The right of sporting or hunting was of all prerogatives that dearest to, and most valued by the nobles.  Not only were the severest and even cruellest penalties imposed on “vilains” who dared to kill the smallest head of game, but quarrels frequently arose between nobles of different degrees on the subject, some pretending to have a feudal privilege of hunting on the lands of others (Fig. 27).  From this tyrannical exercise of the right of hunting, which the least powerful of the nobles only submitted to with the most violent and bitter feelings, sprung those old and familiar ballads, which indicate the popular sentiment on the subject.  In some of these songs the inveterate hunters are condemned, by the order of Fairies or of the Fates, either to follow a phantom stag for everlasting, or to hunt, like King Artus, in the clouds and to catch a fly every hundred years.

The right of jurisdiction, which gave judicial power to the dukes and counts in cases arising in their domains, had no appeal save to the King himself, and this was even often contested by the nobles, as for instance, in the unhappy case of Enguerrand de Coucy.  Enguerrand had ordered three young Flemish noblemen, who were scholars at the Abbey of “St. Nicholas des Bois,” to be seized and hung, because, not knowing that they were on the domain of the Lord of Coucy, they had killed a few rabbits with arrows.  St. Louis called the case before him.  Enguerrand answered to the call, but only to dispute the King’s right, and to claim the judgment of his peers.  The King, without taking any notice of the remonstrance, ordered Enguerrand to be locked up in the big tower of the Louvre, and was nearly applying the law of retaliation to his case.  Eventually he granted him letters of pardon, after condemning him to build three chapels, where masses were continually to be said for the three victims; to give the forest where the young scholars had been found hunting, to the Abbey of “St. Nicholas des Bois;” to lose on all his estates the rights of jurisdiction and sporting; to serve three years in the Holy Land; and to pay to the King a fine of 12,500 pounds tournois.  It must be remembered that Louis IX., although most generous in cases relating simply to private interests, was one of the most stubborn defenders of royal prerogatives.

A right which feudalists had the greatest interest in observing, and causing to be respected, because they themselves might with their wandering habits require it at any moment, was that of safe convoy, or guidance.  This right was so powerful, that it even applied itself to the lower orders, and its violation was considered the most odious crime; thus, in the thirteenth century, the King of Aragon was severely abused by all persons and all classes, because in spite of this right he caused a Jew to be burned so as not to have to pay a debt which the man claimed of him.

[Illustration:  Fig. 27.—­Nobleman in Hunting Costume, preceded by his Servant, trying to find the Scent of a Stag.—­From a Miniature in the Book of Gaston Phoebus ("Des Deduitz de la Chasse des Bestes Sauvaiges").—­Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (National Library of Paris).]