An insight into the early evolution of the tourney.

[Longmane]

(Taken from "Life in a Medieval Castle"  by Frances and Joseph, Gies,)

In the lean times of peace there remained one source of action and possible gain: the tournament.  Historically an outgrowth of old pagan games, taken over like so many other pagan institutions by the early Middle Ages and accorded a Christian coloration, the tournament had by the thirteenth century evolved its own rules and formalities.

Great lords and princes organized tournaments for their own entertainment and that of their friends, and to show off their wealth.  The principal feature was a mock battle between groups of knights from different regions.  Heralds were sent around the countryside to proclaim the tournament, and on the appointed day the knights donned their armor, mounted their horses, and lined up at opposite ends of a level meadow. At a flourish from a herald, the two bands of horsemen charged at each other. 

The field was open-ended, because when one team was defeated and sought to retreat, the other, exactly as in real war, pursued it through wood and dale to capture prisoners.  When it was all over, the defeated knights had to arrange with their captors for their ransom, usually the value of horse and armor, redeemed by a money payment.  William Marshal and another knight made a two-year tour of France attending tournaments, in one ten-month period capturing 103 knights and doing a profitable business in ransoms.

There were also prizes, sometimes for several categories of prowess.  William Marshal once won a fish, a pike of unusual size.  The knights who delivered it found William at the blacksmith's, down on his knees, his head on the anvil, while the smith labored to release him from his helmet, which had gotten turned around backwards from a lance's blow.

Until the latter part of the fourteenth century, there was little individual jousting.  The tournament was essentially training for war, and the mass melee intentionally resembled a real battle.  The combative ardor of the participants was often very akin to the spirit of genuine war, especially if knightly loyalties were enlisted.  Serious and even fatal injuries were common.
 
At one tournament William Marshal's son Gilbert was exhibiting his skill at horsemanship when the bridle broke.  Gilbert was tumbled from the saddle and, catching one foot in the stirrup, was dragged across the field and fatally injured.   After the accident, the tournament degenerated into a brawl in which one of Gilbert's retainers was killed and many knights and squires were badly wounded.

A decade later a tournament near Rochester ended with English squires belaboring the defeated French knights with sticks and clubs.  The earliest English tournaments had been licensed by the king, but Henry III consistently opposed them.   William Marshal forbade one in Henry's name in 1217, and thereafter the prohibitions multiplied, but they were so ineffectual that according to the monastic chronicler of the Annals of Dunstable, "tourneyers, their aiders and abettors, and those who carried merchandise or provisions to tournaments were ordered to be excommunicated, all together, regularly every Sunday."

The tournament at which Gilbert Marshal was killed had been forbidden by the king—a fact which Henry pointed out to Walter Marshal when the latter claimed his brother's inheritance:  "And you too, Walter, who against my wish and notwithstanding my prohibition, and in contempt of me, were present at the tournament...on what grounds do you demand your inheritance?"  Walter's protests that he could not leave his brother did not soften the king's anger, but the intercession of the bishop of Durham finally brought about a reconciliation.

Aside from the fear that the king expressed when he canceled two tournaments in 1247 between knights of his own French province of Poitou and those of his English domain (he was afraid, in the words of Matthew Paris, that "after the spears were shivered, bloody swords might flash forth"), Henry III regarded tournaments as pretexts for conspiracy by the barons. 

In several cases these mock wars were closely connected with baronial uprisings.  On the occasion of an abortive rising at Stamford in 1229 after Henry's coming of age, the barons involved rode off to Chepstow with William Marshal II for a tournament, only to be confronted with a writ by the justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, forbidding the meeting.  Seventy-three more prohibitions were recorded in the ensuing three decades.  Several times knights holding tournaments had their lands seized. On one occasion the king's brother, William de Valence, urged his knightly companions to defy the king's order and hold a tournament, which was only prevented by a heavy fall of snow.   A little later William staged the tournament and succeeded in severely wounding a fellow knight.

The Church joined Henry in its opposition, not only because of the violence of the combats and the danger of sedition.  Besides such innocent auxiliary sports as wrestling, dart shooting, lance hurling, and stone throwing, the tournaments were famous for eating, drinking, and lovemaking.  Jacques de Vitry, the Paris preacher renowned for the acerbity of his sermons, liked to use the tournament to illustrate all seven of the deadly sins. 

The Church's strictures were not very effective.  Jocelin of Brakelond records how Abbot Samson of Bury St.Edmunds forbade a band of young knights to hold a tournament and went so far as to lock the town gates to keep them from the field.  Next day, on the Feast of Peter and Paul, the young men foreswore combat and came to dine with the abbot.  But after dinner, sending for more wine, they caroused, sang, ruined the abbot's afternoon nap, and finally marched out, broke open the town gates, and held their tournament.  The abbot excommunicated the lot.

In the 1250s a milder form of combat, known in England as a Round Table (named after King Arthur's assemblies), anticipated the tournaments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, replacing the mass melee with adversaries in single combat with blunted weapons.   Such meetings were usually preceded by feasting and games. 

But even the Round Tables could be lethal.  In 1252 Matthew Paris recorded the death of Arnold de Montigny in a joust with Roger de Lemburn, which brought suspicion of murder because the iron point of Roger's lance, when drawn from the dead man's throat, was found not to have been blunted as it should have been.   Further, Roger had previously wounded Arnold in a tournament.  Matthew concluded, "But God only knows the truth of this, who alone
searches into the secrets of men's hearts."

At another Round Table in 1256, held at Blyth, the seventeen-year-old Prince Edward fought in armor of linen cloth and with light weapons; but the meeting, like the mass melees, ended in turmoil, with the participants beaten and trampled on.   According to Matthew Paris, a number of nobles, including Earl Marshal Roger Bigod of Chepstow, "never afterwards recovered their health."  Prince Edward, as Edward I, sought to regulate rather than ban tournaments and Round Tables.  His statute of 1267 aimed at preventing riots by limiting the number of squires and specifying the weapons carried by knights, squires, grooms, footmen, heralds, and spectators.   At Edward's own royal tourneys, there were no casualties. 

[BardicNerd]

Yeah, tournaments in BM do not really resemble what they were actually like until the very end of the middle ages.