THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
The Study of Latin and Greek--Invention of Printing--Caxton--New
Schools and Colleges--Architecture, Military, Ecclesiastical,
and Domestic--Sculpture, Painting, and Gilding--The Art of
War--Commerce and Shipping--Coinage.
It might be very reasonably supposed that during a century spent almost
entirely in war, and during the second half of it in the most rancorous
intestine strife, there could not be much national progress. There is no
doubt but that the population was greatly decreased. It was calculated
that at the beginning of the century the population of England and Wales
amounted to about 2,700,000. At the end of it, it is supposed that there
were not 2,500,000.
In these depopulating wars, there can be no question that, besides
the actual destruction of so many men, there must have been terrible
sufferings inflicted, and an immense interruption of all those peaceful
transactions by which nations become wealthy and powerful.
During this century, two events of the highest importance to art and
learning took place--the introduction of the knowledge of Greek and the
invention of printing.
[Illustration: CAXTON SHOWING THE FIRST SPECIMEN OF HIS PRINTING TO KING
EDWARD IV., AT THE ALMONRY, WESTMINSTER.
AFTER THE PAINTING BY DANIEL MACLISE, R.A.]
If the knowledge of Greek had not entirely died out in western Europe,
it had nearly so till this century. The crusades, leading the Christians
of western Europe to the east, had opened up an acquaintance betwixt the
people of the Greek empire and those of the West. The destruction of that
empire in this century drove a number of learned men into Italy, where
they taught their language and literature. Amongst these were Theodore
Gaza, Cardinal Bessarion, George of Trebizond, Demetrius Chalcondyles,
John Argyropulus, and Johannes Lascaris. Before that time some knowledge
of the Greek philosophy had reached us through the Arabians, but till
the fourteenth century very little of the literature of Greece was known
in the western nations, not even the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" of Homer.
In Italy Petrarch and Boccaccio learned the language and studied the
writings of Greece, and an enthusiasm for Greek literature spread over
all Europe. Grocyn studied it in Italy in 1488, under Chalcondyles, and
came and taught it in England.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF CAXTON'S PRINTING IN THE "DICTES AND SAYINGS
OF PHILOSOPHERS" (1477).]
At the same moment that Greek began to be studied, Latin in Europe was
in the lowest and most degraded state. Though it still continued the
language of divines, lawyers, philosophers, historians, and even poets,
it had lost almost every trace of its original idiom and elegance. Latin
words were used, but in the English order, and where words were wanting,
they Anglicised them.
[Illustration: EARL RIVERS PRESENTING CAXTON TO EDWARD IV. (_From MS. in
the Library of Lambeth Palace._)]
But that wonderful art which was destined to chase this darkness like a
new sun was already on its way from Germany to this country. The Chinese
had printed from engraved wooden blocks for many centuries, when the same
idea suggested itself to a citizen of Haarlem, named Laurent Janszoon
Coster. Coster, who was keeper of the cathedral, first cut his letters in
wood, then made separate wooden letters, and employed them in printing
books by tying them together with strings. From wood he proceeded to cut
his letters in metal, and finally to cast them in the present fashion.
Coster concealed his secret with great care, and was anxious to transmit
it to his children; but in this he was disappointed, for at his death
one of his assistants, John Gensfleisch, the Gutenberger, went off to
Mayence, carrying with him movable types of Coster's casting.
That is the Dutch story, but the Germans insist on Gutenberg being the
originator of printing. They contend that Coster's were only the wooden
blocks which had long been in use for the printing of playing cards, and
manuals of devotion. They even insinuate that all that the Dutch claim
had probably been brought from China by Marco Polo in the thirteenth
century, who had seen the paper-money thus printed there in letters of
vermilion, and that Holland had no share in the invention at all. But we
know that the Germans have a vast capacity for claiming. It is notorious
that all the earliest block-printing, the Bibliæ Pauperum, the Bibles of
the Poor, the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, with its fifty pictures, and
other block works, were all done in the Low Countries in the century we
are reviewing.
Taking a broad view, however, it is certain that Gutenberg, Fust, and
Schoeffer, were the men who first printed any known works in movable
types, and from Mayence, in 1445, diffused very soon the knowledge of
the present art of printing over the whole world. The first work which
they are supposed to have printed was the Bible, an edition of the Latin
Vulgate, known by the name of the Mazarin Bible, of which various copies
remain, though without date or printer's name.
Printing was introduced into England in 1474, according to all the chief
authorities of or near that time, by William Caxton. Caxton was a native
of the weald of Kent. He served his apprenticeship to a mercer of London,
and left England in 1441 to transact business in the Low Countries. There
he was greatly regarded by Margaret, the Duchess of Burgundy, Edward
IV.'s sister, who retained him as long as she could at her court. Caxton
was now upwards of fifty years of age, but his inquisitive and active
temperament led him to learn, amongst other things, the whole art of
printing from one Colard Manson. He saw its immense importance, and he
translated Raoul le Feure's "Recueil des Histoires de Troye," and printed
it in folio. This great work he says himself that he began in Bruges,
and finished in Cologne in 1471. The first work which he printed in
England was the "Game and Playe of Chesse," which was published in 1475.
