A vox gon out of the wode go, Afingret (hungered) so that him wes wo; He nes (ne was) nevere in none wise Afingret erour (before) half so swithe. He ne hoeld nouther wey ne strete, For him wes loth men to mete; Him were levere meten one hen, Than half an oundred wimmen.

But not a hen does he come across; they are suspicious, and roost out of reach. At last, half dead, he desires to drink, and sees a well with two pails on the chain; he descends in one of the pails, and finds it impossible to scramble out: he weeps for rage. The wolf, as a matter of course, comes that way, and they begin to talk. Though wanting very much to go, hungrier than ever, and determined to make the wolf take his place, Renard would not have been Renard had he played off this trick on his gossip plainly and without a word. He adds many words, all sparkling with the wit of France, the wit that is to be inherited by Scapin and by Figaro. The wolf, for his part, replies word for word by a verse of Orgon's. Renard will only allow him to descend into the Paradise whither he pretends to have retired, after he has confessed, forgiven all his enemies—Renard being one—and is ready to lead a holy life. Ysengrin agrees, confesses, and forgives; he feels his mind quite at rest, and exclaims in his own way:

Et je verrais mourir frere, enfants, mere et femme, Que je m'en soucierais autant que de cela.[375]

Nou ich am in clene live, Ne recche ich of childe ne of wive.

The wolf goes down, Renard goes up; as the pails meet, the rogue wickedly observes:

Ac ich am therof glad and blithe That thou art nomen in clene live, Thi soul-cnul (knell) ich wile do ringe, And masse for thine soule singe.

But he considers it enough for his purpose to warn the monks that the devil is at the bottom of their well. With great difficulty the monks draw up the devil, which done they beat him, and set the dogs on him.

Some graceful love tales, popular in France, were translated and enjoyed no less popularity in England, where there was now a public for literature of this sort. Such was the case for Amis and Amile, Floire and Blanchefleur, and many others.[376] As for chansons, there were imitations of May songs, "disputoisons,"[377] and carols; love, roses, and birds were sung in sweet words to soft music[378]; so was spring, the season of lilies, when the flowers give more perfume, and the moon more light, and women are more beautiful:

Wymmen waxeth wonder proude.[379]

Their beauties and merits are celebrated one by one, as in a litany; for, said one of those poets, an Englishman who wrote in French:

Beaute de femme passe rose.[380]

In honour of them were composed stanzas spangled with admiring epithets, glittering like a golden shower; innumerable songs were dedicated to their ideal model, the Queen of Angels; others to each one of their physical charms, their "vair eyes"[381] and their eyes "gray y-noh": those being the colours preferred; their skin white as milk, "soft ase sylk"; those scarlet lips that served them to read romances, for romances were read aloud, and not only with the eyes[382]; their voice more melodious than a bird's song. In short, from the time of Edward II. that mixture of mysticism and sensuality appears which was to become one of the characteristics of the fourteenth century.

The poets who made these songs, charming as they were, rarely succeeded however in perfectly imitating the light pace of the careless French muse. In reading a great number of the songs of both countries, one is struck by the difference. The English spring is mixed with winter, and the French with summer; England sings the verses of May, remembering April, France sings them looking forward to June.

Blow northerne wynd, Sent thou me my suetyng, Blow, northerne wynd, blou, blou, blou![383]

says the English poet. Contact with the new-comers had modified the gravity of the Anglo-Saxons, but without sweeping it away wholly and for ever: the possibility of recurring sadness is felt even in the midst of the joy of "Merry England."

But the hour draws near when for the first time, and in spite of all doleful notes, the joy of "Merry England" will bloom forth freely. Edward III. is on the throne, Chaucer is just born, and soon the future Black Prince will win his spurs at Crecy.

FOOTNOTES:

[324] "Castel of Love," "made in the latter half of the XIIIth century," in Horstmann and Furnivall, "Minor Poems of the Vernon MS.," E.E.T.S., 1892, Part I. p. 356, see below, p. 213. Grosseteste had said:

... Trestuz ne poent mie Saver le langage en fin D'Ebreu de griu ne de latin.

(Ibid. p. 355.)

