seat created opportunities for flirting. But not all chess games were quiet. Earlier board games such as backgammon or games with dice were essentially gambling games, so it was only natural that the new one, too, was often played for stakes. But chess was, above all else, a game of skill. Victory and defeat were no longer matters of chance, of good or bad luck. Alexander Nequam noted the intensity of the game, the loser’s feeling of humiliation, the winner’s pride. He watched the faces of the players go ‘deadly white or fiery red, betraying the pent-up fury of an angry mind’. In an aristocratic household, budding chess-players were not only learning the moves, they were also learning restraint and how to control their emotions. King John often played backgammon with his courtiers, but there is no contemporary record of him playing chess. According to a later story, the Romance of Fulk FitzWaryn ,
    ‘one day John and Fulk were sitting alone in a chamber playing chess, when John picked up the chessboard and hit Fulk with it. Fulk hit back, kicking John in the chest so hard that his head crashed against the wall, and he passed out. Fulk rubbed John’s ears