From this time till 1490, or till nearly the date of his death in 1491
or 1492, a period of sixteen years, the list of the works which Caxton
passed through his press is quite wonderful. Thomas Milling, the Abbot
of Westminster, was his most zealous patron; and at Westminster, in the
Almonry, he commenced his business. Earl Rivers, brother to the queen of
Edward IV., another of his friends and patrons, translated the "Dictes
and Sayings of the Philosophers" for his nephew, the Prince of Wales, and
introduced Caxton, when it was printed, to present it to the king and
royal family.
But while Caxton was thus busy he saw others around him also as hard at
work with their presses: Theodore Rood, John Lettow, William Machelina,
and Wynkyn de Worde, foreigners, and Thomas Hunt, an Englishman. A
schoolmaster of St. Albans set up a press there, and several books were
printed at Oxford in 1478, and to the end of the century. There is
no direct evidence of any work being printed in Scotland during this
century, though such may have been the case, and all traces of the fact
obliterated in the almost universal destruction of the cathedral and
conventual libraries at the Reformation. James III. was known to collect
the most superb specimens of typography, and Dr. Henry mentions seeing
a magnificent edition of "Speculum Moralitatis," which had been in that
king's possession, and contained his autograph.
Not less meritorious benefactors of their country, next to the writers
and printers of books, were those who collected them into libraries, and
the most munificent patron and encourager of learning in this manner was
the unfortunate Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. He gave to the University
of Oxford a library of 600 volumes in 1440, valued at £1,000. Some of
these very volumes yet remain in different collections. Duke Humphrey
not only bought books, but he employed men of science and learning to
translate and transcribe. He kept celebrated writers from France and
Italy, as well as Englishmen, to translate from the Greek and other
languages; and is said to have written himself on astronomy, a scheme of
astronomical calculations under his name still remaining in the library
of Gresham College. The great Duke of Bedford, likewise, when master of
Paris, purchased and sent to this country the royal library, containing
853 volumes, valued at 2,223 livres.
The schools and colleges founded during this century were the
following:--Lincoln College, Oxford, founded in 1427, by Richard Fleming,
Bishop of Lincoln, and completed by Thomas Scott, of Rotherham, Bishop of
Lincoln, in 1475. All Souls' College, Oxford, was founded by Chicheley,
Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1437. He expended upon its erection £4,545,
and procured considerable revenues for it out of lands of the alien
priories dissolved just before that time. Magdalene College, Oxford, was
founded by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, in 1458, and soon
became one of the richest colleges in Europe. King's College, Cambridge,
was founded by Henry VI. in 1441. Queens' College, Cambridge, was
founded by Margaret of Anjou, in 1448; and Catherine Hall, Cambridge, was
founded by Robert Woodlark, third provost of King's College, in 1473.
Besides these, Henry VI. founded Eton College, and Thomas Hokenorton,
Abbot of Osney, founded the schools in Oxford, in 1439. Before that
time the professors of several sciences in both universities read
their lectures in private houses, at very inconvenient distances from
each other. To remedy this inconvenience, schools were erected in
both universities at this period. Hokenorton's schools comprehended
the teaching of divinity, metaphysics, natural and moral philosophy,
astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, music, logic, rhetoric, and grammar.
They required liberal aid from other benefactors, and they found these
in the noble Humphrey of Gloucester, and the two brothers Kemp, the one
Archbishop of York and the other Bishop of London. They were completed
in 1480, including Duke Humphrey's noble library, the nucleus of the
present Bodleian, which was refounded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1597. The
quadrangle, containing the schools of Cambridge, was completed in 1475.
Up to this period Scotland had possessed no university whatever, and
its youth had been obliged to travel to foreign universities for their
education. But now the University of St. Andrews was founded in 1410,
and obtained a charter in 1411 from Bishop Wardlaw, which was confirmed
by the Pope in 1412, and by James I. in 1431. The great need of such an
institution was soon evidenced by the university becoming famous. In 1456
Kennedy, the successor of Wardlaw, founded the College of St. Salvator in
that city; and in 1450 William Turnbull, the Bishop of Glasgow, founded
the University of that city; and in the same year was founded the college
or faculty of arts in Glasgow, King James II. taking both college and
university under his especial patronage and protection. This college
received a handsome endowment from James, Lord Hamilton, and his lady,
Euphemia, Countess of Douglas, in 1459.
The castles erected during this period are few. The wars of the
Roses brought the force of cannon and gunpowder against the massive
erections of the barons of past ages, and many a terrible stronghold
was demolished. But there was, from the beginning of these wars, little
leisure for repairing, or for building new castles. The proprietors, for
the most part, were killed or reduced to ruin, and the workmen shared
the same fate, so that labour became too scarce and dear for such great
undertakings. Scotland was affected by similar circumstances.
