Note 377 — PEMBROKE CASTLE, Pembrokeshire.

These jousts and tournaments were used a long time, says the chronicle, and with such slaughter of gentlemen in all places, but in this England most of all—since that King Stephen brought them in—that by divers decrees of the Church they were forbidden, upon paine that whosoever therein were slaine should want Christian buriall in church or churchyard: and hiere with us King Henrie the Third, by advice of his sages, made an Act of Parliament, that their heires who transgressed in this kind should be disinherited. Howbeit, contrary to the said law, so good and wholesome, this naughty and wicked custome was practised a great while, and grew not quite out of use before the happie daies of Kinge Edward the Third, [Matt. Paris, 1248.] In the present instance, the Earl was a youth of but seventeen; but inspired with the manly courage of his forefathers, adventured to tilt with Syr John St. John, by an unlucky slip of whose lance young Hastings was run through the body, and suddenly died. He was a person of so noble disposition that, in bounty and courtesy, he exceeded most of his degree. But, adds the chronicle, his untimely death was then thought by many to be a judgment upon the family in regard that Aymer de Valence, his ancestor, was one of those who gave sentence of death upon Thomas, Earl of Lancaster; for it was observed, that after that judgment so given, none of the succeeding Earls ever saw his father, nor any father of them took delight in seeing his child!