ABSTRACT
Our veracious historian, Professor Hearnshaw, acclaiming Clio as a Muse of Truth, has unsparingly probed beneath the gorgeous panoply of chivalry, and shown how under cover of high idealism men too often acted ignobly, and were false to their plighted vows. Evil was assuredly too often associated with an institution as exalted in its aims as in its origin, and the comment of the historian on the notorious instances of cruelty and want of honour which characterized the great religious military Orders is none too severe when this chivalry in action is tested by the standard of the ideal knight—
“Who reverenced his conscience as his King;
Whose glory was redressing human wrong;
Who spake no slander, no, nor listene’d to it;
Who loved one only and who clave to her.”