[325] Among the collections of English sermons from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, see "An Old English Miscellany," ed. Morris, Early English Text Society, 1872, 8vo; pp. 26 ff., a translation in English prose of the thirteenth century of some of the sermons of Maurice de Sully; p. 187, "a lutel soth sermon" in verse, with good advice to lovers overfond of "Malekyn" or "Janekyn."—"Old English homilies and homiletic treatises ... of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries," ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1867-73, 2 vols. 8vo; prose and verse (specimens of music in the second series); several of those pieces are mere transcripts of Anglo Saxon works anterior to the Conquest; p. 159, the famous "Moral Ode," twelfth century, on the transitoriness of this life: "Ich em nu alder thene ich wes," &c., in rhymed verse (cf. "Old English Miscellany," p. 58, and "Anglia," i. p. 6).—"The Ormulum, with the notes and glossary of Dr. R. M. White," ed. R. Holt, Oxford, 1878, 2 vols. 8vo, an immense compilation in verse, of which a part only has been preserved, the work of Ormin, an Augustinian canon, thirteenth century; contains a paraphrase of the gospel of the day followed by an explanatory sermon; cf. Napier, "Notes on Ormulum" in "History of the Holy Rood Tree," E.E.T.S., 1894—"Hali Meidenhad ... an alliterative Homily of the XIIIth century," ed. Cockayne, E.E.T.S., 1866, in prose.—"English metrical Homilies," ed. J. Small, Edinburgh, 1862, 8vo, homilies interspersed with exempla, compiled ab. 1330.—"Religious pieces in prose and verse," ed. G. G. Perry, E.E.T.S., 1867; statement in a sermon by John Gaytrige, fourteenth century, that "oure ffadire the byschope" has prescribed to each member of his clergy "opynly, one ynglysche apone sonnondayes, preche and teche thaym that thay hase cure off" (p. 2).

[326] Sermon IV. on Sunday (imitated from the French) in Morris's "Old English Homilies," 1867. St. Paul, led by St. Michael, at the sight of so many sufferings, weeps, and God consents that on Sundays the condemned souls shall cease to suffer. This legend was one of the most popular in the Middle Ages; it was told in verse or prose in Greek, Latin, French, English, &c. See Ward, "Catalogue of MS. Romances," vol. ii. 1893, pp. 397 ff.: "Two versions of this vision existed in Greek in the fourth century." An English metrical version has been ed. by Horstmann and Furnivall, "Minor Poems of the Vernon MS.," E.E.T.S., 1892, p. 251.

[327] "Old English homilies and homiletic treatises ... of the XIIth and XIIIth Centuries," ed. with translation, by R. Morris, London, E.E.T.S., 1867, 8vo, vol. i. p. 39.

[328] The Psalter was translated into English, in verse, in the second half of the thirteenth century: "Anglo-Saxon and Early English Psalter," Surtees Society, 1843-7, 8vo; then in prose with a full commentary by Richard Rolle, of Hampole (on whom see below, p. 216): "The Psalter or the Psalms of David," ed. Bramley, Oxford, 1884, 8vo; again in prose, towards 1327, by an anonym, who has been wrongly believed to be William de Shoreham, a monk of Leeds priory: "The earliest English prose Psalter, together with eleven Canticles," ed. Buelbring, E.E.T.S., 1891. The seven penitential psalms were translated in verse in the second half of the fourteenth century by Richard of Maidstone; one is in Horstmann and Furnivall: "Minor Poems of the Vernon MS.," p. 12.

[329] "The Story of Genesis and Exodus, an early English Song," ab. 1250, ed. R. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1865; shortly before that date a translation in French prose of the whole of the Bible had been completed.

[330] See, e.g., "The early South-English Legendary or lives of Saints; I., MS. Laud, 108, in the Bodleian Library," ed. C. Horstmann, Early English Text Society, 1887, 8vo.—Furnivall, "Early English Poems and Lives of Saints," Berlin, Philological Society, 1862, 8vo.—"Materials for the history of Thomas Becket," ed. Robertson, Rolls, 1875 ff., 7 vols. 8vo.—Several separate Lives of Saints have been published by the E.E.T.S.

[331] Horstmann, "The early South-English Legendary," p. vii. The same intends to publish other texts, and to clear the main problems connected with them; "but it will," he says, "require more brains, the brains of several generations to come, before every question relative to this collection can be cleared." Ibid.

[332] The latter is the MS. Laud 108 in the Bodleian, edited by Horstmann; the other is the Harleian MS. 2277 in the British Museum; specimens of its contents have been given by Furnivall in his "Early English poems" (ut supra).

[333] From MS. Harl. 2277, in Furnivall's "Early English poems," 1862, p. 34.

[334]

In the faireste lond huy weren that evere mighte beo. So cler and so light it was that joye thare was i-nogh; Treon thare weren fulle of fruyt wel thicke ever-ech bough ... Hit was evere-more day: heom thoughte, and never-more nyght.

Life of St. Brendan who "was here of oure londe," in Horstmann's "South-English Legendary," p. 220. See also "St. Brandan, a mediaeval Legend of the Sea," ed. T. Wright, Percy Society, 1844; Francisque Michel, "Les Voyages Merveilleux de St. Brandan a la recherche du Paradis terrestre, legende en vers du XIIe. Siecle," Paris, 1878; cf. "Navigation de la barque de Mael Duin," in d'Arbois de Jubainville's "L'Epopee Celtique en Irlande," 1892, pp. 449 ff. (above p. 12).

