History of England, Part I For the use of Middle Forms of Schools
Tout, T. F. --Powell, F. York
1898
CHAPTER V: England in the Fourteenth Century
1. It was in the fourteenth century that the order of life and society which we call medieval reached its height in England. The Church was richer than ever, the division of classes more marked, the trading and commercial guilds thriving as they had never yet. All the forms of medieval art and literature seem to have come into full flower, and the law and constitution were certainly in as perfect a state as the circumstances and ideas of the day allowed. | |
[1] Taking the constitution first, one is especially struck by the growth and strength of Parliament. For in England in the fourteenth century the clergy did not become stronger though they grew richer, the kings fell more and more under the sway of Parliament; while it was in and through Parliament that the younger branches of the royal family, who headed the opposition to the Crown, contrived to get their way. It was in this century that the English Parliament took the form to which it has ever after kept, and in this century that it gained great part of the powers and privileges which it has maintained to this day. It now first set forth plainly its own rights of free speech and self-rule, and insisted that the claims of Pope and Church, the regaly or prerogative of the king, and the rights of the subject should be clearly marked off by statute. It clinched the work of Archbishop Stephen and the Righteous Earl by not allowing a penny to be raised in taxes from Englishman or alien in England without its consent, and it gained complete control over the moneys it voted, It decided between peace and war, and fixed the lines within which the country should be ruled, upholding in a striking way its right to punish unrighteous ministers, and to set up or pull down the king himself Great changes took place in its own composition. 1. To begin with the Clergy. The lower clergy, that is, the dean, archdeacon, and proctor [representative] for the chapter [cathedral body] who came from each cathedral, and the two proctors who represented the beneficed clergy in each see, about 100 members in all, soon ceased to sit with the Knights and Burgesses. For after the Bull Clericis Laicos they did not like to join laymen in voting money out of Church goods and lands. So it came about | |
267 | that the kings allowed the archbishops to gather the bishops, abbots, and lower clergy in two separate bodies, called the Convocations of and , which were not Houses of Parliament at all, though in them the clergy used to make rules for their own order, subject to royal approval and the Church law, and were wont to vote gifts of money to the king in due proportion to the taxes voted in Parliament by the laymen. For as long as the clergy paid their fair share neither the king nor the people cared whether they taxed themselves in Parliament or out of it, especially as the bishops and abbots, as of old, still sat with the Lords in Parliament. 2. The House of Lords now often appears as a court in which great officers impeached [accused] by the Commons of state-offences are tried, and as the place of appeal to which knotty cases of the common law could finally be brought and settled. There were from 150 to 100 Lords, the numbers tending to lessen, but the greater part being always spiritual peers. About the end of the century the number of the latter was fixed as 21 bishops and 27 abbots and priors. Dukes and earls were made by the king with consent of Parliament till took to making all peers by patent [open] letters under his seal. Bishops were chosen by the chapters of their sees, at the king's recommendation, and with the Pope's goodwill; abbots and priors were chosen by their monks and confirmed by the king. 3. The House of Commons now began to take up a well-marked line of its own. Sitting apart under their own Speaker, the Commons refused to join in the law-work of the Upper House (though theysometimes accused State criminals before it), and chiefly busied themselves with the nation's money matters; for the burden of the taxes fell chiefly upon them, and it was their interest to see that the money they voted was carefully gathered and thriftily spent. They also in their petitions begged the king to have various laws made to remedy the evils they noticed in the realm. The king and the Lords sometimes disagreed with these petitions, but if they agreed, the petition was granted and enrolled as a Statute or Act of Parliament. The Lower House was made up of about 300 members (37 counties returning 2 knights apiece; London and each sending 4 citizens; the Cinque Ports with their 16 barons; and about 150 boroughs with 2 burgesses each). It was by keeping the strings of the purse that Parliament was able to hold its own against king and Pope. Luckily the ordinary royal income, The king's own, was barely enough to keep him in time of peace; and when he was at |
268 | war, as he often was, he must needs seek help from Parliament at last, though he often tried to avoid this by various devices, taxing strangers or the Jews (till they were driven out), borrowing money from foreign merchants (which answered well enough till the Lombard bankers were ruined and the Flemings refused to lend any more) or getting loans from rich folk. Parliament was wise enough only to give money on condition that the king should rule to please them or that he should set his seal to laws they wanted, and in this way the Parliaments quietly bought many rights by gold which the barons in the foregoing century had shed their blood to secure. |
The following table will show the state of the regular revenue on an average : | |
