THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
1. The fifteenth century, a remarkable period in many ways, saw three
royal dynasties established in England-- the Houses of Lancaster, York,
and Tudor. Five successful French campaigns of Henry V., and the battle
of Agincourt; and, on the other side, the loss of all our large
possessions in France, with the exception of Calais, under the rule of
the weak Henry VI., were among the chief events of the fifteenth
century. The Wars of the Roses did not contribute anything to the
prosperity of the century, nor could so unsettled and quarrelsome a time
encourage the cultivation of literature. For this among other reasons,
we find no great compositions in prose or verse; but a considerable
activity in the making and distribution of ballads. The best of these
are +Sir Patrick Spens+, +Edom o’ Gordon+, +The Nut-Brown Mayde+, and
some of those written about +Robin Hood+ and his exploits. The ballad
was everywhere popular; and minstrels sang them in every city and
village through the length and breadth of England. The famous ballad of
+Chevy Chase+ is generally placed after the year 1460, though it did not
take its present form till the seventeenth century. It tells the story
of the Battle of Otterburn, which was fought in 1388. This century was
also witness to the short struggle of Richard III., followed by the rise
of the House of Tudor. And, in 1498, just at its close, the wonderful
apparition of a new world-- of +The New World+-- rose on the horizon of
the English mind, for England then first heard of the discovery of
America. But, as regards thinking and writing, the fifteenth century is
the most barren in our literature. It is the most barren in the
+production+ of original literature; but, on the other hand, it is,
compared with all the centuries that preceded it, the most fertile in
the dissemination and +distribution+ of the literature that already
existed. For England saw, in the memorable year of +1474+, the
establishment of the first printing-press in the Almonry at Westminster,
by +William Caxton+. The first book printed by him in this country was
called ‘The Game and Playe of the Chesse.’ When Edward IV. and his
friends visited Caxton’s house and looked at his printing-press, they
spoke of it as a pretty toy; they could not foresee that it was destined
to be a more powerful engine of good government and the spread of
thought and education than the Crown, Parliaments, and courts of law all
put together. The two greatest names in literature in the fifteenth
century are those of +James I.+ (of Scotland) and +William Caxton+
himself. Two followers of Chaucer, +Occleve+ and +Lydgate+ are also
generally mentioned. Put shortly, one might say that the chief poetical
productions of this century were its +ballads+; and the chief prose
productions, +translations+ from Latin or from foreign works.
2. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND (+1394-1437+), though a Scotchman, owed his
education to England. He was born in 1394. Whilst on his way to France
when a boy of eleven, he was captured, in time of peace, by the order of
Henry IV., and kept prisoner in England for about eighteen years. It was
no great misfortune, for he received from Henry the best education that
England could then give in language, literature, music, and all knightly
accomplishments. He married Lady Jane Beaufort, the grand-daughter of
John of Gaunt, the friend and patron of Chaucer. His best and longest
poem is +The Kings Quair+ (that is, Book), a poem which was inspired by
the subject of it, Lady Jane Beaufort herself. The poem is written in a
stanza of seven lines (called +Rime Royal+); and the style is a close
copy of the style of Chaucer. After reigning thirteen years in Scotland,
King James was murdered at Perth, in the year 1437. A Norman by blood,
he is the best poet of the fifteenth century.
3. WILLIAM CAXTON (+1422-1492+) is the name of greatest importance and
significance in the history of our literature in the fifteenth century.
He was born in Kent in the year 1422. He was not merely a printer, he
was also a literary man; and, when he devoted himself to printing, he
took to it as an art, and not as a mere mechanical device. Caxton in
early life was a mercer in the city of London; and in the course of his
business, which was a thriving one, he had to make frequent journeys to
the Low Countries. Here he saw the printing-press for the first time,
with the new separate types, was enchanted with it, and fired by the
wonderful future it opened. It had been introduced into Holland about
the year 1450. Caxton’s press was set up in the Almonry at Westminster,
at the sign of the Red Pole. It produced in all sixty-four books, nearly
all of them in English, some of them written by Caxton himself. One of
the most important of them was Sir Thomas Malory’s +History of King
Arthur+, the storehouse from which Tennyson drew the stories which form
the groundwork of his _Idylls of the King_.