Walpole's idea for this scene was explained by Wilmarth Lewis in his 1969 edition of the novel: "The reader of The Castle of Otranto was to be entertained, of course, but Walpole wished also to widen his knowledge of the Middle Ages. By bringing in the cavalcade of the stranger knight, for example, he could impart information gained from such works as Segar's Honour, Military and Civil, 1602, and Morgan's Sphere of Gentry, 1661: 'First came two harbingers with wands. Next a herald, followed by two pages and two trumpets. . . .Two heralds on each side of a gentleman on horseback bearing a banner with the arms of Vicenza and Otranto quarterly--a circumstance that much offended Manfred.'"