The control of the Law was still in the king's hands, but as the Parliament called unjust judges to account, the courts were on the whole freer than they had been before from the royal caprices. The three Common-Law Courts, with their regular staffs, were full of work, and cases they would not touch were regularly heard and settled by the Chancellor or Keeper of the Privy Seal. The Church Courts had their own business, cases relating to wills, marriages, tithes, and religious offences, and were not allowed to meddle with the common law. The Royal Council and the Courts of the Royal Officers were forbidden to judge any man to lose life, limb, or land, which could only be done before a jury in the Common-Law Courts. The Justices of the Peace were rapidly replacing the manor courts and hundred courts, and checked as they were by the | |
269 | royal Justices of Assize, gave better and fairer law than the old courts, which were mostly in the hands of the stewards of the king or the great lords, who often abused their power. In most of the towns the power was passing into the hands of the great trade-guilds, who named the town councillors for the different wards, and with the aldermen chose the burgesses, mayor, and other officers. The big towns were one by one, after the old example of London, freed from the control of the sheriff of their county, and left to choose their own sheriffs as counties corporate. |
2. [2] In spite of pirates, evil seasons, famines, and plagues, English trade grew steadily during this century, and latterly the strong companies of the Staple and Merchant Adventurers did much to forward commerce where single traders would have failed. The fish trade with Norway; the hide, hemp, bullion, and timber trade with the North Sea and Baltic ports; the wine and salt trade with Gascony; the wool trade with Flanders,--all flourished, and we were now setting up a new and well-paying business, by beginning to make up our own wool, thus saving the risks of double carriage and getting a profit we had hitherto left to foreigners. wisely encouraged Flemish wool-workers to settle in the eastern counties and teach their trade to the people, and in like manner he welcomed all foreign craftsmen who could teach English artisans any hitherto-unknown ways of work, so that English cloth, metal-work, pottery, and glass soon showed much improvement. | |
The great fairs of Weyhill, Stourbridge, Abingdon, and St. Giles () were still the marts for the midland counties, as the great staple-towns by the sea were for the east, west, and south coasts. The many royal merchants (such as Michæl at Poole, or de la Pole of Hull) who became founders of noble families during this century and the next, show the great prizes which were open to far-seeing and industrious traders :-
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A slight debasement of the money, a bad policy borrowed from France, was more than made up for by 's care for the coinage, for plenty of money was needed for the | |
270 | trade of those days. He even struck gold pieces, at first florins of 6s., copies of the Florentine crowns, and afterwards nobles of 6s. 8d. with the image of himself in full armour standing with drawn sword on board a ship, a memory of the sea-fight of Sluys. But in spite of this proud device, piracy was still rife in the narrow seas, and rather increased than lessened through the reign of , while the letters of reprisals granted to English merchants who had suffered from Breton, Friesland, or Flemish pirates only made matters worse, and our carrying trade began somewhat to fall off in consequence. |
The effects of the Black Death have been noticed above. It brought the population down from four to two millions, doubled wages, and generally raised prices about one-fifth. Wheat was now worth about 5s. 10d. and oats 2s. per quarter, an ox 8s. 6d., but a sheep not more than 1s. 6d., for the increase of sheep-farming kept the price down. On the whole, the poor were better fed, better clothed, and better paid than in the former century, though their lot was none the less hard enough, as the poet's portrait of the ploughman shows:- And of the yeoman's food William writes:-
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From the reign of we begin to get pretty full records of courts, councils, and parliaments, beside the account-rolls and charters which abound. Of law treatises there are or and others of the end of the thirteenth century. To the beginning of the next belongs the , or How Parliament is held. The Custom-Book of London, put together by Andrew Horn, , and the old Law-Book, , give full accounts of the City bylaws. The customs of the guilds were collected by 's orders in . | |
3. [3] The architecture of this time was more richly decorated than earlier styles had been; the roofs being loftier, the doors and windows larger and more freely adorned; the pillar-shafts, piers, and buttresses more strikingly fashioned and ingeniously set. The mouldings are thick with carved flowers, and every spire, canopy, and pinnacle of wood, metal, or stone is edged with delicate curling leaf-work. There is more show and splendour about every building, and there is something of extravagance in the enormous west windows of , Durham, and Lichfield, the Round Tower of Windsor, built by for a banqueting-room, and the loftiness of Westminster Hall as restored by . But, on the other hand, all domestic buildings were far more carefully planned and skilfully contrived for comfort than before, without, too, losing any of their beauty; such are William of Wyckham's New College at and Winchester, William Rede's Library at Merton, and the beautiful convents which the friars were raising in every big town. The Wycliffite poet thus describes a great London convent, which is a good example of fourteenth century architecture :- As ever before, so in this age, famous men showed their taste for fair and stately buildings. set up the jewel-like Eleanor crosses as memorials of the wife he loved Burnell the chancellor and raised the western fastnesses of Acton Burnell and Ludlow. Bishop Beck and Lords Nevill and built, or rebuilt, the northern strongholds of Auckland, Raby, and Alnwick. The central palace-castles of Kenilworth and Pomfret were enlarged by and . Archbishop Courtenay and raised the fortresses of Saltwood and Southampton to guard the south; while nearly every baronial family had its crenelated mansion walled and embattled by leave of the king. | |