[335] Renan, "Essais de morale et de critique," Paris, 1867, 3rd edition, p. 446.

[336] By Thomas de Hales, "Incipit quidam cantus quem composuit frater Thomas de Hales." Thomas was a friend of Adam de Marisco and lived in the thirteenth century. "Old English Miscellany," ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1872, p. 94.

[337] The "Ancren Riwle," edited and translated by J. Morton, London, Camden Society, 1853, 4to, thirteenth century. Five MSS. have been preserved, four in English and one in Latin, abbreviated from the English (cf. Bramlette's article in "Anglia," vol. xv. p. 478). A MS. in French: "La Reule des femmes religieuses et recluses," disappeared in the fire of the Cottonian Library. The ladies for whom this book was written lived at Tarrant Kaines, in Dorset, where a convent for monks had been founded by Ralph de Kaines, son of one of the companions of the Conqueror. It is not impossible that the original text was the French one; French fragments subsist in the English version. The anonymous author had taken much trouble about this work. "God knows," he says, "it would be more agreeable to me to start on a journey to Rome than begin to do it again." A journey to Rome was not then a pleasure trip.

[338] P. 53, Morton's translation. The beginning of the quotation runs thus in the original: "Hwoso hevede iseid to Eve theo heo werp hire eien therone, A! wend te awei! thu worpest eien o thi death! Hwat heved heo ionswered? Me leove sire, ther havest wouh. Hwarof kalenges tu me? The eppel that ich loke on is forbode me to etene, and nout forto biholden."

[339] "Vix aliquam inclusarum hujus temporis solam invenies, ante cujus fenestram non anus garrula vel nugigerula mulier sedeat quae eam fabulis occupet, rumoribus aut detractionibus pascat, illius vel illius monachi vel clerici, vel alterius cujuslibet ordinis viri formam, vultum, moresque describat. Illecebrosa quoque interserat, puellarum lasciviam, viduarum, quibus libet quidquid libet, libertatem, conjugum in viris fallendis explendisque voluptatibus astutiam depingat. Os interea in risus cachinnosque dissolvitur, et venenum cum suavitate bibitum per viscera membraque diffunditur." "De vita eremetica Liber," cap. iii., Reclusarun cum externis mulieribus confabulationes; in Migne's "Patrologia," vol. xxxii. col. 1451. See above, p. 153. Aelred wrote this treatise at the request of a sister of his, a sister "carne et spiritu."

[340]

De le franceis, ne del rimer Ne me dait nuls hom blamer, Kar en Engleterre fu ne E norri ordine et aleve.

Furnivall, "Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne," &c., Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, p. 413.

[341] French text of the "Chateau" in Cooke, "Carmina Anglo-Normannica," 1852, Caxton Society; English versions in Horstmann and Furnivall, "The minor Poems of the Vernon MS.," Early English Text Society, 1892, pp. 355, 407; Weymouth: "Castell off Love ... an early English translation of an old French poem by Robert Grosseteste," Philological Society, 1864, 4to; Halliwell, "Castle of Love," Brixton Hill, 1849, 4to. See above, p. 205.

[342] The "Manuel des Pechiez," by William de Wadington, as well as the English metrical translation (a very free one) written in 1303 by Robert Mannyng, of Brunne, Lincolnshire (1260?-1340?), have been edited by Furnivall: "Handlyng Synne," London, Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, contains a number of exempla and curious stories. The same Mannyng wrote, after Peter de Langtoft, an Englishman who had written in French (see above, p. 122), and after Wace, a metrical chronicle, from the time of Noah down to Edward I.: "The Story of England ... A.D. 1338," ed. Furnivall, Rolls, 1887, 2 vols. 8vo. He is possibly the author of a metrical meditation on the Last Supper imitated from his contemporary St. Bonaventure: "Meditacyuns on the Soper of our Lorde," ed. Cowper, E.E.T.S., 1875, 8vo.

[343] "The Ayenbite of Inwyt or Remorse of Conscience, in the Kentish Dialect, 1340 A.D., edited from the autograph MS.," by R. Morris, E.E.T.S. The "Ayenbite" is the work of Dan Michel, of Northgate, Kent, who belonged to "the bochouse of Saynt Austines of Canterberi." The work deals with the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, informs us that "the sothe noblesse comth of the gentyl herte ... ase to the bodye: alle we byeth children of one moder, thet is of erthe" (p. 87). Some of the chapters of Lorens's "Somme" were adapted by Chaucer in his Parson's tale.

