CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

Power of the Church--Ecclesiastical Legislation--Rapacity

of the Papacy--Resistance of the Clergy--The Bull "Clericis

Laicos"--Contests between the Civil and Ecclesiastical

Power--The Scottish Church--Literature, Science, and Art--State

of Learning--The Nominalists and Realists--Medicine--The

Universities--Men of Learning and Science--Roger Bacon

and his Contemporaries--Historians--Growth of the English

Language--Poetry--Architecture--The Early Decorated Style

and its Characteristics--Domestic Buildings--Sculpture and

Painting--Music--Commerce, Coinage, and Shipping--Manners,

Customs, Dress, and Diversions.

Between the reign of John and the termination of that of Richard II. a

striking change had taken place in the power of the Church in England.

From the zenith of that marvellous dominion over the kingdoms of this

world, such as no church or religion had yet exercised in the annals of

mankind, it had begun sensibly to wane. From that extraordinary spectacle

when, at Courcy, on the Loire, in 1162, the two greatest kings of

Christendom, those of England and France, were seen holding the stirrups

of the servant of servants, Alexander III., and leading his horse by

the reins, to the day when John, just half a century afterwards, laid

the crown of this fair empire at the feet of the Pope, "and became a

servant unto tribute," everything had seemed to root the Papacy deeper

into the heart of the world. Kings, nobles, and people bowed down to

it, and received its foot on their necks with profound humility, only

occasionally evincing a slight wincing under its exactions. At that

period the Church of Rome had reached the summit of its glory; but before

the era at which we have now arrived, it had received a stern warning

that its days in England were numbered as the established hierarchy.

So long as the people were kept ignorant of the Bible, the opposition

of king or peer mattered little to it; but the people withdrew their

allegiance, and it fell rapidly.

The Pope, who strenuously supported John against his barons, was equally

friendly to his infant son, Henry III. Archbishop Langton, now in the

ascendant, held a synod at Oxford in 1222, in which fifty canons were

passed, some of which let in a curious light on the internal condition of

the Church. The twenty-eighth canon forbids the keeping of concubines by

the clergy openly in their houses, or visiting them openly, as they did,

to the great scandal of religion. In 1237 a council was held at London by

Otho, the Papal legate, in which were passed what were afterwards known

as the "Constitutions of Otho." The fifteenth and sixteenth canons of

this constitution were aimed at the same practices, and at clandestine

marriages of the priests, which were declared to be very common.

But the main object of the Church was to collect all the English moneys,

and in this pursuit there was no slackness. A cardinal-legate generally

resided in this country, whose chief function this was. During Otho's

abode here, 300 Italians came over, and were installed in lucrative

livings in the churches and abbeys. In pursuance of Magna Charta,

that the Church should be free, it became the only free thing in the

kingdom; every class of men were its vassals, and England was one huge

sponge which the Italian pontiff squeezed vigorously. The barons in

1245 became so exasperated that they sent orders to the wardens of the

seaports to seize all persons bringing bulls or mandates from Rome.

The legate remonstrated, and the barons then told the king that the

Church preferments alone held by Italians in England, independent of

other exactions, amounted to 60,000 marks per annum, a greater sum

than the revenues of the Crown. The barons went further; they sent an

embassy to the Papal council of Lyons, where the Pope was presiding in

person, when they declared, "We can no longer with any patience bear

these oppressions. They are as detestable to God and man as they are

intolerable to us; and, by the grace of God, we will no longer endure

them."

But, so far from relaxing his hold, the Pope soon after sent an order

demanding the half of all revenues of the non-resident clergy, and a

third of those of the resident ones. This outrageous attempt roused the

English clergy to determined resistance, and the rapacious Pope was

defeated. Amongst the most patriotic of the English prelates was the

celebrated Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. Innocent IV., one of

the most imperious pontiffs that ever filled the Papal chair, had sent

him a bull containing a clause which created a wonderful ferment in the

Church and the public mind, commencing with the words _Non obstante_,

which meant, notwithstanding all that the English clergy had to advance,

the holy father was determined to have his will, and he commanded the

venerable bishop to bestow a benefice upon an infant. The honest bishop

tore up the bull, and wrote to the Pope, declaring that the conduct

of the see of Rome "shook the very foundations of faith and security

amongst mankind," and that to put an infant into a living would be next

to the sins of Lucifer and of Antichrist, was in direct opposition to the

precepts of Christ, and would be the destruction of souls, by depriving

them of the benefits of the pastoral office. He refused to comply, and

said plainly that the sins of those who attempted such a thing rose as

high as their office.

The astonished Pope was seized with a furious passion on receiving this

epistle, and swore by St. Peter and St. Paul that he would utterly

confound that old, impertinent, deaf, doting fellow, and make him the

astonishment of the world. "What!" he exclaimed, "is not England our

possession, and its king our vassal, or rather our slave?"

The resistance of the English clergy only inflamed the cupidity and

despotism of the pontiffs. Boniface, the Archbishop of Canterbury,

was the servile tool of Rome, and after him Kilwardby, Peckham, and

Winchelsey carried things with a high hand. At various synods and

councils, held at Merton, Lambeth, London, Reading, and other places,

they passed canons, which went to give the Church unlimited power over

everything and everybody. The Church was to appoint to all livings and

dignities; no layman was to imprison a clergyman; the Church was to

enjoy peaceably all pious legacies and donations. The barons wrote to

the Pope, remonstrating and complaining against the immorality of the

clergy. The Pope replied that he did not suppose the English clergy were

any more licentious than they had always been. The possessions of the

Church went on growing to such an extent, from the arts of the priests

and superstition of the wealthy, that they are said to have amounted to

three-fourths of the property of the whole kingdom, and threatened to

swallow up all its lands. To put a stop to this fearful condition of

things, Edward I. passed his famous statute of mortmain in 1279, and

arrested the progress, for a considerable time, of the Papal avarice.

But, perhaps, the finest draught of golden fishes which the imperial

representative of Peter of Galilee ever made in England was twenty-five

years before the passing of this Act, when he had induced Henry III. to

nominate his son Edmund to the fatal crown of Naples, and, on pretence of

supporting his claim, the Pope drew from England, within a few years, no

less a sum than 950,000 marks, equal in value and purchasable power to

£12,000,000 sterling of our present money.

Boniface VIII., famous in his day as the most haughty and uncompromising

of the Popes, issued, as we have seen, a bull, known by the name of

_Clericis Laicos_, prohibiting all princes, in all countries from

levying taxes on the clergy without his consent. Winchelsey, Archbishop

of Canterbury, produced this bull, and forbade Edward I. to touch the

patrimony of the Church. But Edward was a monarch of the true British

breed, and soon proved more than a match for the archbishop and his Roman

master. He held a Parliament at Edmondsbury in 1296, and demanded a

fifth of the movables of the clergy They refused. Edward gave them till

the next Parliament, in January, 1297, to consider of it, when, still

refusing, and supposing themselves victorious, the king coolly told them

that as they refused to contribute to the support of the State, they

should enjoy no protection from the State. He forthwith outlawed them in

a body, and ordered all the sheriffs in England "to seize all the lay

fees of the clergy, as well secular as regular, with all their goods and

chattels, and retain them till they had further orders from him." He gave

orders to all the judges, also, "to do every man justice against the

clergy, but to do them justice against no man."

This was a condition of things which they had never expected; no monarch

had ever dreamt of, or had dared to attempt, such a measure. It came like

a thunderclap upon the clergy. They found themselves insulted, abused,

and plundered on every side. The archbishop himself, the author of all

this mischief, was stripped of everything, and, when on the verge of

starvation, was glad to submit and pay his fifth to recover the rest of

his property.

The power of the Popedom had thus been brought into collision with the

royal prerogative, and the issue was most damaging to the Papal prestige

all over the world. But Winchelsey, having regained his possessions,

was too indignant to remain quiet. He held a second synod at Merton,

and denounced the utmost terrors of the Church against all sacrilegious

invaders of the Church property, and would not rest till Edward obtained

his suspension from the next Pope, Clement V., and expelled him the

kingdom.

These contests betwixt the civil and ecclesiastical power in England

continued through the whole period we are reviewing, that is, from 1307

to 1399, or from the commencement of the reign of Edward II. to the

end of that of Richard II. To increase the influence of Rome there had

arrived two new orders of friars, the Franciscan and Dominican, in the

reign of Henry III. The Franciscans appeared in England in 1216, and the

Dominicans in 1217. At first they did good work among the poor, but they

soon grew corrupt. To prevent the Pope from thrusting foreigners into

English prelacies and benefices, Edward III. passed a second statute of

Provisors, and followed it by the statute of Præmunire, ordering the

confiscation of the property and the imprisonment of the person of every

one who should carry any pleas out of the kingdom, as well as of the

procurators of such person. This was renewed in 1393 with additional

severity by Richard II., when it was made to include all who brought into

the kingdom any Papal bull, excommunication, or anything of the kind.

[Illustration: COSTUME OF BISHOP OF THE 14TH CENTURY.]

Eight years prior to this Wycliffe died. His doctrines were rapidly

spreading; the reformers, under the name of Lollards, were becoming

numerous; the Papal hierarchy was proportionally alarmed, and Arundel,

the Archbishop of York, became their most active enemy. But before he

could mature his designs against them, he was involved in the prosecution

of the adherents of the Duke of Gloucester for procuring a commission

to control the king, for which his brother, the Earl of Arundel, was

beheaded, and he himself banished. The dawn of the Reformation already

reddened in the east, but the day was yet far off.

During the fourteenth century, the leading men of the Church in Scotland

signalised themselves rather in the patriotic defence of their country

against the English than in theological matters. Amongst the most

distinguished of these were Lamberton, of St. Andrews; Wishart, of

Glasgow; Landells, who was Bishop of St. Andrews from 1341 to 1385,

forty-four years; and Robert Trail, Primate of Scotland, who built the

castle of St. Andrews, and died in 1401, leaving a great name for strict

discipline and wisdom. It is singular that, during this period, the

doctrines of Wycliffe, which had made such ferment in England, appear to

have excited little or no attention in Scotland.

During the period now under review--the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries--the language of the learned was still Latin, and the circle

of education included little more than the Trivium and Quadrivium of the

former age, that is, the course of three sciences--grammar, rhetoric,

and logic; and the course of four--music, arithmetic, geometry, and

astronomy. The grammar was almost exclusively confined to the Latin, for

Roger Bacon says that there were not more than three or four persons

in his time that knew anything of Greek or the Oriental languages;

nay, so gross was the ignorance of the students of the time of the

common elementary forms of Latin itself, that Kilwardby, Archbishop of

Canterbury, on a visit to Oxford in 1276, upbraided the students with

such corruptions as these:--"Ego currit;" "tu currit;" "currens est ego,"

&c.

When grammar was so defective, the rhetoric taught could not be very

profound. The mendicant friars seem to have cultivated it with the

greatest assiduity, as necessary to give effect to their harangues,

and the Provincial of the Augustinians, in the fourteenth century, was

greatly admired for the eloquence of his preaching.