The ordinary house of the middle classes had a hall, in which the daily household life and work went on; an upper chimneyed chamber, where the master and his wife and children sat and even ate (for the old custom of the whole house-hold dining together in the hall was dying out save at special seasons); a kitchen with buttery and cellar for stores ; and two or three sleeping-rooms on the upper story, or in lofts reached by an outside stair or ladder of wood. A byre and stable were attached to most houses, and the little yard, round three sides of which the house was built, and which often contained an elder-tree, or a vine, and a draw-well, was closed on the fourth by a high wall. | |
4. The armour and arms of the middle ages were never more workmanlike and beautiful than in the fourteenth century | |
273 | in England. In the knight's array plate was now added to mail. The coat-of-mail was covered by a breastplate.[4] were buckled broad bands of steel, brassards and Upon the mail sleeves and hose vambraces, cuissards and jambards joined by steel coudieres and genouilleres at elbow and knee. A tippet of mail, the cap-mail, covered neck and shoulders, and was laced to the steel cap or bassinet which guarded the head. This was also fitted with a hinged avantail or face-guard, pierced for eyesight and breathing. In the tournament a huge iron helm buckled to the breastplate sheltered both head and neck from spear-thrusts, though it was too unwieldy for real war. The coat-of-arms was still worn, and over it at the hips knights bore a jewelled belt of metal holding the dagger and sword-sheath. and [shoes] of small jointed plates were now first used. The lance was heavier and the shield smaller and, more curved than before. Even the knight's charger often carried a mail poitral, or breast-guard, and a plate chanfront, or head-cover, under the long flowing mantling; and top-clothes painted or embroidered with his rider's arms. |
As for the archer, , who had fought beside him in France, draws his picture : And the Welsh romancer talks of with its tough tight string of sinew or silk-bound hemp, and the
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The power of well-handled archers was indeed so great that the French king dare not, as was commonly said in | |
274 | England, arm his yoemen and peasants with bow and arrow, lest they should rise and destroy the knights and gentry, who could not withstand their attack. |
Cannons were now used in sieges and battles, but they were only less clumsy, dangerous, and hard to move than the old war-slings and and [catapults] which were still employed, and hand-guns were as yet far too slow-firing and awkward to replace bows and crossbows. | |
In Scotland the pike and the broad-axe, or the long-shafted Lochaber hatchets, were used by the heavy-armed footmen; for though the Highlanders had bows and arrows, the Lowland Scots never became good bowmen, though many laws were passed to further archery. The Scottish knights were armed like their English and French fellows, and were noted for their strength and skill. | |
5. [5] Life in England in the middle ages was not dull, and there was no. lack of merriment in spite of all the troubles of the time, for beside the great church festivals, guild feasts, May games, summer games, wakes, Yule feasts, and the like, there were often pageants and processions in the towns at coronations, great men's weddings, and other public occasions. Both round dances and step-dancing were very favourite pastimes, and many songs were written for dancers to sing. All kinds of music, too, were brought in from abroad; beside the organ, harp, pipe, horn, and tabrets, which had long been played in England, there were viols, and citherns, and bagpipes, and drums, and shawms. Bands of musicians played and sung at feasts and pageants, and in the churches. The English and Welsh were especially skilled in part-singing, and there are hundreds of old songs on all subjects in old vellum books of this time. The mystery plays, too, were now at their best. These were sets of dramas showing forth in order the stories of the Old and New Testaments, acted by the workmen of the several craftguilds or mysteries [metiers] : thus the vintners would act the Marriage of Cana, the carpenters Noah's Ark, and so on. They were played in the open air, like the Passion plays still to be seen in Tyrol and Biscaya, and often took two or three days to perform. Several sets of them which were played in Chester, Coventry and Cornwall are still remaining. was very fond of these plays, and they became so popular that in many places regular companies were formed for playing them. Another very common way of spending a holiday in these days was going a pilgrimage. Of course to go oversea to S. James of Galicia, or to Rome, or the Holy | |
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Land, was a serious undertaking, and done out of religious zeal; but there were many places of pilgrimage in England to which folks went partly for pleasure and partly for piety.