The castles of this period bear unmistakable traces of the Perpendicular
style, which was prevalent in the ecclesiastical architecture of the
age. That portion of Windsor built by William of Wykeham, though much
altered, retains some marked and good features of this age. The exterior
of Tattershall Castle, in Lincolnshire, remains nearly unaltered. All the
castles of this time blend more or less of the domestic character, and
tended towards that style which prevailed in the next century under the
name of Tudor. Another great change in the castellated architecture of
this period was the use of brick in their construction. Bricks, though
introduced into Britain by the Romans, had gone almost out of use till
the reign of Richard II.; now they were in such favour that the castles
of Tattershall, Hurstmonceux, and Caistor were built chiefly of them, as
Thornbury Castle was in the next century. Hurstmonceux, in Sussex, was
erected in 1448 on the plan of Porchester Castle. It was a stupendous
building, of which the ruins now remain, forming a regular parallelogram
of 180 feet square, flanked by seventeen octagon towers, and with a fine
machicolated gateway forming the keep. Tattershall, in Lincolnshire,
built in 1455, is erected in the style of the ancient keep, a huge square
tower with polygonal turrets at the angles. Caistor, in Norfolk, erected
about 1450, was remarkable for two very large circular brick towers at
the northern angle, one of which remains.
But the castles and the mansions of this period possessed frequently
so many features and qualities in common, that some of them are actual
hybrids, the uniting links of the two kinds of houses. They had alike
towers, battlements, and moats, and the chief apartments looked into the
interior quadrangle as the safest. Oxburgh Hall, in Norfolk, is one of
this mixed class. Though called a hall, it is moated, and has a massive
gateway of a remarkable altitude. Raglan Castle, built in the reign of
Edward IV., has more of the true castellated style; Warwick and Windsor,
more of the union of the two styles. At the same time such castles as
had their gateways battered down, and rebuilt at this period, present
in them all the older characteristics of castellated buildings. Such is
the gateway of Carisbrooke Castle, built in the reign of Edward IV., and
the west gate of Canterbury, built towards the close of the fourteenth
century, which retain the stem old circular towers, lighted only by mere
loopholes and _oeillets_.
The style of ecclesiastical architecture prevailing through this century,
and to the middle of the next, is that called the Perpendicular. It
appears to have commenced about 1377, or at the commencement of the
reign of Richard II., just twenty years prior to this century, and
it terminated at the Reformation, in the reign of Henry VIII. The
Reformation was anything but a reformation in architecture. That great
convulsion broke up the period of a thousand years, during which, from
the first introduction of Christianity into this island, this peculiar
character of architecture, often called Gothic, but more properly
Christian, had been progressing and perfecting itself. The Western
princes and prelates, evidently copying the Grecian in their columns,
but adding curves and ornaments unknown to the Greeks, and introducing
principles of pliancy, and of long and lofty aisles, from the suggestions
of the forests, in which they were accustomed to wander, and the linden
groves which they planted, originated a new school of architecture, in
many particulars far exceeding that of the classic nations. No church
took up and perpetuated this noble Christian architecture more cordially
and more inspiredly than the Catholic. Over the whole of Europe, wherever
the Roman Church prevailed, it erected its churches and monasteries in
a spirit of unrivalled grandeur and beauty. In architecture, in music,
and in painting, it acquitted itself royally towards the public, however
it might fail in spirit, in doctrine, or in discipline. The remains
of painted windows, to say nothing of the productions of such men as
Raphael, Michael Angelo, Guido, and a host of others, who drew their
inspiration from the devotions of that church, are sufficient to excite
our highest admiration; and the sublime anthems which resounded through
their august and poetical temples, through what are called "the Dark
Ages," were well calculated to enchain the imagination of minds not
deeply reflective or profoundly informed.
[Illustration: THE QUADRANGLE: ETON COLLEGE.]
In every country we find, moreover, a different style in all these
arts--music, painting, and architecture; demonstrating the exuberance
of genius turned into these channels during long centuries, when all
others, except warfare, seemed closed. England had its distinctive style
in these matters, and in architecture this Perpendicular style was the
last. During its later period it considerably deteriorated, and with
the Reformation it went out. In England sufficient power and property
were left to the Anglican Church to enable it to preserve the majority
of its churches, and many of its conventual buildings: in Scotland the
destruction was more terrible. There public opinion took a great leap
from Catholicism to the simplicity and sternness of the school of John
Knox; and in consequence of his celebrated sermon at Perth, in which he
told his congregation that to effectually drive away the rooks they must
pull out their nests, almost every convent and cathedral, except that of
Glasgow, was reduced to a ruin.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE.]
Of the Perpendicular style we have many churches throughout the country,
and still more into which it has been more or less introduced into
those of earlier date in repairs and restorations. Every county, and
almost every parish, can show us specimens of this style, if it be only
in a window, a porch, or a buttress. Rickman is of opinion that half
the windows in English edifices over the kingdom are of this style.
