In the thirteenth century political poems were written chiefly in Latin
or French. In the fourteenth century a steadily growing tendency to use
English witnesses the increased interest of the people in politics and
social questions. The fullest collections are those edited by T. Wright,
_Political Songs of England_ (John to Edward II), Camden Society, 1839;
and _Political Poems and Songs_ (Edward III to Richard III), Rolls
Series, 2 vols., 1859-61.
The selections A and B are from the poems of Laurence Minot, of which
the best edition is the third by J. Hall, Oxford 1914. Minot was a
better patriot than a poet, and his boisterous contempt for the Scots
and French reflects the spirit of England in the early days of Edward
III's greatness.
The empty phrases in which the anonymous piece C abounds do not disguise
a note of despair. The long war with France was becoming more and more
hopeless. The plague that added to its miseries had carried off Henry,
first Duke of Lancaster, in 1361. The Black Prince, to whom the nation
looked for guidance, had died in 1376. The inglorious old age of Edward
III ended in the following year. But there remained the hope, soon to be
falsified, that the boy king Richard II would steer the ship of state to
safety.
D is the earliest text of the letter which John Ball addressed to the
Essex members of the Great Society of Peasants on the eve of the revolt
of 1381. It shows how deep an impression the characters and allegorical
form of _Piers Plowman_ had made on the oppressed serfs and labourers,
and it gives some idea of the vague and incoherent thinking that brought
ruin on their enterprise. Ball, who had defied established authority all
his life, was freed from prison by the rebels, became a ringleader, and
preached to their assembly on Blackheath a famous sermon with the text:
When Adam dalf, and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?
A few weeks later he was executed by sentence of Lord Chief Justice
Tressilian, who had been charged by the King to take vengeance on the
rebels.
The distich E sums up briefly the history of a year which turned
moderate men against Richard II. A fuller contemporary picture of the
events that led to his deposition is found in the alliterative poem
_Richard the Redeles_, attributed by Skeat to the author of _Piers
Plowman_.