Such were the shrines of Our Lady at Walsingham, Worcester, Doncaster, Penrice, and Ipswich; the Holy Roods of Waltham, Bromholm, and the North Door of S. Paul's; the Holy Blood of Hayles; the resting-places of famous native saints, such as at Durham, S. Edmund at Bury, S. Alban, S. John of Beverley, SS. Etheldreda and
Osyth in East England, S. Edward the Confessor at Westminster, and a host of others, beside the most famous of all,
has described a pilgrim company of all ranks riding together from Southwark to - And the figure of the palmer from overseas was a well-known figure on the roads in
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6. [6] The dress of the gentry was perhaps never more costly and curious than at the courts of and French, Gascon, Spanish, German, and Bohemian fashions, each had their followers. There was a lavish use of embroidered stuffs, fur, and jewellery. One young knight would wear a square-collared tight-laced tunic of blue or green with scalloped border, and sleeves buttoned from elbow to wrist; his head was wrapped in a gay hood of the same stuff, buttoned and jag-edged also, with a long liripipe or pointed hood-tip; hose of different hues covered the legs, and on the feet were Cracow shoes with long curving tips laced to the knees with silver chains. Another chose to dress in a German slop or jacket, or a Spanish paltock, which was a short sleeveless vest laced to the hose by dozens of silk strings. This man would wear over his tunic the French , a fur-lined, fur-trimmed kirtle without sleeves to show the costly buttons of the tunic beneath it; that one held to his English coat with hanging half-sleeves; | |
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a third would appear in a Bohemian gown with ample skirt and huge poke-sleeves, while his hood was twisted into a graceful cap with a jewelled brooch fastened above the forehead, and a long lappet hanging on the left side of the face as far as the collar. A fourth would use a furred
Russian cap as head-gear, and a long Gascon mantle, buttoned on the right shoulder, for a cloak. Riding-boots of Cordova or morocco leather reaching to mid-thigh, and broad riding-hats set with jewels or small feathered caps were worn on horseback; and all spurs were now rowelled.
The great ladies copied the fashions of their lords, and took special pleasure in the ermine-edged and jewel-clasped cote-hardie, and over it the deep-furred mantle with silver clasps and silken neck-cords; their kirtles, like the men's, were of indigo blue, green, or scarlet cloth, square-collared, tight-fitting, bejagged, and fastened with rows of little buttons. The matron's head-dress was a kerchief of fine lawn or cambric or coloured silk draped over the hair, which was gathered up into bosses standing out from the head at either temple, and kept in place by a net of gold or silver wire. unwedded ladies wore a ribbon of silk instead of the kerchief.