But logic was the all-absorbing study of the time. The clergy who had

attended the Crusaders had brought back from the East a knowledge of

Aristotle, through Latin translations and the commentaries of his Arabian

admirers. His logic was now applied not only to such metaphysics as

were taught, but also to theology. Hence arose the School divinity, in

which the doctrines taught by the Church were endeavoured to be made

conformable to the Aristotelian modes of reasoning, and to be defended

by it. If we are to judge of the logic of this period by what remains of

it, we should say it was the art of disputing without meaning or object;

of perplexing the plainest truths, and giving an air of plausibility to

the grossest absurdities. As, for instance, it was argued with the utmost

earnestness that "two contrary propositions might be both true." At

this time there were several thousand students at Oxford, and Hume very

reasonably asks, what were these young men all about? Studying bad logic

and worse metaphysics.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF PORTION OF THE FIRST CHAPTER OF ST. JOHN'S

GOSPEL IN THE WYCLIFFE BIBLE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]

The metaphysics of those days were almost engrossed by the great

controversy of the Nominalists and the Realists; the question--agitated

with all the vehemence of a matter of life or death--being whether

general ideas were realities, or only the particular ideas of things

were real. The Nominalists declared that a general idea, derived from

comparing a great number of individual facts, was no reality, but a

mere idea or name; the Realists contended that these general ideas

were as absolute actualities as the individual ones on which they were

based. Rocelin of Compiègne revived this old question at the end of the

eleventh century, and thus became the head of the Schoolmen of those

ages; but William of Ockham, in the fourteenth century, again revived

this extraordinary question with all its ancient vehemence, his partisans

acquiring the name of Ockhamists. Ockham was a Nominalist, and, says an

old historian, he and his party "waged a fierce war against another sect

of schoolmen, called Realists, about certain metaphysical subtleties

which neither of them understood."

Moral philosophy could not be much more rationally taught when

metaphysics and logic were so fantastic. Many systems of moral philosophy

were taught by the Schoolmen, abounding in endless subtle distinctions

and divisions of virtues and vices, and a host of questions in each of

these divisions. By the logic, metaphysics and moral philosophy of the

Schoolmen combined, the most preposterous doctrines were often taught.

For instance, a learned divine taught this proposition in the University

of Paris in 1300:--"It may be lawful to steal, and the theft can be

pleasing to God. Suppose a young gentleman of good family meets with a

very learned professor [meaning himself], who is able in a short time

to teach him all the speculative sciences, but will not do it for less

than £100, which the young gentleman cannot procure but by theft; in that

case theft is lawful--which is thus proved: Whatever is pleasing to God

is lawful. It is pleasing to God that a young gentleman learn all the

sciences, but he cannot do this without theft; therefore theft is lawful,

and pleasing to God."

It was high time that something tangible and substantial should come

to the rescue of the human mind from this destructive cobwebbery of

metaphysics; and the first thing which did this was the study of the

canon law. The civil and the canon laws not only gave their students

lucrative employment as pleaders, but were the road to advancement in the

Church. The clergy in those ages were not only almost the only lawyers,

but also the doctors, though some of the laity now entered the profession

as a distinct branch. "The civil and canon laws," says Robert Holcot,

a writer of that time, "are in our days so exceedingly profitable,

procuring riches and honours, that almost the whole multitude of scholars

apply to the study of them."

What was the real knowledge of the science of Medicine at this period

we may learn from the great medical work of John Gaddesden, who was

educated at Merton College, Oxford, and declared to be the grand luminary

of physic in the fourteenth century. "He wrote," says Leland, "a large

and learned work on medicine, to which, on account of its excellences,

was given the illustrious title of the 'Medical Rose.' This is a

recipe in the 'Illustrious Medical Rose' of Gaddesden for the cure of

small-pox:--'After this (the appearance of the eruption), cause the whole

body of your patient to be wrapped in red scarlet cloth, or in any other

red cloth, and command everything about the bed to be made red. This is

an excellent cure. It was in this manner I treated the son of the noble

King of England, when he had the small-pox, and I cured him without

leaving any marks.'" The royal patient thus treated must have been Edward

III., or his brother, Prince John of Eltham.

To cure epilepsy, Gaddesden orders the patient "and his parents" to "fast

three days and then go to church. The patient must first confess, he must

have mass on Friday and Saturday, and then on Sunday the priest must read

over the patient's head the Gospel for September, in the time of vintage,

after the feast of the Holy Cross. After this the priest shall write out

this portion of the Gospel reverently, and bind it about the patient's

neck, and he shall be cured."

That is a sample of the practice of medicine from the great work of the

chief physician of the age. As to the Surgery of the time, it is thus

described by Guy de Cauliac, in his "System of Surgery," published in

Paris in 1363:--"The practitioners in surgery are divided into five

sects. The first follow Roger and Roland, and the four masters, and apply

poultices to all wounds and abscesses. The second follow Brunus and

Theodoric, and in the same cases use wine only. The third follow Saliceto

and Lanfranc, and treat wounds with ointments and soft plasters. The

fourth are chiefly Germans, who attend the armies, and promiscuously use

potions, oil, and wool. The fifth are old women and ignorant people, who

have recourse to the saints in all cases."

It was high time that a man like Roger Bacon should appear, and teach

men to come out of all this jugglery and mere fancy-work both in science

and philosophy, and put everything to the test of experiment--a mode of

philosophising, however, which made little progress till the appearance,

three centuries later, of another Bacon, the great Verulam. For the

knowledge of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and chemistry--or rather

astrology and alchemy--as taught at that period, we may refer to our

notice of Bacon amongst the great men of the era.

But the number of schools and colleges which were erected during this

period is a striking proof that the spirit of inquiry and the love of

knowledge were taking rapid and deep root in the nation. In Oxford alone

seven colleges were founded during this period. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

was founded by William, Archdeacon of Durham, who died in 1249, and

bequeathed 310 marks to provide for four Masters of Arts, a foundation

which developed into "University College." BALLIOL COLLEGE was founded by

John Balliol, the father of John, the King of Scotland, about 1268, and

completed by the Lady Devorguilla, his widow. MERTON COLLEGE was founded

by Walter Merton, Bishop of Rochester, in 1264. EXETER COLLEGE was

founded by Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, and Peter de Skelton, a

clergyman, in 1314. It was first called Stapleton College. ORIEL COLLEGE

was founded by Edward II., and his almoner, Adam de Brun, in 1326, and

was called the Hall of the Blessed Virgin of Oxford, but derived its

permanent name from a fresh endowment by Richard III. QUEEN'S COLLEGE was

founded by Robert Eglesfield, chaplain to Philippa, queen of Edward III.,

and named in her honour because she greatly aided him in establishing

it. NEW COLLEGE was named St. Mary's College by its builder and founder,

William of Wykeham, who also built the college at Winchester. It was

finished in 1386.

In Cambridge, during this period, were founded nine colleges,

namely:--PETERHOUSE was founded by Hugh Balsham, afterwards Bishop of

Ely, in 1257. MICHAELHOUSE (now extinct), dedicated to St. Michael, was

founded and endowed about 1324, by Harvey de Stanton, Chancellor of the

Exchequer to Edward II. UNIVERSITY HALL was founded by Richard Badew,

Chancellor of the University, in 1326, but was soon after destroyed

by fire. KING'S HALL was built by Edward III., but afterwards united

to Trinity College. CLARE HALL was a restoration of University Hall,

by Elizabeth de Clare, Countess of Ulster, and named in honour of her

family. PEMBROKE COLLEGE was built in 1347, by Mary de St. Paul, widow

of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, in memory of her husband, who

was killed in a tournament soon after their marriage. She named it the

Hall of Valence and Mary. TRINITY HALL was founded in 1350, by William

Bateman, Bishop of Norwich. GONVILLE HALL was founded by Edward Gonville,

parson of Terrington and Rushworth, in Norfolk, in 1348; after its

restoration by Dr. Caius, in 1558, it was termed Gonville and Caius.

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE was founded, in 1352, by the united guilds of

Corpus Christi and St. Mary, assisted by Henry, Duke of Lancaster.

These were for the most part small and simple establishments at first,

but have arrived at their present wealth and magnificence by additional

benefactions.

The number of scholars who rushed into these schools at first was

something extraordinary; nor were their character and appearance less so.

They are described by Anthony Wood as a regular rabble, who were guilty

of theft and all kinds of crimes and disorders. He declares that they

lived under no discipline nor any masters, but only thrust themselves

into the schools at lectures, that they might pass for scholars when

they were called to account by the townsmen for any mischief, so as to

free them from the jurisdiction of the burghers. At one time, according

to Fitz-Ralph, the Archbishop of Armagh, there were no less than 30,000

students--or so-called students--in Oxford alone; but he says that they

were again reduced to less than 6,000, so many of them had joined the

mendicant friars.

Such was the disorder of the two universities at this time, the violent

quarrels, not only between the students and the townspeople, but also

between each other, that many of the members of both universities retired

to Northampton, and, with the permission of Henry III., commenced a new

university there; but the people of Oxford and Cambridge found means

to obtain its dissolution from the king. About thirty years afterwards

they tried the same experiment at Stamford, but were stopped in the same

manner.

London at this time so abounded with schools, that it was called the

third university. Edward III. built the college of St. Stephen at

Westminster for a college of Divinity, which was dissolved by Henry

VIII. Archbishop Bradwardine founded a theological lecture in St.

Paul's Church, and John of Gaunt founded a college for divines in St.

Paul's Churchyard. There were various schools besides these, but the

most remarkable were the great schools of Law, which arose out of the

provisions of the Great Charter, which fixed the chief courts of justice

at Westminster. Sir John Fortescue, who studied in one of these inns of

court, describes them as a great school or university of law, consisting

of several colleges. "The situation," he says, "where the students read

and study is between Westminster and the City of London. There belong

to it ten lesser inns, and sometimes more, which are called the inns of

Chancery, in each of which there are a hundred students at least, and in

some of them a far greater number not constantly residing." In these the

young nobility and gentry of England began to receive some part of their

education, so that, with all these colleges of learning and of law, the

laity as well as the clergy reaped the benefits of education.

Amongst the theologians of this period none surpass for extent of

learning, talent, and eloquence, Robert Grosseteste, or Greathead, Bishop

of Lincoln. He was originally a very poor lad; but the Mayor of Lincoln,

noticing his quickness of faculty, took him into his house, and put him

to school. He studied at Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris, his splendid

talents acquiring him many patrons. Bacon, who knew him well, gives this

testimony of him:--"Robert Greathead, Bishop of Lincoln, and his friend,

Prior Adam de Marisco, are the two most learned men in the world, and

excel all the rest of mankind both in divine and human knowledge."

Greathead was one of the very few real Greek scholars of the age, and was

equally versed in Hebrew, French, and Latin. But, beyond his learning,

which he has embodied in many voluminous works, his noble and independent

character stands pre-eminent in those times. We have mentioned his

opposition to the Pope inducting mere infants into Church livings; and

the caution which the cardinals are reported, by Matthew Paris, to have

given the Pope when he threatened to take vengeance on him is remarkable,

as indicating their knowledge of the tendency of the age. "Let us not

raise a tumult in the Church without necessity, and precipitate that

revolt and separation from us which we know must one day take place."

But the man of that time in philosophy was Roger Bacon, as Chaucer was in

literature. Bacon was born near Ilchester, and educated at Oxford, and

afterwards at Paris. On his return to England, at the age of twenty-six,

he again settled at Oxford, and entered the order of Franciscan friars of

that city, that he might study at leisure. He soon abandoned the beaten

track, and struck out a course of inquiry and experiment for himself.

He was not content to study Aristotle alone at second hand, but he

made himself master of Greek, and went to the fountain-head of ancient

knowledge.