Whilst our neighbours on the Continent were indulging themselves in the
_flamboyant_ style, and loading their churches with the most exuberant
ornament, as in the splendid cathedrals of Normandy and Brittany, our
ancestors were enamoured of this new and more chaste style. There are
writers who regard the perpendicular lines of this style as an evidence
of a decline in the art. We cannot agree with that opinion. The straight,
continuous mullions of the Perpendicular are--combined with the rich and
abundant ornaments of other portions of the buildings, as the spandrils
enriched with shields, the finely-wrought and soaring canopies, and
crocketed finials, the canopied buttresses, the groined roofs and
fan-tracery of ceilings--a pleasure to the eye, when chastely and richly
designed.
The windows of this style at once catch the observation of the spectator.
The mullions, running through from bottom to top, give you, instead of
the flowing tracery of the Decorated style, a simple and somewhat stiff
heading; but the stiffness is in most instances relieved by the heading
of each individual section being cuspated, and the upper portions of
the window presenting frequent variations, as in the grand western
window of Winchester Cathedral. Some of these windows, with their
cinquefoils and quatrefoils, approach even to the Decorative. Amongst
the finest windows of this kind are those of St. George's, Windsor, of
four lights; the clerestory windows of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, of
five. The east window of York Cathedral is of superb proportions. The
window of the Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, is extremely rich and peculiar
in its character. Those of the Abbey Church of Bath have the mullions
alternating, by the perpendicular line being continued from the centre of
each arch beneath it.
The mullions in this style are crossed at right angles by transoms,
converting the whole window into a series of panels; for panelling in the
Perpendicular style is one of its chief characteristics, being carried
out on walls, doors, and, in many cases, even roofs and ceilings. Take
away the arched head of a window, and you convert it at once into an
Elizabethan one.
Every portion of a Perpendicular building has its essential
characteristics: its piers, its buttresses, its niches, its roofs,
porches, battlements, and ornaments, which we cannot enumerate here.
They must be studied for themselves. We can only point out one or two
prominent examples.
Many of the buildings of this style are adorned with flying buttresses,
which are often pierced, and rich in tracery, as those of Henry VII.'s
Chapel. The projection of the buttresses in King's College Chapel,
Cambridge, is so great that chapels are built between them. Many of these
buttresses are very rich with statuary niches and wrought canopies.
Pinnacles are used profusely in this style; but in St. George's,
Windsor, and the Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, the buttresses run up, and
finish square.
Panelling, as we have said, is one of the most striking features of the
Perpendicular style. This is carried to such an extent in most of the
richly-ornamented buildings, that it covers walls, windows, roofs; for
the doors and windows are only pierced panels. St. George's, Windsor, is
a fine example of this; but still finer is Henry VII.'s Chapel, which,
within and without, is almost covered with panelling. King's College
Chapel, Cambridge, is another remarkable example, which is all panelled,
except the floor. The roof of this chapel is one of the richest specimens
of the fan-tracery in the kingdom. Amongst the most graceful ornaments of
this style are the angels introduced into cornices, and as supporters of
shields and corbels for roof-beams, rich foliated crockets, and flowers
exquisitely worked, conspicuous amongst them being the Tudor flower.
Some of the finest steeples in the country belong to this style. First
and foremost stands the unrivalled open-work tower of St. Nicholas,
Newcastle-on-Tyne. This forms a splendid crown in the air, composed of
four flying buttresses, springing from the base of octagonal turrets, and
bearing at their intersection an elegant lantern, crowned with a spire.
From this have been copied that of St. Giles's, Edinburgh, that of the
church of Linlithgow, and the college tower of Aberdeen. Boston, Derby,
Taunton, Doncaster, Coventry, York, and Canterbury boast noble steeples
of this style.
The arches of the Perpendicular are various; but none are so common
as the flat, four-centred arch. This in doors, and in windows also,
is generally enclosed by a square plane of decoration, appearing as a
frame, and this mostly surmounted by a dripstone; the spandrels formed
betwixt the arch and frame being generally filled by armorial shields,
or ornamental tracery. In some doorways there is an excess of ornament.
The Decorative style in this country, or the florid abroad, has nothing
richer. Every part is covered with canopy-work, flowers, heraldic
emblems, and emblazoned shields. Such is the doorway of King's College
Chapel, Cambridge; and such are the chapels of Henry V. and Henry VII. at
Westminster.
The groined roofs of the Perpendicular style are noble, and often
profusely ornamented. The intersections of the ribs of these groined
roofs are often shields richly emblazoned in their proper colours. The
vaulted roof of the cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral is studded with
above 800 shields, of kings and other benefactors; and the whole presents
a perfect blaze of splendour. Some of these groined roofs are adorned
with a ramification of ribs, running out in a fan-shape, circumscribed by
a quarter or half-circle rib, the intervals filled up with ornament. The
cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral present, perhaps, the first specimen of
the fan-tracery roof; and after that King's College Chapel, Cambridge,
Henry VII.'s Chapel, and the Abbey Church at Bath. The Red Mount Chapel,
at Lynn, in Norfolk, is a unique and very beautiful specimen of the
Perpendicular, not only having a richly ornamental roof of this kind,
but though much injured by time, displaying in every part of it design
and workmanship equally exquisite. Henry VII.'s Chapel and the Divinity
School at Oxford have pendants which come down as low as the springing
line of the fans.