Both men and women often wore costly chaplets, strings of pearls or jewels or carved beads, or wreaths of twisted ribbons. Women's shoes were of stamped leather or embroidered stuff; a jewelled girdle with a long hanging end was worn about the waist of the kirtle, and showed through the side-openings of the cote-hardie. Both ladies and gentlemen wore broad collars of silver and gold, such as only mayors and ushers bear nowadays. The very harness of the horses was most richly adorned. Queen Ann is said to have brought in a kind of side-saddle from Bohemia which became the fashion for great ladies, but most gentlewomen still rode in the old fashion. The ballad thus describes a queen's riding-gear:-
The ordinary dress of middle-class folk was of course not so fine as those above described. The women wore clothes |
277 | cut much as nuns' are now, but of gay colours. The men usually wore hood, tunic, and hose, but when fully dressed put on over these a long buttoned cloth gown of the colour of their livery or guild, with bagged or tight sleeves, girt with a plain leathern girdle. A serjeant-at-law or a judge wore a gown of parti-coloured stuff, belted with a striped silk sash, fur cape, and white silk coif [skull-cap]. The hair and beard were worn long, in the old English fashion. |
It was not only in dress that the costly habits of the richer classes were shown, but also in the grand banquets, with their varied viands, foreign wines, and gorgeous services of plate, at which whole days would be passed. A court poet thus tells of such a feast :- When the banquet was over the guests wash their hands in rosewater, and go forth two and two to the chamber or parlour, where We may compare all this good cheer and fine raiment with the poor ploughman's fare and clothing. | |
7. [7] Just as in Italy the Tuscan was chosen among the other dialects to become the tongue of Italy, so in England it was now that choice was made of one speech which should henceforward become the English tongue. The Southern dialect was set aside; | |
278 | men had almost ceased to write in it, and it was spoken in the most out-of-the-way and least central counties. The Northern dialect became the tongue of the Scottish court, in which Scottish poets and prose-writers wrote and talked down to the eighteenth century; but south of Tweed it was the Midland dialect, which became the King's English, and fathered our spoken and written English of to-day. It is not hard to see why this was, it was the dialect most easily understood by those who spoke the other two; it was spoken at both the universities and at the court (which usually lay in the midlands), hence those who wrote it could count upon the richest and most numerous readers, so that writers were drawn to use it, and songs and dancing ballads and tales were chiefly composed in it, and it became the tongue of the government. Moreover, such great authors as William of Langland, , and , who used it, set a pattern which lesser men naturally followed. For instance, when King James of Scotland wished to write verses he chose to take , "the lodestar of our language," as his model rather than the less famous poets of his own northern speech. Samples of Midland English of the fourteenth century are- .] |
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The sounds and grammar of Midland English changed little during this hundred years, but its store of words was largely new; numbers of English words which had been replaced by French and other foreign words now dropped out altogether, and in William of Langland or 's works one finds not more than six or seven words in a hundred which cannot now be understood. The chief difference, indeed, between the , beside pronunciation, lies in the far greater number of old English and Danish words kept by the former, as even at this day may be seen from a glance at the pages of Burns or other modern Scottish poets. The following lines give a fair sample of the Northern dialect of the fourteenth century:-
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8. [8] Ever since the Conquest gentlefolk had read and written French, and what English books had been written were written for the middle and poorer classes. However, now that the lords and gentry no longer held estates in France, but were born and bred in England, though they still understood and spoke French, they began to find it easier to read their favourite poems and tales in English than in French. Writers, therefore, set themselves to English the most famous French and Latin books for their use. At the end of the thirteenth century, Robert of Gloucester was, as we have seen, making his charming and the in English rhyme. Among his fellow-authors were the writer of the popular a huge rhyming Scripture history, and Robert Manning, a canon and priest of Bourne, who not only Englished Peter of Langtoft's French but also William of Wadington's which he called and Bonaventura's Nor is , the hermit of Hampole, to be forgotten, the author of one version of the widely-read of which there was also a south English translation. All these religious books found eager readers among both parish priests, and monks, and pious laymen. Nor was there any lack of lighter reading. William, a man from the Severn valley, did the poem of into English alliterative (letter-stressed) metre for Humfrey of Bohun, Earl of Hereford, about , and the Romances of Alexander, Vespasian, and the Knight of the Swan were also Englished in the same way about the same time. At the Scottish court of David were two Sir Hugh of Eglintoun, -1381 (judge of the Royal Court and husband of Gill, half-sister of Robert II.), and Clerk of Tranent, about . Sir Hugh used the old verse for his
and but added rhyme and stanza-form to letter-stress in the
and the It was this kind of verse that Clerk chose for his poems on | |
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Gawayn. These two men were not mere translators, they took old stories and gave them fresh life and beauty. Another Scot of letters was , Archdeacon of
Aberdeen, who wrote a rhyming Saints' Lives, and an oft-quoted poem, which has never been forgotten in Scotland. A fourth northern author, who made a fine rhyming poem on Sir Tristram, was followed by a shoal of copiers, who turned most of the French tales of and the Latin into what was often mere clinking doggrel, of the kind mocks in The earlier and better of these rhymed gestes are by Northerners, the later and worse by Midland men. |
The fourteenth century also gives birth to the English and Scottish ballad, the most beautiful of all modern popular poetry. The metre was that of the earlier French dancing songs (the later French ballad is wholly of another kind); and our oldest ballads were made for singing to the round dance, with burdens or choruses in which all the company joined. The first Robin Hood ballad ( ) is as early as , as is the first border ballad ( ); the first historical ballad ( ) is of 's time. In 's days, the war-songs of Lawrence Minot, in French rhyme, must not be left out; and the chronicler and other French poets wrote love poems for There are hundreds of songs and carols of the like kind by unknown English poets of this and the following reigns. | |
We have seen how great was the power of and his disciples on English thought, it was even greater on the English tongue, for they certainly gave a start to English prose-writing. The famous French allegory the by William Lorris, and John Clopinel of Meung, with its humour, satire, and thoughtfulness, no doubt had some weight with our William of Langland, though both in matter, verse, and plot he is thoroughly English, and uses the popular love of allegory which the French poets had fostered, for his own aims and in his own way. He, like them, had many followers, mostly among the earnest Lollards, to whom we owe the
and the like. | |
But by far the foremost figure among English writers of this day is . Born about , the son of a merchant vintner in Street, London, he passed his youth in the household of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and after his death became a follower of , in whose service | |
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and King 's he spent nearly all his life. He fought in France in his youth, and was prisoner there from
to . In his manhood he was often abroad in
France and Italy on embassies, , from or He also served the king as Comptroller of the Customs, , and Clerk of the Works, , and he sat as knight of the shire for in the Parliament of . On coming to the throne gave him a pension, but he died the same year in a house close to the
Abbey of Westminster, where his body now lies entombed.