But that did not satisfy him. He sought to make himself acquainted with

Nature, the great fountain of all our human knowledge. He declared

that if you would know the truth you must seek it by actual inquiry

and experiment. In this system of philosophising he preceded Francis

Bacon nearly three centuries and a half; but he was before his time,

and, therefore, the benefit of his teaching was, to a large extent,

lost. His great work, the "Opus Majus," contains the result of his

researches; and he states in that work that he had expended £2,000 in

twenty years on apparatus and experiments--a sum equal to £30,000 of

our money at present. This he had done through the generosity of his

friends and patrons, having made a greater amount of discoveries in

geometry, astronomy, physics, optics, mechanics, and chemistry, than

ever was accomplished by any one man in an equal space of time. In his

treatise on optics, "De Scientiâ Perspectivâ," he gives you the mode

of constructing spectacles and microscopic lenses. In mechanics, he

talks of having ascertained by experiments wonders that we have not yet

reached by steam; of a mode of propelling ships so that they should

require only one man to guide them, and with a velocity greater than if

they were full of sailors. "Chariots," he says, "may be constructed that

will move with incredible rapidity, without the help of animals." He

speculated and believed in the capability of raising the most wonderful

weights by mechanical contrivance, and of walking on the bottom of the

sea. But, unfortunately, he has not left us the explicit exposition

of these marvels. His system of chemical analysis has, however, been

greatly praised by some modern chemists, and it is evident that he was

well acquainted with gunpowder. "A little matter," he says, "about the

bigness of a man's thumb makes a horrible noise, and produces a dreadful

corruscation; and by this a city or an army may be destroyed several

ways." He then explains that sulphur, saltpetre, and powdered charcoal

are the ingredients of this wonderful explosive substance. Whether Bacon

discovered this mixture, or whether he learnt it in his Asiatic reading,

is a moot point. At all events, he knew the fact, and in the reign of

Edward III. gunpowder came into use in war.

Bacon was the martyr of science. Instead of benefiting by his

discoveries, the ignorant monks of his order accused him of necromancy

and dealing with the devil. He was kept in close confinement for years,

and was not allowed to send his "Opus Majus" to any one except the Pope.

After receiving a copy of it, Clement IV. procured him his liberty, but

he was very soon imprisoned again by Jerome de Esculo, general of the

Franciscan order. He continued in confinement this time eleven or twelve

years, and, on coming out, old and broken down by his cruel suffering, he

still continued his labours with undiminished ardour till his death about

1294.

[Illustration: THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURY COLLEGES OF OXFORD

UNIVERSITY. (_See p._ 491.)]

A kindred spirit to Bacon was Michael Scott, who was born about the

beginning of the thirteenth century at his family seat in Scotland. By

his study of astrology and alchemy in common with Bacon and the great

inquirers of the time he obtained the reputation of a magician, which has

mixed up his name with the wildest popular legends and superstitions of

Scotland. So strong were the convictions of his countrymen that he was

a magician that Dempster assures us many people in Scotland in his time

dared not so much as touch his works. Bishop Tanner says, "He was one of

the greatest philosophers, physicians, and linguists of his age; and,

though his fondness for astrology, alchemy, physiognomy, and chiromancy

made people think him a magician, none speaks or writes more respectfully

of God and religion than he does." He was deeply read in the Greek

and Arabic languages, and, while residing at the court of the Emperor

Frederick II., he translated for that prince the works of Aristotle into

Latin, to which Bacon attributes the high admiration which those works

obtained afterwards in Europe.

Duns Scotus, though supposed to be of Scottish origin, was educated at

Oxford, from which seat of learning he went to Paris, to maintain before

the university of that city his favourite doctrine of the immaculate

conception of the Virgin. He had profoundly studied moral philosophy,

mathematics, civil and canon law, and school divinity. No man of his age

was so admired and applauded, but his works now sleep, covered with the

dust of ages.

William of Ockham was a very learned and eloquent theologian, who

maintained the temporal independence of kings, and was supported, against

all the efforts of three successive Popes to crush him, by his patron,

the Emperor Ludwig of Germany; but on the death of that prince he was

compelled to recant. He did not long survive this humiliation, having for

many years borne the title of the Singular and Invincible Doctor. During

his life appeared Wycliffe, who, under happier auspices, proclaimed the

freedom of religion.

The historians of this period, from whom, and from the parliamentary

writs and statutes, our history is derived, are chiefly these:--

Matthew Paris is the great writer of the period. Besides a _Historia

Minor_, he wrote the important _Chronica Majora_. Under this title,

however, is included the work of three or four, all monks of St. Albans,

namely, Roger Wendover, Matthew Paris, an unknown writer, and William

Rishanger. Matthew Paris's own share comprehends only the period from

1235 to 1259, about twenty-five years. He continues Wendover, and

Rishanger continues him. Besides this, he wrote the lives of twenty-three

abbots of St. Albans. Wendover's chronicle, "Flores Historiarum," reaches

from the Creation to the year 1235, and is divided at the birth of

Christ into two halves. Matthew Paris, in copying Wendover, has taken

care to infuse here and there his own spirit, which was one of great

freedom of remark on kings, priests, popes, and, what is singular, on

the usurpations of the Court of Rome itself. Matthew had seen the world

and courts, and had picked up a large quantity of amusing anecdotes

and curious characteristics of great men. He went as visitor of the

Benedictine order to Haco of Norway, and, at the Pope's instance, made a

visitation of the monastery of Holm, in that kingdom. He was employed in

writing history by Henry III., and even assisted by him in it. He says,

"He wrote this almost constantly with the king in his palace, at his

table, and in his closet; and that prince guided his pen in writing in

the most diligent and condescending manner." No historian who has written

of his own times has shown more boldness and independence than Matthew

Paris. Though a monk, he did not hesitate to paint the corruptions of a

monastic life in the plainest colours, nor to denounce the corruptions

of the Church and hierarchy at large with equal honesty. For this he has

been assailed, and charged even with interpolating falsehoods by those

whom his honest freedom had offended. But Matthew Paris was not only a

most accomplished man for that age, but one of the most incorruptible of

those who ever associated with kings and pontiffs. He is declared at the

same time to have been "famous for the purity, integrity, innocence, and

simplicity of his manners."

Matthew of Westminster also wrote "Flowers of History," of which the

earlier part is based on Roger of Wendover, but which is a valuable

authority for the reigns of John, Henry III., and Edward I.

Thomas Wykes wrote a chronicle extending from the Conquest to 1304. He

was a canon in the Abbey of Osney. The latter years of his chronicle,

from 1289, are supposed to be by another hand.

Walter Hemingford, a monk of the Abbey of Gisborough, in Yorkshire, wrote

a chronicle of about the same period with Wykes, continued by later hands

to 1346.

John de Trokelowe and Henry de Blandford who are supposed to have been

monks of St. Albans, wrote histories of Edward II., as did also the

anonymous monk of Malmesbury.

Bartholomew Cotton, whose work has been published in the Rolls Series,

copied other chronicles in his earlier pages; but the reign of Edward I.

to the year 1298 is a very valuable contribution to our history.

Robert of Avesbury, who was registrar of the court of the Archbishop

of Canterbury, wrote the history of Edward III. to the year 1356.

His account is most valuable. He gives us many particulars that

appear nowhere else, which, as he had access to the best sources, are

undoubtedly correct. They serve to test the accounts of Froissart,

who is apt to merge into the romantic. In this work of Avesbury's

abound original letters of Edward regarding the attack on Cambray in

1336, and the expedition into Brittany in 1342; besides relations of

the circumstances which led to the battle of Creçy by officers and

eye-witnesses, and dispatches from the camps of the Earl of Derby and the

Black Prince, with similar most interesting and invaluable documents.

Adam of Murimuth wrote the history of Edward II. and the earlier part of

that of Edward III. He was engaged much in public affairs as ambassador,

both from the clergy to the Pope at Avignon, and from the king to the

Court of Rome, as well as afterwards to the King of Sicily on account

of Edward's claims in Provence. He saw much and, as professor of civil

law, was much engaged in affairs of the Government, but his account is

somewhat meagre and dry.

Besides these, we may name Nicholas Trivet, who wrote "Annals," from 1136

to 1307; and Ralph Higden, whose "Polychronicon" ends in 1357, and has

been translated into English by John of Trevisa. Robert de Brunne, or

Manning, a canon of Brunne, in Lincolnshire, wrote a rhymed chronicle,

including versions or appropriations of Ware's old French poem of Brut,

and Peter Langtoft's French "Rhymed Cronicall." The latter part, from

King Ina to the death of Edward I., has some historic merit. Henry

Knighton, a canon of Leicester, is the author of a history from the time

of King Edgar to 1395, and of an account of the deposition of Richard II.

His work is of great authority in the latter of these reigns. Thomas de

la Moor wrote a life of Edward II., and asserts that he had the account

of the battle of Bannockburn and Edward's last days from eye-witnesses.

In Scottish history of this period, we have the "Scoticronica" of Sir

Thomas Gray of Heton, who was a native of the north of England, being

taken prisoner by the Scots. He has left us in his "Cronicall" many

particulars of the times of Wallace. Andrew Wyntoun, the author of the

"Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland," was living in the long reign of David

II., and his rhymed chronicle reaches from the beginning of the world, in

the fashion of those times, to the year 1424. He was canon of the priory

of St. Andrews. The portion of his chronicle from the beginning of the

reign of David II. to the end of Robert II. is supposed to be by another

hand. John Fordun's "Scotichronicon" is a regular chronicle of Scotland

to the year 1385. This work was continued by Walter Bower, Abbot of St.

Icolmkill (Iona), in the fifteenth century.

Besides these, the monastic registers of Mailros (Melrose), ending in

1270; of Margan, ending 1232; of Burton, ending 1262; and Waverley,

ending 1291, afford evidence of the history of Scotland and England, and

of the literary talent of the two countries at this time.

But it is to the poets of this era that we must look for the chief

genius, and the evidences of the progress of literature in the nation.

It is a singular fact that, while the Roman Church had continued the

use of the Latin language during the Middle Ages, it had neglected, or

rather discouraged, the reading of the great Roman and Greek writers,

so that the Greek and Roman classical literature became, as it were,

extinct. The great classical authors which were not destroyed lay

buried in the dust of abbeys and monasteries. So completely were Greek

literature and the Greek tongues forgotten, that, as we before stated, we

find Bacon declaring that there were not above four men in England who

understood Greek, or could pass the fifth proposition of the first book

of Euclid--the familiar _pons asinorum_, or bridge of asses. So utterly

were the clergy unacquainted with Greek that, on finding a New Testament

amongst the books of the Reformers, they declared that it was some new

heretical language. But, as knowledge revived, the same men who were

the greatest advocates for classical studies and the restoration of the

classical writers to public use were those who began also to write in

their vernacular tongues; and this was especially the case with Petrarch

in Italy.

Latin was the almost universal language of the learned in art, science,

and literature still at this period. The works of the chroniclers were

written in Latin for the most part; Bacon wrote all his works in Latin.

But for some time, in the chief countries of Europe, eminent authors--and

especially the poets--had begun to use their native tongues. Dante,

Boccaccio, and Petrarch in Italy had set the example; Froissart had done

it in French; and now our great poets in England did the same.

