Still gayer scenes the old gate has witnessed.  Smithfield was the principal spot in London for jousts, tournaments, and military exercises, and many a grand display of knightly arms has taken place before this priory gate.  “In 1357 great and royal jousts were then holden in Smithfield; there being present the Kings of England, France, and Scotland, with many other nobles and great estates of divers lands,” writes Stow.  Gay must have been the scene in the forty-eighth year of Edward III, when Dame Alice Perrers, the King’s mistress, as Lady of the Sun, rode from the Tower of London to Smithfield accompanied by many lords and ladies, every lady leading a lord by his horse-bridle, and there began a great joust which endured seven days after.  The lists were set in the great open space with tiers of seats around, a great central canopy for the Queen of Beauty, the royal party, and divers tents and pavilions for the contending knights and esquires.  It was a grand spectacle, adorned with all the pomp and magnificence of medieval chivalry.  Froissart describes with consummate detail the jousts in the fourteenth year of Richard II, before a grand company, when sixty coursers gaily apparelled for the jousts issued from the Tower of London ridden by esquires of honour, and then sixty ladies of honour mounted on palfreys, each lady leading a knight with a chain of gold, with a great number of trumpets and other instruments of music with them.  On arriving at Smithfield the ladies dismounted, the esquires led the coursers which the knights mounted, and after their helmets were set on their heads proclamation was made by the heralds, the jousts began, “to the great pleasure of the beholders.”  But it was not all pomp and pageantry.  Many and deadly were the fights fought in front of the old gate, when men lost their lives or were borne from the field mortally wounded, or contended for honour and life against unjust accusers.  That must have been a sorry scene in 1446, when a rascally servant, John David, accused his master, William Catur, of treason, and had to face the wager of battle in Smithfield.  The master was well beloved, and inconsiderate friends plied him with wine so that he was not in a condition to fight, and was slain by his servant.  But Stow reminds us that the prosperity of the wicked is frail.  Not long after David was hanged at Tyburn for felony, and the chronicler concludes:  “Let such false accusers note this for example, and look for no better end without speedy repentance.”  He omits to draw any moral from the intemperance of the master and the danger of drunkenness.