Arms and athletics

Along with the artistic and the intellectual sides of noble life there was, from the cradle itself, the physical. Babies stretched and kicked; children learnt to walk, played games and ran about. Boys and girls moved with their households from one dwelling place to another in the ceaseless journeyings of aristocratic life, the younger no doubt in carriages or carts but the older on horseback. Since everyone of substance in the Middle Ages was a rider unless he or she was infirm, noble children were surrounded by horses and probably learnt to ride them at an early age. Eventually they acquired their own mounts. Henry the second son of Edward I was given a white palfrey in 1274 when he was 7. ¹ Henry IV bought steeds for his 10-year-old son John in 1399-1400, and for John's brother Humphrey two years later when he was 12. ² As they grew older, boys and also girls were introduced to hunting and bowshooting, and at the highest level boys in their teens who were going to be knights exerted themselves in military skills: the wearing of armour, the use of arms and the management of war-horses.