This was a proof that the English language was now travelling up from

the common people, and establishing itself amongst all ranks. The Norman

nobles and gentry found themselves speaking English, and engrafting on

it many of their own terms. Metrical romances and songs had long been

circulated amongst the people; they now reached the higher classes.

Robert of Gloucester versified the chronicle of Robert of Monmouth; Peter

Langtoft, a canon of Bridlington, found his chronicle in French verse

translated into English by Robert Manning of Brunne, already mentioned.

This was the English of that day:--

"Pers of Langtoft, a chanon,

Schaven in the house of Bridlyngton,

O Frankis style this storie he wrote,

Of Inglis kinges," &c.

About the middle of the fourteenth century William Langland, a secular

priest of Oxford, wrote a famous satirical allegory against persons of

all professions, called "The Vision of Piers Plowman." This is written in

alliterative verse, and its language appears to be of a purposely archaic

type. This is precisely what Spenser did in his "Faery Queen," in the

reign of Elizabeth; he went backwards in his diction, so that now it is

nearly obsolete, while the language of his contemporary, Shakespeare, is

still sterling English, and likely to continue so. Who could imagine that

these lines were written in the same age as those which we shall place

beside them by a contemporary?

"Hunger in hast tho' hint Wastour by the maw,

And wrong him so by the wombe that both his eies watered.

He buffeted the Briton about the chekes

That he loked lyke a lanterne al his life after."

Take now these few lines from John Barbour, of the same period:--

"Ah, freedom is a noble thing!

Freedom makes man to have liking;

Freedom all solace to man gives;

He lives at ease that freely lives.

A noble heart may have none ease,

Nor nought else that may it please

If freedom fail."

Now this was the work, not of an English, but of a Scottish poet, who

wrote in English.

John Barbour was born in Aberdeen in 1316, though the date is somewhat

uncertain. He became, under David II., Archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1356. He

obtained permission of Edward III., through his own sovereign, to study

at Oxford, and became famous, not only as a divine and philosopher, but

as a poet, only surpassed in that age by Chaucer, and certainly far more

purely English in his language than Chaucer himself. His great poem is

the story of Robert Bruce and his noble companions, Douglas and Randolph,

Earl of Moray.

Of the English poets, with a reference to Lawrence Minot, who celebrated

the exploits of Edward III. in martial poems, and has, therefore, been

styled the Tyrtæus of his age, we shall now only mention Gower and

Chaucer.

John Gower was of an ancient and opulent family--we believe the Duke

of Sutherland claims him as his ancestor--and he consequently received

the best education that the age could supply. He was born in 1324,

and entered the Inner Temple at a suitable age. He rose high in his

profession, and indulged himself in his leisure hours in poetry. Gower

wrote, besides smaller pieces, three considerable poems, one in Latin,

one in French, and one in English, namely:--"Speculum Meditantis," "Vox

Clamantis," and "Confessio Amantis." There is no question that they

possess much poetical merit, and they were greatly admired in their own

time and long afterwards, but at present they would find few who could

enjoy them. The "Speculum Meditantis" is a moral poem, recommending

fidelity and mutual affection to married people; and hence Chaucer styled

him the "Moral Gower"--a name which has continued with him. To our taste

he is more moral than poetical. Gower was originally disposed to call

for reform in the Church, which he describes in dark colours; but the

rebellion of Wat Tyler frightened him, and he became strongly opposed to

Wycliffe and his doctrines. Yet he was a timid courtier. He dedicated

his "Confessio Amantis" to Richard II., and afterwards to his dethroner,

Henry of Lancaster.

"This boke upon amendement

To stand to his commandement,

With whom min herte is of accorde,

I sende unto min owne lorde,

Which of Lancashire is Henry named."

There can be no doubt that the successful appearance of Chaucer in his

native English induced Gower to do the same.

Chaucer was a far bolder, and far more original man. It is the most

striking proof that English had now taken firm hold at the court itself,

when two such men as Gower and Chaucer cast the chance of their fame

into that vehicle. Chaucer was brother-in-law to John of Gaunt, having

married Philippa, the sister of John of Gaunt's third wife, Catherine

Swynford. Chaucer was educated at both Cambridge and Oxford. He was a

page to Edward III., and went as ambassador to Genoa and Flanders. On the

former occasion it is probable that he met with Petrarch, for he says in

the prologue to the "Clerk's Tale":--

"I wal you tell a tale, which that I

Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,

Frauncis Petrark, the laureate poete."

[Illustration: GEOFFREY CHAUCER.]

Chaucer's great poem, the "Canterbury Tales," is a collection of poems

which, for spirit, humour, knowledge and enjoyment of life, have

nothing like them, except Shakespeare. They are full of vigour, beauty,

and the most subtle sense. They sparkle, burn, and laugh on every

page. We have the most vivid picture of the times, and all the varied

characters amongst whom he lived. We feel what a buoyant, genial soul

he was, and yet we know that he did not escape without his troubles and

his deep griefs. Warton, in his "History of English Poetry," says of

him:--"Chaucer surpasses his predecessors in an infinite proportion. His

genius was universal, and adapted to themes of unbounded variety. His

merit was not less in painting familiar manners with humour and propriety

than in moving the passions, and in representing the beautiful or the

grand objects of Nature with grace and sublimity." Truly is he called

the father of English poetry, and he had no real successor till the

appearance of Spenser and Shakespeare.

We have already traced (see chapter XXVI.) the progress of the Early

English style of architecture from its rise and through the best period

of its duration. It has been seen how, by combining into one window two

or more lancets, and the circle above them, tracery was made. This at

first was left solid and was not moulded, and the form of the tracery

was simple--generally a circle, or circles, in the head or intersecting

lines. The introduction of tracery gave great facilities for enlarging

the width of the windows; and we accordingly find those of two or more

lights gradually superseding the lancet.

After this change it is difficult to distinguish the late examples of

one style from the early ones of the other; indeed, tracery may be

regarded as the commencement of the transition. But in the beginning of

the reign of Edward I. a more decided change took place--tracery proper

became fully developed. However, the architects had not yet ventured

on the graceful flowing lines of the true Decorated style; they clung

to their geometrical forms, and therefore we find, in windows of this

time, circles, triangles, both plain and spherical squares, quatrefoils,

trefoils, etc.; and, for this reason, this style of Edward I. has been

called Geometrical, or Early Decorated, which well distinguishes it from

the fully developed, or flowing Decorated. This is, perhaps, the best

period of English architecture; for, though the geometrical forms give

a certain stiffness to the tracery, it is more than compensated by the

extreme beauty and finish of the workmanship. The imitation of natural

foliage was perfect, and the drawing of the human figure more chaste and

finished than at any other period. The style continued through the reign

of the first Edward, after which it gradually changed into that of the

more perfect Decorated.

The Decorated style differs from the Early English in its windows, which,

instead of being lancets, or having tracery of the simplest forms, had

the head entirely filled with tracery, either of geometrical forms, or

ramifying from the mullions in the most easy and graceful manner, and in

every variety of design; and the same character distinguishes them from

the next, or Perpendicular style, in which the mullions are carried

through in perpendicular lines to the head of the window.

In the Decorated style, Gothic architecture seems to have attained its

greatest excellency; this was its culminating point. Up to this period

it had gone on improving from change to change; its principles had been

fully carried out, and the fancy seems to have run wild in imagining new

forms of beauty. The more we contemplate the buildings of this period the

more we are struck with admiration at the wonderful powers of invention

possessed by the architects and workmen of the time. Wherever ornament

was wanted, there it was ready, and always beautiful and appropriate.

They possessed a keen perception of the beauties of Nature, and hands

capable of giving form to those perceptions. But when so much perfection

had been attained, it is not unnatural, however it may be regretted,

that the next change should be in a downward direction. This was the

case here; and the introduction of the straight line led to the entire

destruction of all that grace and freedom so much admired in Decorated

Gothic architecture.

Many of our finest ecclesiastical buildings are in this style. The

beautiful crosses of Northampton, Waltham, and Geddington, erected

by Edward I. to the memory of his Queen Eleanor, are of the early or

Geometrical period, and afford many valuable details.

Exeter Cathedral, the nave of York, the chapel of Merton College, Oxford,

and the Chapter House, Wells, offer excellent examples of the Geometrical

period.

The west front of York is the finest specimen of a Decorated front we

possess, and the details are of the most exquisite description, both in

design and execution.

The Chapter House, York, is of Early Decorated character. It is octagonal

and groined, and is said by Rickman to be "by far the finest polygonal

room, without a central pillar, in the kingdom, and the delicacy and

variety of its ornaments are nearly unequalled." That it must, even at

the time of its erection, have been considered "unequalled" is shown by

the inscription at the entrance:--

"UT ROSA FLOS FLORUM,

SIC EST DOMUS ISTA DOMORUM."[42]

The Chapter House, Wells, is another extremely beautiful building of the

same period, but this is supported by a central pillar.

Many fine churches of this style are to be found in various parts of the

kingdom, of which one of the finest is Howden, in Yorkshire; but many of

them, though belonging to this period, are very plain in their details.

[Illustration: QUEEN ELEANOR'S CROSS, NORTHAMPTON.]

The monuments of this century are, both in composition and execution, the

finest which exist. We have many fine bold compositions in Early English,

and many very elaborate ones in the Perpendicular style, but none of them

equal the Decorated in chasteness of design and delicacy of execution.

The monument of Aymer de Valence in Westminster Abbey is a fine specimen

of Early Decorated; the Percy shrine at Beverley Minster is another

splendid example; and the effigy of Queen Eleanor in Westminster Abbey is

one of the most elegant figures in this or any other country.

TOWERS.--Many church towers in this style are finished with spires, which

are frequently crocketed and have spire lights, and sometimes they are

banded with quatrefoils.

WINDOWS.--These are the most important features of the Decorated style,

and will require the greatest attention. In its early period, or what is

called Geometrical, the lancet window is still sometimes used; but it

is foliated and not plain, as in Early English. The heads of two-lights

windows are divided by arches springing from the mullions. The spaces

are filled with triangles, trefoils, quatrefoils, circles, etc., all the

forms being such as could easily be drawn with the compasses; but the

ogee, or flowing curve, is never used. In larger windows the same filling

up of the head with geometrical forms is used, and plain intersecting

tracery is not uncommon. These forms are combined in many different

manners, and great variety is produced. The window given from Meopham is

an example of early tracery.

[Illustration: WINDOW FROM MEOPHAM.]

[Illustration: WINDOW FROM ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]

By an easy and natural process this stiff tracery gave way to the

flowing line which succeeded it. One of the earliest modifications was

to fill the head of the window with flowing quatrefoils. This was much

used in the time of Edward II. The use of the flowing line gave such

great facilities for design, that the varieties of tracery are almost

innumerable; so much so, that they are difficult to describe, or even to

classify, and in our small space it is impossible. They, however, all

agree in one principle--that is, in the mullions branching into tracery,

and not being carried through to the head of the window, as in the next

style. The one given from St. Mary's, Beverley, is a good example for

showing the manner in which the lines of the mullions were carried up.

There are many windows in this style which have ogee heads and canopies.