A simpler roof, but quaint and impressive in its appearance, is the open
one--that is, open to the roof framing. Here, as all is bare to the eye,
the whole framework of beams and rafters has been constructed for effect.
The wood-work forms arches, pendants, and pierced panels of various form
and ornament. Such are the roofs of Westminster Hall, Crosby Hall (just
removed), Eltham Palace, the College of Christ Church, Oxford, and many
an old baronial hall and church throughout the country.
Specimens of this style of architecture in whole or in part will meet
the reader in every part of England, Wales, and Scotland; and it should
be remembered that it is an especial and exclusively English style, no
other country possessing it. In Scotland Melrose Abbey and Roslin Chapel
present fine specimens of the Perpendicular, the latter one displaying
some singular variations, the work of foreign artists.
When we descend from the military castle to more domestic architecture,
we find the large houses of the gentry, or nobility, though totally
incapable of resisting cannon, yet frequently battlemented, flanked
with turrets, and surrounded by the flooded moat. The large houses of
this period were generally built round one or two quadrangles. These
buildings often possessed much variety of exterior detail: a great
arched gateway with the armorial escutcheon above it; projections,
recesses, tall chimneys, flanking buttresses, handsome oriel windows, and
pointed gables, terminated by some animal belonging to the emblazonry
of the family. They were commonly adorned with fanes, in the form of
the military banner of the chief, duly emblazoned in proper colours.
Within, the great hall, with its open groined roof, the kitchen, and
the buttery, cut the principal figure. At the upper end of the hall was
the daïs or raised part, on which stood the table of the lord and his
immediate family or particular guests; and below the great salt-cellar
sat the remainder of the establishment. At the lower end was commonly a
music gallery. The fire was still frequently in the centre of the hall,
and there was a hole in the roof to permit the smoke to escape, as at
Penshurst, where the front of the music gallery is true Perpendicular. In
other houses there were large open fireplaces, the mantelpieces of which
were frequently richly carved with the armorial shields of the family.
The floors were still strewn with fresh rushes instead of a carpet, and
the walls were hung with arras, which clothed them, and at the same
time kept out cold draughts. Plaster ceilings were yet unknown. The
greater portion of these houses, however, was required for the sleeping
apartments of the numerous retainers.
In the humbler halls, granges, and farmhouses, the same plan of building
round a quadrangle was mostly adhered to, and a large number of such
houses were of framed timber, with ornamental gables and porches, and
displaying much carving. Great Chatfield manor-house in Wiltshire,
Harlaxton in Lincolnshire, Helmingham Hall, Norfolk, Moreton Hall in
Cheshire, and probably some of the framed timber houses of Lancashire, as
the Hall-in-the-Wood, Smithell's, Speke Hall, &c., in whole or in part,
date from this period. Ockwells, in Berkshire, is another of the fine old
timber houses of this century.
In the towns the houses were also chiefly of wood. The streets were
extremely narrow, and the upper storeys of the houses projected over
the lower ones, so that you might almost shake hands out of the third
or fourth storey windows. This was the cause of such frequent fires as
occurred in London. Many of the small houses in these narrow streets
were adorned with abundance of carving. The houses or inns of the great
barons, prelates, and abbots were extensive, and surrounded inner courts.
Here, during Parliament, and on other grand occasions, the owners came
with their vast retinues. We are told that the Duke of York lodged with
400 men in Baynard's Castle, in 1457. The Earl of Warwick had his house
in Warwick Lane, still called after it, where he could lodge 800 men.
At another house of his called the Herber, meaning an inn, the Earl of
Salisbury, his father, lodged with 500 men. Still more extensive must
have been the abodes of the Earls of Exeter and Northumberland, who
occasionally brought retinues of from 800 to 1,500 men. The sites of
these great houses are yet known, and bear the names of their ancient
owners, but the buildings themselves have long vanished. The great houses
of Scotland still kept up the show of feudal strength and capability of
defence. The peels, or Border towers, yet bear evidence of the necessity
of stout fortification in those times. We may form some idea of the
devastation made amongst private dwellings in the Wars of the Roses,
from the statement of John Rous, the Warwick antiquary, who says that
no fewer than sixty villages, some of them large and populous, with
churches and manor-houses, had been destroyed within twelve miles of that
town. From all that we can learn, the common people of this age were but
indifferently lodged, and the mansions of the great were more stately
than comfortable.