[344] See in particular: "Legends of the Holy Rood, symbols of the Passion and Cross Poems, in old English of the XIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries," ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1871.—"An Old English Miscellany containing a Bestiary, Kentish sermons, Proverbs of Alfred and religious poems of the XIIIth century," ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1872.—"The religious poems of William de Shoreham," ed. T. Wright, Percy Society, 1849, on sacraments, commandments, deadly sins, &c., first half of the fourteenth century.—"The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS.," ed. Horstmann and Furnivall, E.E.T.S., 1892; contains a variety of poems in the honour of the Virgin, pious tales, "a dispitison bitweene a good man and the devel," p. 329, meditations, laments, vision of St. Paul, &c., of various authors and dates, mostly of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.—On visions of heaven and hell (vision of St. Paul of Tundal, of St. Patrick, of Thurkill), and on the Latin, French, and English texts of several of them, see Ward, "Catalogue of Romances," 1893, vol. ii. pp. 397 ff.

[345] "Cursor Mundi, the cursur of the world," ed. R. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1874-93, 7 parts, compiled ab. 1300 from the "Historia Ecclesiastica" of Peter Comestor, the "Fete de la Conception" of Wace, the "Chateau d'Amour" of Grosseteste, &c. (Haenisch "Inquiry into the sources of the Cursor Mundi," ibid. part vii.). The work has been wrongly attributed to John of Lindbergh. See Morris's preface, p. xviii. Cf. Napier, "History of the Holy Rood Tree," E.E.T.S., 1894 (English, Latin, and French prose texts of the Cross legend).

[346]

For lewde men y undyrtoke, On Englyssh tunge to make thys boke: For many ben of swyche manere That talys and rymys wyl blethly here Yn gamys and festys and at the ale.

"Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, written A.D. 1303 with ... Le Manuel des Pechiez by William of Wadington," ed. Furnivall, London, Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, Prologue, p. 2.

[347] There exist Latin and English texts of his works, the latter being generally considered as translations made by himself. His principal composition is his poem: "The Pricke of Conscience," ed. Morris, Philological Society, 1863, 8vo. He wrote also a prose translation of "The Psalter," with a commentary, ed. Bramley, Oxford, 1884, 8vo, and also "English Prose Treatises," ed. G. S., 1866, 8vo. Most of his works in Latin have been collected under the title: "D. Richardi Pampolitani Anglo-Saxonis eremitae ... Psalterium Davidicum atque alia ... Monumenta," Cologne, 1536, fol.

[348] "When I had takene my syngulere purpos and lefte the seculere habyte, and I be-ganne mare to serve God than mane, it fell one a nyghte als I lay in my reste, in the begynnynge of my conversyone, thare appered to me a full faire yonge womane, the whilke I had sene be-fore, and the whilke luffed me noght lyttil in gude lufe." "English Prose Treatises," p. 5.

[349] "Officium de Sancto Ricardo eremita." The office contains hymns in the honour of the saint: "Rejoice, mother country of the English!..."

Letetur felix Anglorum patria ... Pange lingua graciosi Ricardi preconium, Pii, puri, preciosi, fugientis vicium.

"English Prose Treatises," pp. xv and xvi.

[350] "English Prose Treatises," pp. 1, 4, 5. Cf. Rolle's Latin text, "Nominis Iesu encomion": "O bonum nomen, o dulce nomen," &c., in "Richardi Pampolitani, ... Monumenta," Cologne, 1536, fol. cxliii. At the same page, the story of the young woman.

[351] "Layamon's Brut or Chronicle of Britain, a poetical Semi-Saxon paraphrase of the Brut of Wace," ed. by Sir Fred. Madden, London, Society of Antiquaries, 1847, 3 vols. 8vo.—Cf. Ward, "Catalogue of Romances," vol. i. 1883: "Many important additions are made to Wace, but they seem to be mostly derived from Welsh traditions," p. 269, Wace's "Geste des Bretons," or "Roman de Brut," written in 1155, was ed. by Leroux de Lincy, Rouen, 1836, 2 vols. 8vo. Cf. P. Meyer, "De quelques Chroniques Anglo-Normandes qui ont porte le nom de Brut," Bulletin de la Societe des Anciens Textes francais, 1878. Layamon, son of Leovenath, lived at Ernley, now Lower Arley, on the Severn; he uses sometimes alliteration and sometimes rhyme in his verse. The MS. Cott. Otho C. xiii contains a "somewhat modernised" version of Layamon's "Brut," late thirteenth or early fourteenth century (Ward, ibid.). On Layamon and his work, see "Anglia," i. p. 197, and ii. p. 153.

[352] Madden, ut supra, vol. i. p. 1.