DOORWAYS.--In small churches the doorways have frequently but little,

except the mouldings, to distinguish them. These are carried without

interruption down to the ground. They are commonly quite plain, but have

sometimes hollows filled with the ball-flower or foliage. In cathedrals

and large buildings the doorways are usually of large dimensions,

and are often very deeply recessed. They are richly moulded, and the

hollows filled with a profusion of ornament and foliage, among which the

four-leaved flower and ball-flower are conspicuous. They have generally

shafts, with capitals and bases; these shafts are not detached, as in the

Early English, but cut in the same stone as the mouldings. Sometimes a

series of niches with figures is carried round the door.

The finest examples we have of Decorated doors are those of the west

front of York, and the south door of the choir, Lincoln. A canopy, either

single or double, sometimes flowing and sometimes straight-lined and

richly crocketed, is often carved over the door.

PORCHES are not numerous, but of great variety of form, and can in

general be distinguished only by their mouldings and details. They have

frequently a considerable projection, with windows in their sides and

groined roofs. There is a very curious one at Over, in Cambridgeshire,

which has clustered shafts and pinnacles at the angles. Wooden porches

with ornamental barge boards are not uncommon.

The BUTTRESSES of this style are usually very rich. The earlier ones are

in general finished with a small gable or canopy reaching as high as

the parapet, as at Merton College, Oxford, where the pediment is filled

with a trefoil, and the gargoyle, or water-spout, of grotesque design,

passes through just under it. Below this is a panel of window tracery,

and the lower stage of the buttress has another pedimented head. This

kind of buttress, though commonly plainer, belongs to the Geometrical

period. A much richer variety of the same kind occurs at the west front

of Howden, where there is a canopied niche with a figure in it; and the

buttress terminates in a turret pinnacle, with open-work tracery, and

a crocketed spire. In the later period of the style the buttresses are

in many cases enriched with canopied niches, with or without figures, in

both stages. Sometimes they have a plain set-off instead of a pediment;

but in all cases they may be known by their peculiar mouldings. They are

also repeatedly set on the angles of buildings diagonally, which is not

the case in the preceding style.

The PINNACLES are numerous, and very fine. They are in general square,

and set on diagonally; the sides are frequently panelled, and terminate

in crocketed canopies, or gablets, from which rises the spire, which is

also crocketed at the angles, and terminates in a finial. The foliage of

the Crockets and Finials is loose and free, and has not the square stiff

form so observable in the Perpendicular.

The PILLARS of this style in small churches are occasionally octagonal

or plain round; but in large buildings they are very various in section.

They have, at times, a number of small shafts surrounding a central

pillar; but these shafts are, like those of the doors, cut out of the

same block, and not detached, as in the Early English style. In some

instances the central mass is a lozenge, and in others a square set

diagonally. In some cases, as at Exeter, it consists of a number of

equal-sized small shafts set round a lozenge body. The small shafts are

repeatedly filleted.

The BASES have not the rounds and deep hollows which we find in the Early

English, but are generally made up of rounds or roll mouldings.

The CAPITALS are important, and form one of the most valuable marks of

the style. They are often without ornament, and can then be distinguished

only by their mouldings. Sometimes they have the ball-flower, and

occasionally heads or human figures; but the most usual design is a

wreath or ball of foliage. In the Early English style we see the stems

of the foliage rising from the neck mould, or astragal, and turning over

under the abacus of the capital; but in the present style we have most

commonly a stem with its leaves wrapped round the bell of the capital,

and filling up the space like a ball. The one here given from Selby is an

excellent example of the general appearance of a rich Decorated capital;

but the foliage is infinitely varied. Sometimes it is long and flowing,

encircling the whole capital of a clustered column; but in general it is

a faithful copy of natural forms, the oak, the ivy, the maple, and the

vine being the plants most generally copied; and this is done with great

delicacy and grace. Decorated foliage, whether of capitals, corbels, or

cornices, is greatly superior to that of any other style; and nothing can

exceed the skill with which it is drawn and carved.

[Illustration: DECORATED CAPITAL FROM SELBY.]

ARCHES.--These are not so acute as those of the Early English. The

equilateral is the one most frequently used, but sometimes it is still

lower. They are generally moulded, but the mouldings are in many

instances bold quarter rounds or filleted rounds, and sometimes the

arches are merely plainly chamfered. In a few instances the mouldings

of the arch are carried down to the ground without the intervention

either of capital or impost. In large buildings vaulting shafts are

carried up the pillars to support the groining of the ROOF, which is

much more complicated than in the Early English. Numerous extra ribs are

introduced, and richly carved bosses placed at the intersections, which

give it much richness and variety. Many beautiful open timber roofs of

this style still remain, both in churches and houses. Stone groining is

imitated in wood in cases where it would not be safe to place the weight

of a stone roof on the walls.

The MOULDINGS and ORNAMENTS are quite us important in this as any other

period, as a means of distinguishing one style from another, and fixing

the date of a building. The mouldings have lost the boldness of the Early

English, but they have gained a greater neatness. The rounds are not so

wide, and have frequently one, two, or sometimes three small fillets

running along them. Another moulding, very peculiar to this style, is

a round, the upper half of which projects over the lower; it is called

the _roll-moulding_. There are also two ornaments which belong almost

as exclusively to the Decorated as the zigzag to the Norman, or the

tooth ornament to the Early English. These are called the _ball-flower_

and the _four-leaved flower_, of which we give examples. They are used,

particularly the ball-flower, in cornices, capitals, corbels, in the

mouldings of doors and windows, and in every place where ornament can be

used. The ball-flower is even used as crockets on the spire of Salisbury

Cathedral; and the mullions and tracery of some of the windows in

Gloucester Cathedral are completely filled with it.

[Illustration: BALL-FLOWER. WITH ROLL-MOULDING AND HOLLOW.]

[Illustration: FOUR-LEAVED FLOWER, WITH FILLETED, ROUND, AND HOLLOW

MOULDING.]

DIAPER-WORK is very extensively used in this style in the backs of

niches, on buttresses, and for covering spaces where other ornament could

not well be used.

Towards the end of the reign of Edward III. a great revolution in

architecture was in progress. The change was first indicated by the

introduction of straight lines among the flowing tracery of the windows,

by which the beautiful freedom of their design was much impaired. This

was followed by the foliage and other ornamental parts becoming more

stiff and formal, and losing their truthfulness to nature.

It is curious to see how this idea of the perpendicular line and of a

tendency to general squareness of form seems to have taken possession of

the minds of the architects of the period; and it can only be attributed

to the inherent love of variety and a desire for novelty. All things

showed the approach of a change, which certainly was not the work of any

one individual, but was rather the effect of a pervading idea, until

William of Wykeham embodied and improved it, and brought out the new or

Perpendicular style, which will be the subject of a future chapter.

Of the DOMESTIC BUILDINGS of the fourteenth century many good specimens

yet remain. They were almost all built more or less for defence; and

the more exposed the situation, the more were the defences increased,

until it is difficult in many cases to say whether a building should be

considered a house or a castle. The saying that "An Englishman's house is

his castle" was at this time literally true. They were mostly moated, and

contained but few rooms, one of which was much larger than the rest--the

hall.

Of the military strongholds, or CASTLES, properly so called, many of

the finest we possess were built during this period; among which may be

mentioned Carnarvon, Chepstow, Kidwelly, Pembroke, Windsor, Clifford's

Tower in York, Warwick, etc. The masonry of these is of the most perfect

description; the courses, as at Clifford's Tower, York, being laid

regularly through the whole extent of the building; thus showing that

in castellated, as well as in every other branch of architecture, the

Edwardian period stands pre-eminent.

The art of Sculpture was necessarily inseparable from ecclesiastical

architecture. In our churches of the feudal ages the sculptured canopies,

chantries, tracery, and statues are of singular merit and great poetic

beauty in many instances, and in none more than in those of this period.

They show a marked advance on the prior period. Both in the Early English

and the Decorated orders we have exquisite specimens of sculpture, in

spite of the destruction of the Reformation and the ravages of time. At

York, Ely, Lichfield, Durham, Wells, and Westminster Abbey we can yet

admire the labour of the sculptors of the eras of Henry III. and Edward

I. In the cathedrals of Glasgow and Aberdeen, as well as in the splendid

remains of Elgin and Holyrood, we have yet traces of it. The foliage, the

trefoils, and quatrefoils of this period are peculiarly free, natural,

and simple. In the Decorated order, at Croyland and Tintern, in the

nave at York, in the magnificent choir at Lincoln, at Beverley, Ripon,

and Carlisle, as well as in the beautiful ruin of Melrose, and a few

churches in Scotland, we ought not to pass over the sculpture. On many of

these graceful works the monks themselves are said to have laboured, and

Walter de Colchester, sacristan of the abbey of St. Albans, is expressly

celebrated by Matthew Paris as an admirable statuary.

We are assured, too, that Painting was carried to a great extent in

adorning the palaces and churches of this period, though we find

scarcely any trace of it left. Henry III. kept several painters

constantly at work, whose names are recorded, and who executed many

beautiful paintings at his various palaces at Westminster, Winchester,

Woodstock, Windsor, Kenilworth, etc. Bishop Langton painted the history

of the wars and life of Edward I. on the walls of the episcopal palace

at Lichfield. Edward III. collected by royal order painters from all

quarters to decorate his palace at Westminster; and Foxe, in his "Acts

and Monuments," tells us that the principal churches and chapels had

not only portraits of the Madonna and the saints, but the walls were

extensively decorated with paintings. So that, whatever its merits,

painting was much in demand in this period.

Of Music as practised at this period we can only speak historically, for

no proofs appear to have come down to us of the actual written music of

the times. Though we had good writers on music in the fourteenth century,

it is not till the fifteenth that we are enabled to judge of what the

music of our ancestors was by actual notation. We know that both the

ancient Gauls and Britons were extremely fond of music, and that at all

the banquets of the nobles their minstrels accompanied their songs on the

harp. The minstrel in most European countries was a union of the poet and

musician. He composed his own music, and sang it. For this cause he was

the welcome guest at all great houses. Every great baron--as well as our

monarchs--kept his train of minstrels who composed songs in honour of

their martial deeds, and sang them to the harp at their tables. Matilda,

queen of Henry I., was, according to William of Malmesbury, so fond of

music, that she expended all her revenues upon it, and oppressed her

tenants to pay her minstrels. John of Salisbury declares that the great

of his time imitated Nero in his extravagance towards musicians. He says

they prostituted their favour by bestowing it on minstrels and buffoons.

Richard I. was not only extremely fond of minstrels, but was a

distinguished one himself, and every one knows the story of his being

discovered by his minstrel Blondel in his prison in Germany. Edward I.

would have lost his life by assassination during the Crusades, but his

harper, hearing the struggle, rushed in and brained the assassin with a

tripod. We could accumulate a whole volume of such facts all through our

history; but one which shows, too, how well the musicians were rewarded

is that Roger, or Raherus, the king's minstrel in the reign of Henry I.,

in the year 1102, according to Leland, founded the priory and hospital

of St. Bartholomew, in West Smithfield, became the first prior, and so

remained till his death.

The first Earl of Chester gave a freedom of arrest on any account to all

minstrels who should attend Chester Fair, and the last earl was rescued

from the Welsh who besieged him in Rhuddlan Castle, by a band of these

minstrels and their followers, who rushed away from the fair for that

purpose.

John of Gaunt established a court of minstrels at Tutbury, in

Staffordshire, traces of which remained to our own times.