He was a friend of the French poet Eustace des Champs
(whose uncle Machault's metre he often used) and of Otho
Graunson, and in Italy he may have met Petrarca and Boccaccio, whose works he admired and copied. From the Italians he learned to write in a smooth and natural style; but he had gifts of his own which lifted him above his masters, sound common-sense, delightful mirth, and kindliness of soul, and from them he gained his keen, quick insight into truths which were dim or wholly dark to most men of his day. So that though he was court poet, a gentleman writing for the pleasure of lords and ladies, not caring to teach any new thing or wishing for any sudden changes, his work is truthful, natural, and lasting, and he has left us not only the best picture of his own age, but perhaps the deepest views of men's hearts and thoughts yet set down on paper in England. His first works were copies of the French poems of the day, he also translated Boccaccio's paraphrased Boethius' (King 's old favourite), and made a for his son Lewis. But the is his best work-a great undertaking of which not a quarter was finished, but which is none the less the most perfect piece of writing any Englishman before the Reformation ever penned, and fully justifies the honour in which later English poets have held its author. Already in his own day had many friends and admirers, chief of whom was , , a favourite poet of , for whom he made his a long medley of moral tales somewhat after Robert of Bourne's model. also wrote the in French, but his best poem, a thoughtful satire called the is in Latin. |
In history the Latin chroniclers are still our chief guides. John of Trokelowe () and the painstaking Thomas Walsingham () keep up the credit of S. Albans. | |
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A Malmesbury monk writes on 's reign. Walter of Gisburne or Hemingford is the last of the Northern chroniclers of the legal type of Howden, and goes down to
, and Robert of Avesbury, the exact Registrar of the
Archbishop of 's Court, does like worthy work for
's reign. A learned black friar, Nicholas Trevet, who had studied at and Paris, wrote a brief and careful history of and ; and a Chester monk of S. Werburg's, named Randolf Higden, made a huge encyclopedia of English history down to his own day, called
which a priest of Berkeley,John of Trevisa, Englished in almost the last big book in the Southern dialect. It is also a clear sign that the English people wanted books in their own tongue. One of 's servants gives in French an and another has left the John le Bel [the Fair], a canon of Liege and follower of the house of Hainault, who was in England at the beginning of 's reign, wrote of English history in French down to , and , a priest who wrote for Ingelram, Earl of Bedford, and Earl John of Blois, continued his work down to . 's love of deeds of arms and pleasant way of writing have always made his chronicle a favourite, while his knowledge of English exploits and interests in foreign lands, Flanders, Gascony, Spain, Brittany, Germany, Italy, and France, give it much value. But it is perhaps in his book that one can most plainly see the selfish disregard of the poor, and the wanton pride, and lust, and haste to shed blood, which were so soon to bring ruin upon the nobles, who gave way to them,-a ruin that happily cleared the path for men with higher aims than their own present pleasures.
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Footnotes: [1] English constitution and finance in the fourteenth century. [2] Trade, prices and wages in the fourteenth century. [3] Fourteenth Century or Decorated architecture in England. [4] Armour and arms in the fourteenth century. [5] Pastimes and pilgrimages. [6] Food and raiment in England in the fourteenth century. [7] Beginning of our modern book English. [8] English literature in the fourteenth century. Chaucer, Wycliff, Langland, Eglintoun, Froissart. |