[353] Madden, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 476. The original text (printed in short lines by Madden and here in long ones) runs thus:

Tha loh Arthur the althele king, And thus yeddien agon mid gommenfulle worden: Lien nu there Colgrim thu were iclumben haghe Thu clumbe a thissen hulle wunder ane haeghe, Swulc thu woldest to haevene nu thu scalt to haelle; Ther thu miht kenne muche of thine cunne, And gret thu ther Hengest the cnihten wes fayerest, Ebissa and Ossa Octa and of thine cunne ma, And bide heom ther wunie wintres and sumeres, And we scullen on londe libben in blisse.

[354] "Roman de Brut," vol. ii. p. 57.

[355] On Robert, see above, pp. 117, 122. On the sources of his chronicle, see Ellmer, "Anglia," vol. x. pp. 1 ff and 291 ff.

[356] "Lay of Havelok," ed. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1868, end of thirteenth century, p. 1.

[357] On wandering minstrels and jongleurs, see "English Wayfaring Life," ii., chap. i., and below, p. 345, above, p. 162.

[358] "Romance of William of Palerne, translated from the French at the command of Sir Humphrey de Bohun, ab. 1350," ed. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1867, 8vo. l. 5533.

[359] "Cursor Mundi," ed. Morris, part v. p. 1651. A large number of English mediaeval romances will be found among the publications of the Early English Text Society (including among others: Ferumbras, Otuel, Huon of Burdeux, Charles the Grete, Four Sons of Aymon, Sir Bevis of Hamton, King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Guy of Warwick, William of Palerne, Generides, Morte Arthure, Lonelich's History of the Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathie, Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, &c.), the Camden and the Percy Societies, the Roxburghe and the Bannatyne Clubs. Some also have been published by Koelbing in his "Altenglische Bibliothek," Heilbronn; by H. W. Weber: "Metrical Romances of the XIIIth, XIVth and XVth centuries," Edinburgh, 1810, 3 vols. 8vo. &c. See also H. L. D. Ward, "Catalogue of MS. Romances in the British Museum," 1883 ff.

[360] "King Horn, with Fragments of Floriz and Blauncheflur, and of the Assumption of Our Lady," ed. Rawson Lumby, E.E.T.S., 1886, 8vo. "Horn" is printed from a Cambridge MS. of the thirteenth century. A French metrical version of this story, written by "Thomas" about 1170, was edited by R. Brede and E. Stengel: "Das Anglonormannische Lied vom wackern Ritter Horn," Marbourg, 1883, 8vo: "Hic est de Horn bono milite." Concerning "Horn," see Ward, "Catalogue of Romances," i. p. 447; "Anglia," iv. p. 342; "Romania," xv. p. 575 (an article by W. Soderhjelm, showing that the Thomas of "Tristan" and the Thomas of "Horn" are not the same man).

[361] Another sign of a Scandinavian origin consists in the flame that comes out of the mouth of Havelok at night, and betrays his royal origin. The events take place at Lincoln, Grimsby, and in Denmark; the seal of Grimsby engraved in the thirteenth century represents, besides "Habloc" and "Goldeburgh," "Gryem," the founder of the town, and supposed father of the hero. Gaimar, the chronicler, wrote in French verse the story of Havelok, and we have it: "Le Lai d'Haveloc le Danois," in Hardy and Martin "Lestorie des Engles," Rolls, 1888, vol. i. p. 290. The English text, "Havelok the Dane," ed. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1868, was probably written between 1296 and 1300 (see the letter of J. W. Hales to the Athenaeum, Feb. 23, 1889), cf. Ward's "Catalogue," i. p. 423.

[362] "Guy of Warwick," ed. Zupitza, E.E.T.S., 1875-91 (cf. Ward's "Catalogue of Romances," i. p. 471). "All the Middle English versions of the Romances of Guy of Warwick are translations from the French.... The French romance was done into English several times. We possess the whole or considerable fragments of, at least, four different Middle English versions" (Zupitza's Preface).

[363] Part of the adventures of Fulke belongs to history; his rebellion actually took place in 1201. His story was told in a French poem, written before 1314 and turned into prose before 1320 (the text, though in French, is remarkable for its strong English bias); an English poem on the same subject is lost. (Ward, "Catalogue of Romances," i. pp. 501 ff.) The version in French prose has been edited by J. Stephenson, with his Ralph de Coggeshall, Rolls, 1875, p. 277, and by Moland and d'Hericault in their "Nouvelles en prose du quatorzieme Siecle," Paris, 1858. See also the life of the outlaw Hereward, in Latin, twelfth century: "De Gestis Herewardi Saxonis," in the "Chroniques Anglo-Normandes," of F. Michel, Rouen, 1836-40, vol. ii.