In the Middle Ages, Du Cange says that these men swarmed so about the

houses and courts of the great, and princes spent such large sums on

them, as completely to drain their coffers. In fact, it would appear

in all ages of our history that a singer would, as now, carry off

more in one season than a popular author would in his whole life. The

king in those times had accompanying him, when he went on his warlike

expeditions, besides the musicians of the army, and expressly attached

to his own train, fifteen or more minstrels. The nobles had often large

bands of them in their houses. We read in the household book of the Earls

of Northumberland of the regulations for the minstrels; and Bishop Percy,

one of that family, in his "Hermit of Warkworth," says:--

"The minstrels of thy noble house,

All clad in robes of blue,

With silver crescents on their arms.

Attend in order due."

Trokelowe the chronicler gives us a very curious passage demonstrating

at once the state assumed by minstrels at this period, and the free

access which they had to the very presence of royalty. What is more,

it shows that women were now accredited minstrels. When Edward II. in

1316 solemnised the feast of Pentecost, and sat at table in royal state

in the Great Hall at Westminster, attended by the peers of the realm,

a certain woman, dressed in the habit of a minstrel, riding on a great

horse, trapped in the minstrel fashion, entered the hall, and going round

the several tables, acting the part of a minstrel, at length mounted the

steps to the royal table, on which she deposited a letter. Having done

this, she turned her horse, and, saluting all the company, she departed.

When the letter was read it was found to contain severe animadversions

on the king's conduct; at which he was greatly offended, and the

door-keepers being called and reprimanded for admitting her, they replied

"that it never was the custom of the king's palace to deny admission to

minstrels, especially on such high solemnities and feast-days."

[Illustration: MINSTRELS AT A BANQUET IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. (_See p._

503.)]

The harp was the great and favourite instrument, but we now find a number

of others mentioned. The band of musicians in the household of Edward

III. consisted of five trumpeters, one cyteler, five pipers, one tabret,

one mabrer, two clarions, one fiddler, three wayghts, or hautbois. In a

work of the time there are mentioned the following musical instruments:

the organ, the harp, the sawtrey, the lyre, the cymbal, the sistrum,

the trumpet, the flute, the pipe, the tabor, the nakyre, the drum, and

several others. Some of these were used in martial, some in church music,

and others in social and street music.

Chaucer, in the "Canterbury Tales," makes mention of "a ribible," as used

by his parish clerk, who must have been a merry fellow:--

"In trousty manir coulth he trip and daunce

After the scale of Oxenford (Oxford) tho,

And with his legges casten to and fro,

And playing songs on a small ribible,

Thereto he song sometimes a loud querrible;

And as well could he play on a giterne."

The "giterne" was probably the guitar, and the cyteler, or citole,

mentioned by Gower, the zitern, which has always been a favourite

instrument on the Continent, and has of late years been introduced

into England. Matthew Paris also speaks of musical instruments called

"burdons," which were used in the church of St. Albans, and probably in

others.

Church music, we are told by the old writers, was now as ardently studied

by the clergy as secular music by the minstrels and gleemen. Music was

taught in all colleges, cathedrals, convents, and capital churches; and

the clergy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were by much the

most able musicians, as well in instrumental as vocal music. The learned

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who was also an excellent sculptor

and goldsmith, was passionately fond of music as well as of fishing. He

wrote a hand-book for anglers, "Manuel de Pêche"; and he had always a

harper in the next room, and when wearied with his studies, he ordered

him to play. Like Saul, he thought sweet music drove away evil spirits.

Being asked--

"Why he held the harpe so dere?"

He replied,

"The virtue of the harpe, through skyle and ryght,

Wyll destroye the fendis myght,

And to the cros by gode skeyl

Ys the harp lykened weyl."

[Illustration: FAIR AT WESTMINSTER IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. (_See p._

506.)]

In the churches of this time some of the public offices were considered

as musical exhibitions, and were frequented for amusement rather than

devotion.

The clergy of the Middle Ages sought to amuse the people by their

pageants and miracle plays, and to attract them by joyous music. To the

various diversions of hunting, hawking, feasting, and dancing, which a

king recommended to his daughter to chase away her melancholy, he added:--

"Then shall ye go to your even-song,

With tenors and trebles among;

Your quire nor organ songe shall want,

With country note and discaunt;

The other half on organs playing,

With young children full fayn synging."

Guido Aretini's musical scale, invented in the eleventh century, had

been now greatly improved by the addition of several characters for

representing the various lengths of musical sounds, and music thus

delineated was called _cantus mesurabilis_, or measured song.

Hand-organs of a rude construction were already known and to be seen in

the streets of cities, but far more frequently the pipe, the tabor,

and the drum, the fiddle, and even the harp, accompanying the feats of

dancing dog and bear.

Both the foreign and domestic Commerce of England at that time seems to

have grown and flourished, as it has continued to do almost ever since,

from an innate and unconquerable tendency in the people towards trade

and commercial enterprise, rather than from any fostering and judicious

exertions of the Government. On the contrary, in the reigns of the great

Edwards the knowledge of the principles of trade appears to have been

as completely absent from the heads of those kings as their ruinous

imposts and restrictions were calculated to crush it. In the reigns of

the Edwards the chief articles of export or of raw material were allowed

to be sold only in certain places; and sometimes this was one place, and

sometimes another. Sometimes this staple or place of sale was at home,

sometimes abroad. Edward II. ordered that all articles of the staple--as

wool, sheep-skins, and leather--should not be carried as heretofore to

places in Brabant, Flanders, and Artois, but to Antwerp only. Edward

III. made Calais the staple when that town was captured in 1347; and in

1353 he removed it again, and ordered wool, wool-fells, or sheep-skins,

leather, and lead, to be sold only at Newcastle-on-Tyne, York, Lincoln,

Norwich, Westminster, Canterbury, Chichester, Exeter, and Bristol for

England; at Carmarthen, for Wales; and Dublin, Waterford, Cork, and

Drogheda, for Ireland.

This was better than our merchants being obliged to carry all these

commodities abroad; but repeated changes followed this. "The condition

of the merchants," says Macpherson, in his "Annals of Commerce," "who

were obliged to deal in staple goods was truly pitiable in those days of

perpetual changes."

But this was not all. Suddenly and arbitrarily the king, when wanting to

raise money on tolls, would proclaim a fair in Westminster, and compel

all the tradesmen of London to shut up their shops, and carry all their

goods thither. Matthew Paris tells us that when Henry III. did this, the

fair lasted for a fortnight; and during that time all the fairs in the

kingdom besides were suspended. He draws a dismal picture of the miseries

and losses which the merchants suffered. The weather was dreadfully wet

and cold. Their goods, removed from good shops to their tents, were

drenched and spoiled, and they themselves were obliged to eat their

victuals standing deep in the mud and wet. The people were loud in their

complaints, but four years afterwards the king repeated the experiment,

when it failed, for very few buyers came to it.

Fairs, indeed, seemed to engross the chief domestic trade of the nation;

and people came to them from different countries. A fair at St. Giles's

Hall, near Winchester, continued sixteen days. As at Westminster, all

trade was prohibited during its continuance at Winchester, Southampton,

and at any place within seven miles. Immense crowds from all parts of

England and from abroad flocked to it. It resembled a great city, being

laid out in regular streets, inhabited by foreign and domestic traders.

To such fairs the kings, barons, prelates, and gentry of the time sent

their agents, or went in person, and purchased jewels, plate, cloth,

spices, liquors, furniture, horses, cattle, corn, and provisions of all

kinds, men and women not excepted.

One of these fairs must have been a most extraordinary sight.

Bartolomeus, a contemporary writer, assures us that men and women slaves

were publicly sold in these fairs like beasts, down to the latter part of

the fourteenth century.

The internal trade was not only oppressed by the arbitrary appointment

of such fairs, and simultaneous closing of others, but by a host of

greater and lesser impositions, called lastage, payage; passage,

frontage, stallage, and others, now become unintelligible, though far

too intelligible to those who were fleeced by them. Some of these taxes

were demanded at every fair, and by every baron through whose domain they

were compelled to pass. But if the internal trade of the country was thus

oppressed, how much more the foreign. In 1275 Edward I. issued an order

compelling all foreign merchants to sell their goods within forty days

after their arrival. No foreign merchants were allowed to remain in the

country longer than that time, except by special licence from the king.

It was not till 1303 that Edward permitted foreign merchants to come and

go freely, and to reside under the protection of the English laws; and

it was not till fifty years afterwards that they were freed from the

oppressive law of being obliged to answer for the debts and offences

of every other foreign resident. In 1306 a number of foreign merchants

were imprisoned in the Tower, and detained there till they gave security

that none of them would leave the kingdom or export anything without the

king's licence.

In 1307 Edward prohibited any coin being taken out of the country. In

1335 Edward III. made a like law, prohibiting either money or plate

being taken out, on pain of forfeiture of all such property. Sworn

searchers were appointed at all the ports; and in 1343 these regulations

were repeated, and the searchers were to receive one-third of all the

money or plate seized. All foreign cloths were to be reduced to the

English measure; all were to be measured by the king's aldnagers, and

whatever cloth was found of a less measure in length or breadth was to be

forfeited.

How commerce could exist under such absurd restrictions is marvellous.

Yet the advantages of trade with this country must, under all these

obstacles, have been greater than with most others, for foreign merchants

flocked hither in great numbers. They were called "merchant-strangers";

and forming themselves into companies, they soon managed to engross

nearly all the foreign trade of the country. The Merchants of the Steel

Yard were a most flourishing company of German merchants, who were

settled here before the Conquest, but at this period were become much

more opulent and powerful. This was owing to their connection with the

celebrated confederation of the Hanse Towns, and to the privileges

conferred on them by successive monarchs in consequence of that

connection.

Then there were the Merchants of the Staple, who were established about

this time. Their business was to collect the staple articles, wool,

sheep-skins, leather, lead, and tin, and convey them to the staple towns.

Englishmen, Irish, or Welsh might do this to the staple towns within

the kingdom, but no native could be concerned in exporting them to the

staple towns abroad. The great object was to enable the king to collect

his customs easily, and that foreign merchants might know where to go for

these articles. There were six moderators--two Germans, two Lombards,

and two English--appointed to settle all disputes in the presence of the

mayor and constable of the staple, for their affairs were not subject to

the ordinary magistrates.

The Jews, who had been so fleeced in John's reign, were, for their wealth

and usurious habits, banished from the realm in 1290.

According to Macpherson's "Annals of Commerce," the total exports of

England in 1384 were £212,338 5s., and the imports £38,383 16s. 10d.,

leaving a balance in our favour of £173,954. But Anderson, in his

"Annals," makes the balance more considerable, namely, £255,370.

During this period coals began to be used in England, and were brought

by sea to London. The monks of Dunfermline, in Scotland, also obtained

leave of a neighbouring baron to dig coals for their own use in his lands

at Pittencrief.

Bills of exchange were now much in use, being much encouraged by the

Government, under the idea that they prevented money going out of the

kingdom, and in 1381 a law was passed recommending, and, in fact,

commanding, their use in foreign transactions.

One of the most useful and creditable transactions of the reign of Edward

III. was the issue of a gold coinage. The coinage of England had till

this period consisted of silver, and chiefly in the form of marks and

pennies; a mark being two-thirds of a tower-pound, the pound not being

a real coin, but a pound weight of silver coins. The shilling also was

a nominal coin at this time, being the twentieth part of a pound. The

penny was the two hundred and fortieth part of a pound, and there were

also silver halfpence and farthings; but the people often made these by

cutting the pence into halves and quarters--a practice against which

various ordinances were issued. At this time a penny was called an

_esterling_, or _sterling_, whence our word sterling coin.

