The Swashbuckling Press

When we think of Knights in shining armour, we have a fantastic vision open before us: Mounted noblemen, lance in hand, and ready in a split second to rescue damsels in distress from an evil lord's castle!!

Perhaps the most noted era's in Knighthood belong to King Arthur and King Richard the Lion-Heart, two king's era's of which will be mentioned rather soon in this article.

Other knights and era's worth mentioning are:

Don Quoxite, a fictional knight created by Cerevantes. Don Quoxite was a comedy written in the 1500's about a man who thought he was a knight, when knighthood had already came to a close. Don Quoxite was a little touched in the head, and mistook windmills for giants and sheep for armies.

The Black Sheild of Falworth, aka: Men of Iron was written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Of course Stevenson called his book Men of Iron, but when Hollywood got ahold of the story, they renamed it The Black Shield of Falworth and had Tony Curtis play the leading role of a man coming to age, learning the art of knighthood, and wooing his real life wife: Janet Leigh, mom and dad to famous actress Jamie Leigh Curtis.

Quentin Duward was a knighthood story written by Sir Walter Scott, of which Hollywood got ahold of also. This time keeping the title the same, I believe the actor they chose for this story is Robert Taylor, the same who played Ivanhoe . . . .

Ivanhoe - one of my personal favorite stories!! The novel by Sir Walter Scott has been dubbed the first official Romance Novel of all time, and also the first official Swashbuckling novel of all time. Of course, the first real Swashbuckling story, however, should be credited to Daniel Defoe, who was writing one hundred years before Scott!! However, in all actuality, even though these statistics are based upon how Swashbucklers are viewed today, the first writers that have a Swashbuckling themed background can also be credited to Sir Thomas Malory, who, in the 1400's wrote "Le Morte d'Arthur" aka "The Death of King Arthur." in the 1500's Spain, Cerevantes wrote "Don Quoxite," and in the late 1500's England Shakespeare was writing his heart out. We can even go further we some of the very first English works, such as Beowulf, written by a Saxon hand in perhaps late 1300's to eary 1400's England, and also "A little Gest of Robyn Hode" written in perhaps the late 1300's as well. 

Ivanhoe, which was written in 1820 in Scotland by Sir Walter Scott, is also the very first fictionalized novel that has Robin Hood in its volume!! The novel Ivanhoe in the world of fiction is a key novel to the King Richard the Lion-Heart / Robin Hood legend stories.

If we remember the movie "The Adventures of Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn, filmed back in 1938, or even more importantly the stories by famous Robin Hood novelists, especially American author Howard Pyle in the early 1900's with his novel "The merry Adventures of Robin Hood," we see that Robin was trying to help England while King Richard was away at the Crusades, trying to rid Jerusalem from an infidel. The novel Ivanhoe also follows this theme. It has Ivanhoe as a soldier who went over with Richard to the Crusades over in the Holy Land, but returns to England ahead of Richard, who has just been captured and held for ransom somewhere over in England. While Ivanhoe tries to find Richard, Robin in England is trying to out-smart Richard's evil brother, Prince John, who has taken over the English throne while Richard is away. This novel has been made into film several times.

Just before these events, Sir Walter Scott wrote a prequel to this story called: "The Talisman." which places the story over in Palestine during the Crusades when Richard is still dealing with the Sarisan leader Saladin, the Arabian leader who had Jerusalem captured at that time. This has also been made into a movie called: "King Richard and the Crusaders," and has George Sanders playing Richard.

Ivanhoe himself may or may not have been a real person. Scott got the idea from an old English Middle-Aged poem that he had read, of which there was only one mention of the name Ivanhoe without any clue whatsoever of what kind of person he really was.

Next, we move on over the King Arthur, who is perhaps the best known Middle-Ages king, who may have been the very first Middle-Aged King, starting in the early 500's A.D., before true knighthood really began. In fact, even though dubbed with being the first king of the Brits, Arthur, if he really had existed - which I believe he did - was in all actuality a Roman by birth, which, oc course, makes him Italian rather than English.

In my personal opinion, Arthur became king of Britian for only one reason, its because something had happened to cause Rome to yeild their grip on England in the early 1500's to allow Arthur to claim it as his own kingdom. But what was that event?

Prior to Arthur's kingship over England, Rome had owned most of the island. Rome was still mixed in petty fueds against native Britains before they could claim the whole island, and that of Ireland and Scotland, as their own.

During the midst of all these fueds, something major had happened to cause Rome to suddenly give up its claim on England, and in fact not too long afterwards, Rome had fallen completely!! What was it? In fact, not only did the empire of Rome fall, but so did the empire of China, and the American empire of Indians fall - ALL AT THE SAME TIME!! For the answer to these questions, please go to our page: "What happened in 535 A.D.?"