Though such extensive destruction of the statuary which adorned both the
exterior and interior of our churches took place at the Reformation,
sufficient yet remains to warrant us in the belief that the fifteenth
surpassed every prior century in its sculpture. The very opposition
which the Wycliffites had raised to the worship and even existence of
images, seems to have stimulated the Church only the more to put forth
its strength in this direction. Sculptors, both foreign and English,
therefore received the highest encouragement, and were in the fullest
employ. The few statues which yet remain in niches, on the outside of our
cathedrals, especially those on the west end of the Cathedral of Wells,
though probably not the best work of the artists, are decided proofs
of their ability. The effigies of knights and ladies extended on their
altar tombs received grave damage, with the rest of the ecclesiastical
art, from the misguided zeal of the reformers, yet many such remain of
undoubted beauty, and the chantries, which were in this century erected
over the tombs of great prelates, are of the most exquisite design and
workmanship. Such are those in Winchester Cathedral of Bishops Wykeham,
Beaufort, and Waynflete. The shrine of Bishop Beaufort, in particular,
is a mass of Portland stone, carved like the finest ivory, and is a most
gorgeous specimen of a tomb of the Perpendicular period. Henry V.'s
chantry, in Westminster Abbey, is the only one erected in this period to
royalty, and it is a monument of high honour to the age.
The names of some of the artists of this era are preserved. Thomas Colyn,
Thomas Holewell, and Thomas Poppehowe, executed, carried over, and
erected in Nantes, in 1408, the alabaster tomb of the Duke of Brittany.
Of the five artists who executed the celebrated tomb of Richard, Earl
of Warwick, in the Beauchamp Chapel, four were English, and the fifth
was a Dutch goldsmith. Besides the great image of the earl, there were
thirty-two images on this monument. These were all cast by William
Austin, a founder of London, clearly a great genius, on the finest latten
(brass), and gilded by Bartholomew Lambespring the Dutch goldsmith. The
monument and the superb chapel in which it stands cost £2,481 4s. 7d.,
equivalent to £24,800 now.
Most of the monumental brasses which abound in our churches were the
work of this period. There are some of much older date, but, during this
century they were multiplied everywhere, and afforded great scope for the
talents of founders, engravers, and enamellers.
In painting, the age does not appear to have equally excelled. There
was, unquestionably, abundance of religious pictures on the walls of our
churches, and the images themselves were painted and gilt; but there
do not seem to have existed artists who had a true conception of the
sublimity of their pursuit. The painting of such works was undertaken by
the job, by painters and stainers. John Prudde, glazier in Westminster,
undertook to "import from beyond seas glass of the finest colours, blue,
yellow red, purple, sanguine, and violet," and with it glaze the windows
of the Beauchamp Chapel. Brentwood, a stainer of London, was to paint
the west wall of the chapel "with all manner of devices and imagery;"
and Christian Coliburne, painter, of London, was to "paint the images in
the finest oil colours." The great Earl of Warwick bargained with his
tailor to paint the scenes of his embassy to France, for which he was to
receive £1 8s. 6d. The "Dance of Death," so common on the Continent in
churches and churchyards, made also so famous by Holbein, was copied from
the cloister of the Innocents in Paris, and painted on the walls of the
cloister of St. Paul's. It was a specimen of the portrait painting of the
age, for it contained the portraits of actual persons, in different ranks
of life, in their proper dresses. The portraits of our kings, queens, and
celebrated characters, done at this time, are of inferior merit.
[Illustration: _From the Froissart MS. in the British Museum._
_Reproduced by André & Sleigh, Ltd., Bushey, Herts._
THE GRAND ASSAULT UPON THE TOWN OF AFRICA BY THE ENGLISH AND FRENCH.
THE TOWN OF AFRICA, SOME SEVENTY MILES FROM TUNIS, WAS THE OBJECTIVE OF
THE EXPEDITION THAT SAILED FROM GENOA IN 1390 TO CHASTISE THE BARBARY
CORSAIRS, AS DEPICTED IN ANOTHER OF THE FROISSART ILLUMINATIONS. THE VIEW
OF THE TOWN IS CLEARLY IMAGINARY, THE ARTIST BEING PROBABLY FAMILIAR WITH
NONE BUT FLEMISH OR FRENCH ARCHITECTURE.]
Gilding was in great request, not only for ornamenting churches and their
monuments, but for domestic use, the precious metals being very scarce,
and therefore copper and brass articles were commonly silvered or gilt.
But it was in the illumination of manuscripts that the artistic genius
of the time was, more than almost in any other department, displayed.
The colours used are deemed inferior in splendour to those of the
fourteenth century, but the illuminations are superior in drawing and
power of expression. The terror depicted in the faces of the Earl of
Warwick's sailors in expectation of shipwreck, and the grief in those who
witnessed his death, are evidences of the hand of a master. Many of the
portraits of the leading characters of the age are to be found in these
illuminations; and they afford us the most lively views of the persons
and dresses of our ancestors of that day--their arms, ships, houses,
furniture, manners, and employments. But the art of printing was already
in existence, and before it the beautiful art of illumination fell and
died out.
