Kenelm Henry Digby (c. 1797 – 1880) was an Anglo-Irish writer, whose reputation rests chiefly on his earliest publication, The Broad-Stone of Honour, or Rules for the Gentlemen of England (1822), which contains an exhaustive survey of medieval customs.
The book inculcated in readers ideas of chivalry and staunch Catholicism and stressed the importance of the heart’s knowledge over intellectual learning, presenting historical figures as role models.
From 1816 to 1819, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge,[2] where some members of the university advocated reform and even republicanism; Digby, however, favoured a strong monarchy, the Church, and chivalry.
At Cambridge, he read Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam; his close friends there were George Darby, Julius Hare, William Whewell, and Adam Sedgwick.
After that, he rewrote and expanded the one volume into four, published in 1828–29: Godfridus, containing a general introduction (named after Godfrey of Boulogne, a Crusade hero); Tancredus, discussing chivalry’s discipline and applauding Christianity (for Tancred, Prince of Galilee, another Crusade hero); Morus, bashing the Reformation as the death of chivalry and religion (after Sir Thomas More); and Orlandus, which detailed Digby's idea of chivalric behaviour (after Ariosto's Orlando Furioso).