John Evelyn Quotes
This knight was indeed a valiant gentleman; but not a little given to romance, when he spake of himself.
Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Edited by William Bray, vol. 1, Henry Colburn, 1850, p. 271.
The line was a quotation from Chaucer.
Chivalry was a set of rules that regulated the behavior of knights especially as to their behavior in battle. It was the Medieval equivalent of the Geneva Convention. At the time knights fought against knights and peasants fought against peasants. After time the fighting was mixed. Previously, if a knight was subdued by other knights, he would surrender and promise to fight any more and that would be honored. But when a small group of peasants brought down a knight in armor, he could not surrender. He had probably killed other lightly armored peasants who were friends, and the peasants did not trust the knights. So typically, the peasants just killed the fallen knight. Social class determined the concepts of honor, fairness, trust, and chivalry came to an end.
