Trial by Combat

 

I may have mentioned before that one of the things that has surprised me about AI is the cultural biases it has already internalised. 

And that when it comes to the Middle Ages, Grok in particular has the sensibility of a not very sophisticated American tourist.

So I knew it was going to be fun asking it to illustrate a striking but not very well-known event which took place on the pavement outside Westminster Hall in London in June 1380.

Does Grok comprehend that the current Palace of Westminster, including ‘Big Ben’, was built by the Victorians? Of course not. On other searches it has readily rendered Tower Bridge in medieval scenes as ‘London Bridge’.

Anyway, the Westminster incident I am referring to is a trial by battle between a knight and a squire that the former had accused of treason, in the presence of the teenager King Richard II and a raucous crowd of onlookers, some seated within purpose-built wooden lists.

The issue related to the surrender of a little place called Saint-Sauveur to the French after a year-long siege in 1373. The knight, Sir John Annesley, holding a claim to this town via his wife, insisted that the squire, Thomas Catterton, had taken a bung from the French and thus committed treason, but lacked the right kind of evidence…documents, witnesses and so on.

No problem, let’s have a big public joust under the jurisdiction of the Court of Chivalry to sort this out.

The two men dueled judicially with lances on horseback, then with swords and daggers, to the point of complete exhaustion, and still the matter remained unresolved.

The larger and more ungainly of the pair, Catterton, then tumbled and Annesley seemingly concluded that he could surely now proceed to victory, WWE-style by falling on top of his opponent and pinning him to the ground.

But he had been sweating profusely beneath his helmet and could not see so well through his visor and when he launched himself at Catterton, he missed.

Catterton, at this stage basically Cattertonic, managed somehow to roll over on top of Sir John and then passed out. Neither ‘party’ appeared able to move. Stalemate. Nothing like the joust in ‘El Cid’, this.

The young King ordered his retainers to lift the stricken men in armour, but Sir John, still conscious, pleased to be put back in the same position where he had been ‘winning’.

As this was about to be done, Catterton, at that moment supposedly recovering, collapsed sideways off the chair upon which he had been placed and no amount of water or wine would revive him.

Richard issued an on-the-spot verdict in favour of Annesley with Catterton’s life declared forfeit, but he expired the next day anyway.

(In the end I have appended some of the less ludicrous images with which Grok responded to my promptings. In one of them the medieval crowd once again looks a bit like a mob of modern-day Gunners fans.)