[364] It is possible that Robin Hood existed, in which case it seems probable he lived under Edward II. "The stories that are told about him, however, had almost all been previously told, connected with the names of other outlaws such as Hereward and Fulke Fitz-Warin." Ward, "Catalogue of Romances," i. pp. 517 ff. He was the hero of many songs, from the fourteenth century; most of those we have belong, however, to the sixteenth.

[365] On the transformations of Guy of Warwick and representations of him in chap books, see "English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare," pp 64, 350.

[366] "Cursor Mundi," i. p. 21. Cf. Bartholomew the Englishman, in his "De Proprietatibus Rerum," book xv., chap. xiv., thus translated by Trevisa: "Englonde is fulle of myrthe and of game and men oft tymes able to myrth and game, free men of harte and with tongue, but the honde is more better and more free than the tongue."—"Cest acteur monstre bien en ce chapitre qu'il fut Anglois," observes with some spite Corbichon, the French translator of Bartholomew, writing, it is true, during the Hundred Years' War.

[367] English text: "Dame Siriz" in Th. Wright, "Anecdota Literaria," London, 1844, 8vo, p. 1; and in Goldbeck and Matzner, "Altenglische Sprachproben," Berlin, 1867, p. 103. French text in the "Castoiement d'un pere a son fils," Barbazan and Meon, "Fabliaux," vol. ii. The English text belongs to the end of the thirteenth century, and the story is localised in England; mention is made of "Botolfston," otherwise, St. Botolph or Boston. See above, p. 154; on a dramatisation of the story, see below, p. 447.

[368] Story of a drinking horn from which husbands with faithless wives cannot drink without spilling the contents. Arthur invites his knights to try the experiment, and is not a little surprised to find that it turns against himself. French text: "Le lai du Cor, restitution critique," by F. Wulff, Lund, 1888, 8vo, written by Robert Biquet in the twelfth century; only one MS. (copied in England) has been preserved. English text: "The Cokwolds Daunce," from a MS. of the fifteenth century, in Hazlitt's "Remains of the early popular poetry of England," London, 1864, 4 vols, 8vo, vol. i. p. 35. Cf. Le "Mantel Mautaille," in Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil General," vol. iii. and "La Coupe Enchantee," by La Fontaine.

[369] French text: "De pleine Bourse de Sens," by Jean le Galois, in Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil General," vol. iii. p. 88. English text: "How a Merchande dyd his wyfe betray," in Hazlitt's "Remains" (ut supra), vol. i. p. 196. Of the same sort are "Sir Cleges" (Weber, "Metrical Romances," 1810, vol. i.), the "Tale of the Basyn" (in Hartshorne, "Ancient Metrical Tales," London, 1829, p. 202), a fabliau, probably derived from a French original, etc.

[370] English text: "The Land of Cokaygne" (end of the fourteenth century, seems to have been originally composed in the thirteenth), in Goldbeck and Matzner, "Altengische Sprachproben," Berlin, 1867, part i., p. 147; also in Furnivall, "Early English Poems," Berlin, 1862, p. 156. French text in Barbazan and Meon, "Fabliaux," vol. iii. p. 175: "C'est li Fabliaus de Coquaigne."

[371] "Aucassin and Nicolete," Andrew Lang's translation, London, 1887, p. 12. The French original in verse and prose, a cante-fable, belongs to the twelfth century. Text in Moland and d'Hericault, "Nouvelles francoises en prose, du treizieme siecle" (the editors wrongly referred "Aucassin" to that century), Paris, 1856, 16mo.

[372] Knights are represented in many MSS. of English make, fighting against butterflies or snails, and undergoing the most ridiculous experiences; for example, in MS. 10 E iv. and 2 B vii. in the British Museum, early fourteenth century; the caricaturists derive their ideas from French tales written in derision of knighthood. Poems with the same object were composed in English; one of a later date has been preserved: "The Turnament of Totenham" (Hazlitt's "Remains," iii. p. 82); the champions of the tourney are English artisans:

Ther hoppyd Hawkyn, Ther dawnsid Dawkyn, Ther trumpyd Tymkyn, And all were true drynkers.

[373]

He putteth in hys pawtener A kerchyf and a comb, A shewer and a coyf To bynd with his loks, And ratyl on the rowbyble And in non other boks Ne mo; Mawgrey have the bysshop That lat hyt so goo.

"A Poem on the times of Edward II.," ed. Hardwick, Percy Society, 1849, p. 8.

[374] "The Vox and Wolf," time of Edward I., in Matzner, "Altenglische Sprachproben," Berlin, 1867, part i. p. 130; also in Th. Wright, "Latin Stories," 1842, p. xvi. This story of the adventure in the well forms Branch IV. of the French text. Martin's "Roman de Renart," Strasbourg, 1882, vol. i. p. 146.

[375] Tartufe, i. 6.