[Illustration: STREET IN LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
The deadly arts of destruction were more practised during this century
than all others. First the English turned their arms against the French,
and then against each other, and though many of their armies were hastily
raised, and therefore ill-disciplined, they not only showed their
accustomed bravery, but many advances were made in the manner of raising,
forming, paying, and disciplining troops, as well as in the modes of
attacking fortifications and towns. Henry V. was a consummate master in
this, his favourite art, and was, perhaps, the first of our kings who
introduced a scheme of superior discipline, teaching his troops to march
in straight lines at proper distances, with a steady, measured pace; to
advance, attack, halt, or fall back without breaking, or getting into
confusion. This, combined with his mode of employing his archers, which
we have described in the account of his battles, gave him an invincible
superiority over his enemies.
As the feudal system decayed, the kings of England no longer depended
on their barons appearing in the field with their vassals, but they
bargained with different leaders to furnish men at stated prices,
which, as we have shown, were high. It was only in cases of rebellion
and intestine struggle that they summoned all their military tenants
to raise the people in mass, and the same summonses were issued to the
archbishops, bishops, and all the principal clergy, to arm all their
followers, lay and clerical, and march to the royal standard.
The pictures of battles and sieges at this period give us an odd medley
of bows and arrows, crossbows, spears, cannon, and hand-guns. The old
weapons were not left off, because the new ones were too imperfect and
too difficult of locomotion to supersede them. The cannons, though
often of immense bore and weight, throwing balls of from one to five
hundredweight, were, for the most part, without carriages, and therefore
difficult and tardy in their operations. The Scots were the first to
anticipate the modern gun-carriage, by what they called their "carts of
war," which carried two guns each, while many of the guns of the English
required fifty horses to drag them. They had, however, smaller guns; as
culverins, serpentines, basilisks, fowlers, scorpions, &c. The culverins
were a species of hand-gun in general, fired from a rest, or from the
shoulder. The Swiss had 10,000 culverins at the famous battle of Morat.
These hand-guns are said to have been first brought into England by
Edward IV. on his return from Flanders in 1471. Ships were also supplied
with small guns.
The trade of England continued to flourish and extend itself through
this century, in spite of the obstacles and ruinous effects of almost
perpetual war. Our kings, however warlike they might be, were yet very
sensible of the advantages of commerce, and during this century made
numerous treaties in its favour. At the same time, it is curious that,
even when two countries were at war, such was the spirit of trade, that
the merchants went on trading whenever they could, just as if there
was no war at all. This was the case, especially between England and
Flanders. Our monarchs were already ambitious of reigning supreme masters
of the seas, and this doctrine was as jealously urged upon them by the
nation. In a rhyming pamphlet, written about 1433, and to be found in
Hakluyt (Vol. I., p. 167), the writer says, that "if the English keep the
seas, especially the main seas, they will compell all the world to be at
peace with them, and to court their friendship."
Henry IV., though harassed by the difficulties of a usurped crown,
strenuously set himself to promote commerce, and to put an end to the
continual depredations committed upon each other by the English and the
merchants of the Hanse Towns, as well as those of Prussia and Livonia,
subject to the grand master of the Teutonic order of knights.
Henry V. was as victorious at sea as on land; and by his fleet, under his
brother, the great Duke of Bedford, in 1416, and again in 1417, the Earl
of Huntingdon being his admiral, swept the seas of the united fleets of
France and Genoa, and made himself complete master of the ocean during
his time. This ascendency was lost under the disastrous reign of Henry
VI., but was regained by Edward IV., a monarch who, notwithstanding his
voluptuous character, was fully alive to the vast benefits accruing to
a nation from foreign trade, and thought it no dishonour to be, if not
a merchant-prince, a prince-merchant. He had ships of his own, and in
time of peace he did not suffer them to remain useless in harbour, but
freighted them with goods on his own account, and grew rich by traffic.
Notwithstanding all this, the nation was not yet much more enlightened
as to the real principles of trade than it was in the previous century.
The same absurd restrictions were in force against foreign merchants.
Such foreign merchants were required to lay out all the money received
for goods imported in English merchandise. No gold or silver coin, plate
or bullion, was, on any account, to be carried out of the kingdom. Banks
were now established in most countries, and bills of exchange had been
in use since the thirteenth century--so that these remedied, to a large
extent, this evil; but it is clear that where the exports of a country
exceeded its imports, the balance must be remitted in cash; and the
commercial men were clever enough to evade all the laws of this kind. No
fact was so notorious as that the coinage of England abounded in all the
countries to which she traded.
Besides the prohibition of carrying out any English coin or even bullion,
foreign merchants were to sell all the goods they brought within
three months, but they were not to sell any of them to other merchant
strangers, and when they arrived in any English town they were assigned
to particular hosts, and were to lodge nowhere else. Yet, under all these
obstacles, our commerce grew, and our merchants extended their voyages to
ports and countries which they had not hitherto frequented. In 1413 they
fitted out ships in the port of London for Morocco, having a cargo of
wool and other merchandise valued at £24,000, or £240,000 of our money.