The gold coins circulated before this period were foreign, and called

bezants, or byzantines. Henry I. issued a gold coin of the weight of two

silver pennies, which was ordered to pass for twenty silver pennies. The

people, however, refused it, as gold being only reckoned nine times the

value of silver, the king had thus made it ten times the value, which

was one-tenth more than the real value. So completely did this coin

disappear, that no specimen, we believe, is now known of it.

Edward I. issued in 1279 a silver coin equal to four silver pennies, and

called it a gross, or groat, that is, a great penny. No coins of the

reign of Edward II. are known certainly to remain, but there are a few

which are surmised to be his.

The new gold coinage of Edward III., issued in 1344, consisted of florins

(so-called from the gold coin of Florence), to pass for six shillings;

half florins for three shillings; and quarter for one shilling and

sixpence. But he had committed the same fault as Henry I., and overvalued

these coins, which prevented the circulation. To remedy this error, he

coined in the same year gold nobles, half nobles, and farthing nobles,

valued respectively at six shillings and eightpence, three shillings and

fourpence, and one shilling and eightpence. The coin was called a "noble"

because of the fineness of its metal. This coinage continued to circulate

to the end of this period.

To prevent extortion in exchange of these moneys, and probably to secure

a little profit to the Crown, Edward took the whole matter into his own

hands, appointing official exchangers in every part of the kingdom,

making a profit of one and one-fifth per cent. by the transactions. The

great loss to the public in those times was occasioned by the extensive

clipping of the coins. To such a degree had this taken place in the time

of Edward I., that the Jews being accused as the chief offenders, he

seized in one day, and hanged with very little trial, 244 of them. At

the same time all the goldsmiths in the kingdom were taken and put into

prison, on suspicion of participation in the crime.

The rate of interest was high at this period, seldom less than ten, more

often twenty per cent., and, in the case of the Corsini, sixty per cent.

The Church of Rome prohibited the lending of money on usury; and yet,

when the Bishop of London excommunicated the Corsini, who were the papal

agents, the Pope protected them, or they must have suffered the fate

which overtook the Jews.

The method of coining at this time was simply by beating out thin plates

of silver into a roundish form, and stamping them by a blow with a

hammer. The coins were, of course, of rude workmanship.

The coins minted in Scotland in the reign of Edward III. were so much

less in value that he prohibited their circulation, but ordered it to be

brought to the mint as bullion. The old coins, however, he permitted to

circulate. The first gold coins of Scotland are of the mintage of Robert

II., 1371 to 1390. In Ireland there were several coinages of money, but

in 1339 appeared a foreign inferior money called turnkeys, or black

money, which was allowed to circulate from the scarcity of better.

The British sailors, during the period under review, greatly augmented

the character for skill and bravery which they had acquired in King

John's time. The great victory of Edward III. at Sluys, and their

subsequent ones, placed them at the head of the maritime world. The Monk

of Malmesbury before that, in 1315, had written thus of them:--"English

ships visit every coast, and English sailors excel all others, both in

the arts of navigating and of fighting." Whether this character at this

time was quite true, as regarded the skill in navigation of the Genoese,

is doubtful; but in fighting, they had shown their superior valour by

beating the Genoese in the French service at sea, just as their comrades

had done on land. The royal navy in these reigns does not appear to have

been at any time numerous. The number of the ships of war of Edward II.

that we are made acquainted with was only five. Of the size of these we

have no information; but as early as 1270 we read of a ship of Venice

which was 125 feet long, carrying 110 men. Edward III., in 1360, ordered

the vessels intended to transport his troops to France to carry forty

mariners, forty men-at-arms, and sixty archers. Edward's admiral and the

mariners of the Cinque Ports captured no less than eighty vessels off the

French coast, of which one had been purchased some years before for 5,000

francs. This was a large fleet itself. But in size the Genoese vessels

must have greatly exceeded the largest of these, as we read of some of

them, ship and cargo, being valued at £60,000 and £70,000 each.

The large fleets of England, however, with which Edward transported

his armies and fought his sea-fights, were chiefly merchant vessels,

collected by the most arbitrary authority as wanted. The press-warrants

of that day show us that those who executed them were empowered to seize

all vessels, great and small, that were in port or that came into port;

to cause them to be unloaded, if necessary; and to conduct them at once

to the place of rendezvous. In this manner were speedily mustered the 738

vessels which were drawn up at the siege of Calais, and the 1,100 vessels

with which Edward invaded France in 1359.

London and Yarmouth were the two great seaports of that day, and there

appears every reason to believe that Edward on this latter occasion had

at least half of the whole mercantile navy of England in his service. The

number of English ships was found at this time to diminish rather than

to increase; nor can this be any matter of wonder. The violent seizures

of trading vessels, the interruptions of commercial enterprises, and the

necessary losses of property, were enough to have destroyed the whole

commerce of any less vigorous country. Added to this, the encouragement

of the merchant strangers, who carried on a great part of their trade in

foreign bottoms, no doubt, was an additional cause of this decrease.

An event, however, took place in 1302 of unparalleled advantage to

navigation--the invention of the mariner's compass by Flavio di Gioja of

Amalfi. This opened up new oceans and new worlds to Europe; and already

in the reign of Edward III. Nicholas de Leuna, a Carmelite friar, is

said to have made five voyages of discovery towards the north pole, and

presented to that monarch a description of the countries which he had

seen. In 1344, one Macham, an Englishman, is said to have discovered

Madeira, and in 1395 some French and Spanish adventurers discovered the

Canaries.

[Illustration: ENGLISH SHIPS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. (_See p._ 508.)]

Scotland during this time must have displayed considerable maritime

enterprise, for the Scottish captain John Mercer, in one of his daring

cruises, made great destruction amongst the English merchant vessels,

till Alderman Phillpot of London encountered and took him prisoner. So

bold were the Scots in 1335 and 1337, that they seized English vessels at

the very mouth of the Thames; attacked and plundered Guernsey and Jersey;

sailed along the southern coast of England; took a number of vessels

lying at the Isle of Wight; and cruised along the eastern shore, doing

much damage, till the equinoctial gales drove them home.

The manners and customs which prevailed during this period bore a great

resemblance to those we have described in the preceding age. Yet, by the

extensive expeditions of the English on the Continent, and to the East in

the Crusades, various changes were introduced, and, if we are to believe

the writers of the times, a great corruption of morals had taken place.

Thomas Wykes, speaking of the civil wars in the reign of Henry III.,

says:--"In these five years past there have been so many battles, both by

land and sea, so much slaughter and destruction of the people of England,

so many devastations, plunderings, robberies, thefts, sacrileges,

perjuries, treacheries, and treasons, that the nation hath lost all sense

of distinction between right and wrong, virtue and vice."

No nation had shown such valour as the English, but none had shown so

little mercy abroad, or the wise policy which puts on a show of it. We

have seen how much the First and Third Edward gained by their arms,

both in Scotland and France, and how they lost it all by the reckless

cruelties which they inflicted on those countries, and their total

neglect of every attempt to conciliate their goodwill. Froissart, who

does justice to the bravery and virtues of the English, blames them for

their insolent and disgusting behaviour to people of other nations.

"When I was at Bordeaux, a little before the Black Prince set out on his

expedition into Spain, I observed that the English were so proud and

haughty, that they could not behave to the people of other nations with

any appearance of civility. Even the gentlemen of Gascony and Aquitaine,

who had lost their estates in fighting for them, could not obtain the

smallest place of profit from them, being constantly told that they were

unfit for and unworthy of preferment. By this treatment they lost the

love and incurred the hatred of those gentlemen, which they discovered as

soon as opportunity offered. In a word, the King of France gained those

gentlemen, and their countries, by his liberality and condescension, and

the English lost them by their haughtiness."

The style of living of this period, however, at home, amongst the princes

and aristocracy, was most magnificent--rudely so, it is true, but lavish

and lordly. The enormous establishments of Edward II. and Richard II. we

have described, the household of the latter consisting of 10,000 persons.

Alexander III. of Scotland, being present at the coronation of Edward I.,

rode to Westminster, attended by 100 knights, mounted on fine horses,

which they let loose, with all their furniture, as soon as they alighted,

to be seized by the populace as their property. In this he was imitated

by the Earls of Lancaster, Cornwall, Gloucester, Pembroke, and Warrenne,

who each paid Edward the same expensive, unprofitable compliment.

The style of living amongst the great barons is shown by the household

accounts of the Earl of Lancaster in 1313. In that year the earl expended

£7,309, containing as much silver as £21,927, or equivalent to £109,635

of our money; nay, so very cheap were wines and some other things, that

it would now-a-days require a far larger sum than this to maintain

an equal hospitality. The quantity of wine consumed in the earl's

establishment in that year was 471 pipes. Other earls and barons used up

in free living all the revenues of their immense estates. Towards the

conclusion of this period this profuse hospitality was on the decline,

and, instead of dining in their great hall with their dependents, the

nobles began to dine in private parlours with a few familiar friends. But

this innovation was extremely unpopular, and subjected those who adopted

it to much reproach.

It appears that painted ceilings and walls in the great houses prevailed

even before the reign of Henry III. Scripture and romantic subjects

prevailed in these decorations. The "Painted Chamber" at Westminster

was embellished in this manner. In the romance of "Arthur of Little

Britain" these painted walls and ceilings are described as "done with

gold, azure, and other fresh colours," which is precisely the style of

the old Byzantine school. In the reign of Henry III. they had painted

glass windows, not only in churches, but in private houses, and with

lattices which opened and shut. In different old illuminated MSS. we

have specimens of the chairs, beds, reading-desks, and other furniture.

The so-called chair of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, still

used as the coronation chair, is probably the oldest chair in England

(_See p._ 341). In Strutt and other works may be found various things of

this kind copied from the old writers. The wills of our sovereigns and

nobles give accounts of other articles bequeathed; and the romances of

the time abound in lavish descriptions of the splendour of the palaces

and halls of knights and barons. The Countess of Pembroke in 1367 gives

her daughter a bed with furniture of her father's arms. Lord Ferrers

leaves his son his green bed with his arms thereon, and to his daughter

his white bed, and all the furniture, and the arms of Ferrers and Ufford

thereon. Beds of black satin, of red camora, of blue, red, and white

silk, and black velvet, are mentioned. That of the mother of Richard III.

was of red velvet, embroidered with ostrich feathers of silver, and heads

of leopards of gold, with boughs and leaves coming out of their mouths.

Many of these beds have testers and canopies: in the will of Lady

Neville, in 1385, is mentioned a "white couvrelit and tester, powdered

with popinjays." Many, however, had hangings of tapestry all illustrated

in needlework, with pictures of battles and great events, as well as

scenes from the Bible and from the favourite romances, and Matthew of

Paris tells us that Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I., covered the

floor with tapestry, at which there was much scoffing.

Clocks which struck and chimed the hour are mentioned at the close of

the thirteenth century; and Matthew of Paris gives us a rich idea of a

cupboard of plate, containing a cup of gold, six quart standing pots of

silver, twenty-four silver bowls with covers, a basin, ewer, and chasoir

of silver. There is also frequent mention of silver and silver-gilt

plate, dishes, chargers, salt-cellars spoons, silver lavatories,

spice-plates, knives with silver handles, and a fork of crystal belonging

to Edward I. Forks were used in Italy as early as 1330, but not till

the seventeenth century in this country. Fire-screens standing on feet

were in use in the reign of Edward I., and also ornamental andirons, or

fire-dogs.