[376] "Amis and Amiloun," ed. Koelbing, Heilbronn, 1884, 8vo, French and English texts, in verse. French text in prose, in Moland and d'Hericault, "Nouvelles ... du XIIIe. Siecle," 1856, 16mo.—French text of "Floire" in Edelstand du Meril, "Poemes du XIIIe. Siecle," Paris, 1856. English text: "Floris and Blauncheflur, mittelenglisches Gedicht aus dem 13 Jahrhundert," ed. Hausknecht, Berlin, 1885, 8vo; see also Lumby, "Horn ... with fragments of Floriz," E.E.T.S., 1886. The popularity of this tale is shown by the fact that four or five different versions of it in English have come down to us.—Lays by Marie de France were also translated into English: "Le Lay le Freine," in verse, of the beginning of the fourteenth century. English text in "Anglia," vol. iii. p. 415; "Sir Launfal," by Thomas Chestre, fifteenth century, in "Ritson's Metrical Romances," 1802.

[377] Examples of "estrifs," debates or "disputoisons": "The Thrush and the Nightingale," on the merits of women, time of Edward I. (with a title in French: "Si comence le cuntent par entre le mauvis et la russinole"); "The Debate of the Carpenter's Tools" (both in Hazlitt's "Remains," vol. i. p. 50, and i. p. 79); "The Debate of the Body and the Soul" (Matzner's "Altenglische Sprachproben," part i. p. 90), same subject in French verse, thirteenth century, "Monumenta Franciscana," vol. i. p. 587; "The Owl and the Nightingale" (ed. Stevenson, Roxburghe Club, 1838, 4to). This last, one of the most characteristic of all, belongs to the thirteenth century, and consists in a debate between the two birds concerning their respective merits; they are very learned, and quote Alfred's proverbs, but they are not very well bred, and come almost to insults and blows.

[378] Litanies of love:

Love is wele, love is wo, love is geddede, Love is lif, love is deth, &c.

Th. Wright, "Anecdota Literaria," London, 1844, 8vo, p. 96, time of Edward I., imitated from the "Chastoiement des Dames," in Barbazan and Meon, vol. ii.

[379] Th. Wright, "Specimens of Lyric Poetry, composed in England in the reign of Edward I.," Percy Society, 1842, 8vo, p. 43.

[380] They wrote in French, Latin, and English, using sometimes the three languages in the same song, sometimes only two of them:

Scripsi haec carmina in tabulis! Mon ostel est en mi la vile de Paris: May y sugge namore, so wel me is; Yef hi deye for love of hire, duel hit ys.

Wright, "Specimens of Lyric Poetry," p. 64.

[381]

Femmes portent les oyls veyrs E regardent come faucoun.

T. Wright, "Specimens," p. 4.

[382]

Heo hath a mury mouth to mele, With lefly rede lippes lele Romaunz forte rede.

Ibid., p. 34.

[383] Ibid., p. 51.



BOOK III.

ENGLAND TO THE ENGLISH.



CHAPTER I.

THE NEW NATION.

I.

In the course of the fourteenth century, under Edward III. and Richard II., a double fusion, which had been slowly preparing during the preceding reigns, is completed and sealed for ever; the races established on English ground are fused into one, and the languages they spoke become one also. The French are no longer superposed on the natives; henceforth there are only English in the English island.

Until the fourteenth year of Edward III.'s reign, whenever a murder was committed and the authors of it remained unknown, the victim was prima facie assumed to be French, "Francigena," and the whole county was fined. But the county was allowed to prove, if it could, that the dead man was only an Englishman, and in that case there was nothing to pay. Bracton, in the thirteenth century, is very positive; an inquest was necessary, "ut sciri possit utrum interfectus Anglicus fuerit, vel Francigena."[384] The Anglicus and the Francigena therefore still subsisted, and were not equal before the law. The rule had not fallen into disuse, since a formal statute was needed to repeal it; the statute of 1340, which abolishes the "presentement d'Englescherie,"[385] thus sweeping away one of the most conspicuous marks left behind by the Conquest.