This raised the ire of the Genoese, who seized these precious ships; but
Henry IV. soon made ample reprisals by granting to his subjects letters
of marque to seize the ships and goods of the Genoese wherever they could
be found. And so well did the English kings follow this up, that we find
them in Richard III.'s reign not only successfully competing with the
Genoese, but obtaining a footing in Italy itself, and establishing a
consul at Pisa. Consuls, or, as they were then called, governors, of the
English traders abroad, were also employed during this period in Germany,
Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Flanders.
[Illustration: _From the Froissart MS. in the British Museum._
FROISSART PRESENTING HIS BOOK OF LOVE POEMS TO RICHARD II. IN 1395.
ON HIS RETURN TO ENGLAND IN 1395, AFTER AN ABSENCE OF TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS,
SIR JOHN FROISSART HAD AN INTERVIEW WITH THE KING, TO WHOM HE PRESENTED
HIS BOOK OF LOVE POEMS. "THE ROMANCE OF MELIADOR."]
[Illustration: _From the Froissart MS. in the British Museum._
THE LANDING OF THE LADY DE COUCY AT BOULOGNE.
THE LADY DE COUCY, WHO IS FOLLOWED BY HER WAITING MAID, HAD BEEN IN
ATTENDANCE UPON QUEEN ISABELLA, CONSORT OF RICHARD II AND SHE IS HERE
SEEN RETURNING SADLY TO FRANCE (IN 1399) BEARING TIDINGS OF THE KING'S
DOWNFALL.]
Wool, woollens, tin, hides, and corn, were still our chief exports.
Slaves, says the historian, were no longer an article of commerce; but
the conveyance of pilgrims to foreign shrines was a source of great
emolument to merchants. A curious pamphlet of the middle of this century,
called "The Prologue of English Policy," gives us a complete view of
our imports:--The commodities of Spain were figs, raisins, wines, oils,
soap, dates, liquorice, wax, iron, wool, wadmote, goatfell, redfell,
saffron, and quicksilver--a valuable importation. Those of Portugal were
very much the same. Brittany sent wine, salt, crest-cloth or linen, and
canvas; Germany, Scandinavia, and Flanders, iron, steel, copper, osmond,
bowstaves, boards, wax, corn, pitch, tar, flax, hemp, felting, thread,
fustian, buckram, canvas, and wool-cards; Genoa, gold, cloth of gold,
silk, cotton, oil, black pepper, rockalum, and wood; Venice, Florence,
and other Italian states, all kinds of spices and grocery wares, sweet
wines, sugar, dates.
The age abounded with great merchants. The Medici of Florence; Jacques
le Coeur, the greatest merchant that France ever produced, who had
more wealth and trade than all the other merchants of that country
together, and who supplied Charles VII. with money by which he recovered
his country from the English. In our own country John Norbury, John
Hende, and Richard Whittington, were the leading merchants of London,
the last of whom was so far from a poor boy making his fortune by a cat
that he was the son of Sir William Whittington, knight. In Bristol
also flourished at this time William Cannynge, who was five times mayor
of that city, and who had, for some cause not explained, 2,470 tons of
shipping taken from him at once by Edward IV., including one ship of 400
tons, one of 500, and one of 900. The name of this Cannynge is familiar
to readers of Chatterton's ingenious Rowley poems.
Of the ships and shipping of the age we need not say more than that, with
all the characteristics of the past age, there was an attempt to build
larger vessels in rivalry of the Genoese. John Taverner, of Hull, had a
royal licence granted him in 1449, conferring on him great privileges
and exemptions as a merchant, for building one as large as a Venetian
carrack, one of their first-class ships, or even larger. And Bishop
Kennedy, of St. Andrews, was as much celebrated for building a ship of
unusual size, called the _Bishop's Berge_, as for building and endowing
a college.
In Scotland the state of the shipping interest was much the same as in
England. James I. displayed enlightened views of trade. He made various
laws to ascertain the rate of duty on all exports and imports, to secure
the effects of any traders dying abroad, and permitted his subjects to
trade in foreign ships when they had no vessels of their own. In both
countries great care was taken to protect and promote their fisheries.
The coin of those times in England was chiefly of gold and silver.
The gold coin consisted of nobles, half-nobles, and quarter-nobles,
originally equivalent to guineas (the exact value of a noble in Henry
IV.'s reign was 21s. 1-1/2d.), half-guineas, and quarter-guineas, or
dollars of 5s. 3d. The silver coins were groats, half-groats, and
pennies. But it must be remembered that all these coins were of ten times
the intrinsic value of our present money; so that the labourer who in the
fifteenth century received 1-1/2d. per day, received as much as fifteen
pence of the present money. But the great historical fact regarding
the money of this age was its continual adulteration, and consequent
depreciation.
[Illustration: CANNON OF THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. (_From an
Engraving by I. van Mechlin._)]