Richard I’s Tournament Decree (1194)

Richard licensed five places in England where tournaments could be held: Between Salisbury and Wilton, Warwick and Kenilworth, Stamford and Warinford, Brackley and Mixbury, and Blyth and Tickhill. Those who wished to tourney there had to obtain a license and issue payment for the privilege, and foreign knights were prohibited from tourneying in England. This is perhaps the first secular regulation of a tournament, done for the dual purpose of encouraging the sport and reducing the potential for it to be used as a gathering point for disloyal opposition."The famous king Richard, observing that the extra training and instruction of the French has made them correspondingly fierce in war, wished that the knights of his kingdom should train in their own lands, so that they could learn from tourneying the art of war and so that the French could not insult the English knights for being crude and less skilled."