The feasts at coronations of kings, the installations of prelates, the

marriages of great nobles, and similar high occasions, were profuse in

the number of dishes, and the guests entertained sometimes amounted

to thousands. The coronation banquet of Edward III. cost £40,000 of

our money. At the installation of Ralph, Abbot of St. Augustine, at

Canterbury, in 1309, 6,000 guests sat down to 3,000 dishes, which cost

£45,000 of our money. At the marriage-dinner of the Earl of Cornwall to

the daughter of Raymond, Count of Provence, at London, in 1243, 30,000

dishes were served up. The marriage-feast of Alexander III. of Scotland

and Margaret of England, held at York in 1281, causes Matthew Paris

to say:--"If I attempted to describe the grandeur of this solemnity,

the number of the illustrious guests, the richness and variety of the

dresses, the sumptuousness of the feasts, the multitude of the minstrels,

mimics, and others whose business it was to amuse and divert the company,

my readers would think I was imposing on their credulity."

Chaucer describes in his "Parson's Tale" the artificial Cookery to

which they had attained, and adds: "They had excess of divers meats and

drinks, boiled, roasted, grilled, and fried." They had "mortries," and

blancmanges, "and such maner bake metes, and dish metes brenning of wild

fire, paynted and castelled with paper and somblable waste, so that it is

abusion to think."

The latter ornaments were what they called their "intermeats"

(_entremets_). These represented battles, sieges, &c., introduced

between the courses for the amusement of the guests. At a banquet given

by Charles V. of France to the Emperor Charles IV., in 1378, there

came a great ship into the hall as if of itself, the machinery being

concealed. It came with all its masts, sails, rigging, and colours--the

arms of Jerusalem--flying. Geoffrey of Bouillon, with several knights

armed cap-à-pie, were represented on deck. Then appeared the walls of

Jerusalem, and a regular siege, assault, and conquest of the city was

gone through.

As for the drinks of the period, ale and cider satisfied the common

people; but a great variety of foreign wines were imported and consumed

by the wealthy. Warton, in his "History of English Poetry," quotes the

following enumeration of wines known and used at this time:--

"Ye shall have Rumney and Malespine,

Both Ypocrasse and Vernage wine,

Montrese and wine of Greke,

Both Algrade and Despiceeke,

Antioch and Bastarde,

Pyment also, and Garnarde;

Wine of Greke and Muscadell,

Both Clare, Pyment, and Rochell."

Pyment, yprocras, and claret were compounded of wine, honey, and spices

of different kinds, and in different proportions, and were considered as

great delicacies. People of rank had two meals a day--dinner and supper.

Princes and people of high rank had a kind of collation just before going

to bed, called "the wines," consisting of delicate cakes and wine warmed

and spiced. It would appear from a passage in Chaucer that they ate

spiced condiments after their meals, as we take a dessert.

"There was eke wexing many a spice,

As clove, gilofre, and licorice,

Gingiber, and grain de Paris;

And many a spice delitable,

To etan whan men rise fro table."

It is clear that those who had wealth knew no contemptible amount of the

art of good living.

The Costumes of this period were rich and varied. Loud complaints are

made by the historians of the extravagance in dress, and laws were

enacted both to restrain the excesses in dressing and eating. Edward II.

decreed that none of the great men of his realm should have more than

two courses at their meals, each to consist of only two kinds of flesh,

except prelates, earls, barons, and the greatest men of the land, who

might have an intermeat of one kind. In 1363, sumptuary laws restricting

dress in like manner were passed in Parliament, but we are told that

some of these laws were not at all regarded. "The squire endeavoured to

outshine the knight, the knight the baron, the baron the earl, and the

earl the very king himself."

We have examples of the different royal robes of the kings of that time

in their statues. Henry III., in Westminster Abbey, has a long and very

full tunic, and a mantle fastened by a fibula on the right shoulder, both

devoid of ornament. But the boots are exceedingly splendid, being fretted

or crossed with lines, and each square of the fret containing a lion or

leopard. The cloth he wore is said to have been inwoven with gold, and

on his head he wore a coronet or small chaplet of gold. Edward I. has

no statue, but on opening his tomb, he was found dressed very much like

Henry III.; his tunic was of red silk, his mantle of crimson satin.

Edward II., in his effigies in Gloucester Cathedral, appears in a loose

tunic with long streamers or tippets at the elbows, and his mantle open

in front.

Edward III. appears in his loose tunic and mantle, both richly

embroidered; his son William, in York Cathedral, in a close embroidered

tunic and mantle, with jagged edges.

[Illustration: _Baron._ _Lady._ _Gentleman._ _Peasant._

_Soldier._ _Peasant Woman._

COSTUMES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.]

The military costume changed from the chain mail of the Knights Templars

in the time of Edward III. to plated armour. Sometimes the helmet was

closed with a visor, and in other cases had only a protecting piece of

steel down the nose, called a nasal. To describe all the accoutrements,

armorial bearings on shields, crests, and banners of the knights of this

period, and the armour and caparison of their horses, would require a

volume.

The dresses of gentlemen, in the early part of that period, consisted

generally of a loose, long tunic, and over that the cyclas or contoise--a

sort of mantle--and when travelling a supertotus, or overall. Short

dresses afterwards prevailed, with close-fitting hose and shoes. The

shoes in the early part of this time were well fitting to the foot, but

afterwards assumed enormous long toes, which are represented as suspended

to the knee by chains or cords, though no drawing of these suspended

toes has come down to us. In the reign of Richard II. gentlemen's

dresses again became long and very luxurious, often with open sides to

their garments, and preposterously long-toed shoes. These were called

_crackowes_, being supposed to come from Cracow, and had often their

upper part cut in imitation of a church window. Chaucer's parish clerk,

Absalom, "had Paul'is windows carven on his shose." The capuchon, or

head-dress, in some cases resembled a simple cap or rounded hat, in

others assumed very much the character of a turban.

[Illustration: ENGLISH MERRY-MAKING IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY; TILTING AT

THE QUINTAIN. (_See p._ 514.)]

Camden's description of a dandy of the fourteenth century is particularly

ludicrous:--"He wore long-pointed shoes, fastened to his knees by gold

or silver chains; hose of one colour on one leg, and of another colour

on the other. Short breeches, not reaching to the middle of the thigh; a

coat, one half white, and the other half black or blue; a long beard, a

silk band buttoned under his chin, embroidered with grotesque figures of

animals, dancing-men, &c., and sometimes ornamented with gold, silver,

and precious stones."

The Scots at this period dressed very much as the English, except in

the Highlands. The Welsh were the least luxurious of any people in the

island in dress, and the common soldiers of that nation at the battle

of Bannockburn are said to have been conspicuous to the Scots by the

scantiness and rudeness of their clothing.

The ladies' dresses were as varied. In the earlier period they wore long

dresses, and on their heads a sort of hood or cowl; but in the reign of

Edward II. they adopted a most becoming style of head-dress--that of

simple bands or nets, supporting the hair in much elegance of form, and

plaited and turned up behind. It has very much of an Eastern air, and

probably was of Saracen origin, brought to Europe during the Crusades.

Sometimes on this was worn a light sort of hood, with a silken bandage

passing under the chin. Their dresses also assumed more the fashion

of modern gowns. Aprons, richly embroidered, appeared, and the female

costume of the time of Edward III. would pass very well now, the gown

fitting elegantly to the bust, and of modern proportion. They had,

however, the long narrow bands depending from the elbows, or from a

little above them.

The diversions of those ages were very much the same as those of the

former one, and, therefore, need no particular description. We are

surprised to hear, towards the end of the reign of Edward III., that the

practice of archery was on the decline amongst the people. Every man in

the feudal ages in England who did not possess land to the value of forty

shillings a year used to be required to qualify himself for a bowman; and

the practice of archery in the villages, from boyhood upward, produced

those famous bowmen who cleared the fields of Creçy and Poitiers of all

opponents. Could it be the introduction of gunpowder and cannon which had

already produced this effect? Yet Rymer says, "That art is now neglected,

and the people spend their time in throwing stones, wood, or iron; in

playing at the hand-ball, foot-ball, or club-ball; in bull-baiting and

cock-fighting, and in more useless and dishonest games." Tilting at the

quintain was a favourite sport at festive gatherings.

Wrestling for a ram was a popular amusement; and a wrestling-match of

this kind between London and Westminster, in 1222, terminated in a

regular battle, in which much blood was spilled.

By the "dishonest games" is probably meant such games of chance as cross

and pile, to which the common people were then much addicted, and in

which Edward II. spent both his time and his money; for there are found

in this king's accounts items of money borrowed of his barber and the

usher of his chamber while at such play. Card games were invented towards

the end of the fourteenth century by Jacquemin Gringonneur, in Paris, to

amuse the melancholy hours of the mentally afflicted Charles VI., but

they do not appear to have been so early introduced into this country.

Tournaments, hunting, dancing, pageants, mummings, and disguisings were

the amusements of the great, even the greatest, princes, and were the

delectation of the people when they could witness them. At a masquerade

at the court of Charles VI. in Paris, in 1388, the king and five young

noblemen had dressed themselves as savages, with long hair of flax fixed

to their robes by pitch, which caught fire from the torches, and the king

was rescued with difficulty, while four of his companions were burnt to

death.

The drama appeared in that day under the form of "Mysteries and

Moralities," or "Miracle-plays," which were acted in the churches and

monasteries by the clergy and monks, and in which the most sacred

passages and personages of the Scriptures were introduced in the most

free and extraordinary manner. From the clergy the drama by degrees

passed over to the laity. In the streets the tragetours, or jugglers,

gave extensive amusement; and, according to Chaucer, legerdemain must

have reached considerable perfection, for he says the tragetours could

make people believe they saw a boat come swimming into a hall; a lion

walk in; flowers spring up as in a meadow; ripe grapes, red and white,

appear on imaginary vines, castles, looking solid lime and stone, appear,

and then vanish again.

[Illustration: _From the Froissart MS. in the British Museum._

_Reproduced by André & Sleigh, Ld., Bushey, Herts._

THE CORONATION OF HENRY IV. IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY IN 1399.]

Such is the picture of England in the fourteenth century. In arms she

had won eternal and unequalled fame; in poetry, literature, and art she

had made brilliant advances. Her churches were piles of glorious poetry

in stone; and in poetry itself she had a Chaucer; in architecture, a

Wykeham; in philosophy, Bacon and Grosseteste; a number of learned

historians; Wycliffe had made the Bible common property, and given

religion new wings, sending it to the cottage and the dwelling of

the industrious citizen. In the constitution, the Great Charter had

been confirmed, and many excellent statutes passed, restraining the

royal and baronial power, and extending that of the people. Gunpowder

and cannon were come to change all warfare, and make strong castles

useless. Manufactures had been introduced by the noble Queen Philippa

of Hainault. Gardens of culinary vegetables, of medicinal herbs, and of

flowers, as well as _pomaria_, or orchards, were becoming general, though

vineyards were fast dying out; and, altogether, it must be pronounced

a distinguished and progressive era, which did its duty to the common

country and to posterity--except in the two important domains of morals

and of humanity.