About the same time the fusion of idioms took place, and the English language was definitively constituted. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, towards 1311, the text of the king's oath was to be found in Latin among the State documents, and a note was added declaring that "if the king was illiterate," he was to swear in French[386]; it was in the latter tongue that Edward II. took his oath in 1307; the idea that it could be sworn in English did not occur. But when the century was closing, in 1399, an exactly opposite phenomenon happened. Henry of Lancaster usurped the throne and, in the Parliament assembled at Westminster, pronounced in English the solemn words by which he claimed the crown: "In the name of Fadir, Son and Holy Gost, I, Henry of Lancastre, chalenge yis Rewme of Yngland."[387]

During this interval, the union of the two languages had taken place. The work of aggregation can be followed in its various phases, and almost from year to year. In the first half of the century, the "lowe men," the "rustics," rurales homines, are still keen to learn French, satagunt omni nisu; they wish to frenchify, francigenare,[388] themselves, in order to imitate the nobles, and be more thought of. Their efforts had a remarkable result, precisely for the reason that they never succeeded in speaking pure French, and that in their ill-cleared brains the two languages were never kept distinctly apart. The nobles, cleverer men, could speak both idioms without confounding them, but so could not these rurales, who lisped the master's tongue with difficulty, mixing together the two vocabularies and the two grammars, mistaking the genders, assigning, for want of better knowledge, the neuter to all the words that did not designate beings with a sex, in other words, strange as it may seem, creating the new language. It was on the lips of "lowe men" that the fusion first began; they are the real founders of modern English; the "French of Stratford-at-Bow" had not less to do with it than the "French of Paris."

Even the nobles had not been able to completely escape the consequences of a perpetual contact with the rurales. Had these latter been utterly ignorant of French, the language of the master would have been kept purer, but they spoke the French idiom after a fashion, and their manner of speaking it had a contagious influence on that of the great. In the best families, the children being in constant communication with native servants and young peasants, spoke the idiom of France less and less correctly. From the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth, they confuse French words that bear a resemblance to each other, and then also commences for them that annoyance to which so many English children have been subjected, from generation to generation down to our time: the difficulty of knowing when to say mon and ma—"kaunt dewunt dire moun et ma"—that is how to distinguish the genders. They have to be taught by manuals, and the popularity of one written by Walter de Biblesworth,[389] in the fourteenth century, shows how greatly such treatises were needed. "Dear sister," writes Walter to the Lady Dionyse de Montchensy, "I have composed this work so that your children can know the properties of the things they see, and also when to say mon and ma, son and sa, le and la, moi and je." And he goes on showing at the same time the maze and the way out of it: "You have la levre and le lievre; and la livre and le livre. The levre closes the teeth in; le lievre the woods inhabits; la livre is used in trade; le livre is used at church."[390]

Inextricable difficulties! And all the harder to unravel that Anglo-Saxon too had genders, equally arbitrary, which did not agree with the French ones. It is easy to conceive that among the various compromises effected between the two idioms, from which English was finally to emerge, the principal should be the suppression of this cumbersome distinction of genders.

What happened in the manor happened also in the courts of justice. There French was likewise spoken, it being the rule, and the trials were apparently not lacking in liveliness, witness this judge whom we see paraphrasing the usual formula: "Allez a Dieu," or "Adieu," and wishing the defendant, none other than the bishop of Chester, to "go to the great devil"—"Allez au grant deable."[391]—("'What,' said Ponocrates, 'brother John, do you swear?' 'It is only,' said the monk, 'to adorn my speech. These are colours of Ciceronian rhetoric.'")—But from most of the speeches registered in French in the "Year-books," it is easily gathered that advocates, serjeants as they were called, did not express themselves without difficulty, and that they delivered in French what they had thought in English.

Their trouble goes on increasing. In 1300 a regulation in force at Oxford allowed people who had to speak in a suit to express themselves in "any language generally understood."[392] In the second half of the century, the difficulties have reached such a pitch that a reform becomes indispensable; counsel and clients no longer understand each other. In 1362, a statute ordains that henceforward all pleas shall be conducted in English, and they shall be enrolled in Latin; and that in the English law courts "the French language, which is too unknown in the said realm,"[393] shall be discontinued.

This ignorance is now notorious. Froissart remarks on it; the English, he says, do not observe treaties faithfully, "and to this they are inclined by their not understanding very well all the terms of the language of France; and one does not know how to force a thing into their head unless it be all to their advantage."[394] Trevisa, about the same time, translating into English the chronicle of Ralph Higden, reaches the passage where it is said that all the country people endeavour to learn French, and inserts a note to rectify the statement. This manner, he writes, is since the great pestilence (1349) "sumdel i-chaunged," and to-day, in the year 1385, "in alle the gramere scoles of Engelond, children leveth Frensche and construeth and lerneth an Englische." This allows them to make rapid progress; but now they "conneth na more Frensche than can hir (their) lift heele, and that is harme for hem, and (if) they schulle passe the see and travaille in straunge landes and in many other places. Also gentil men haveth now moche i-left for to teche here children Frensche."[395]

The English themselves laugh at their French; they are conscious of speaking, like Chaucer's Prioress, the French of Stratford-at-Bow, or, like Avarice in the "Visions" of Langland, that "of the ferthest end of Norfolke."[396]

There will shortly be found in the kingdom personages of importance, exceptions it is true, with whom it will be impossible to negotiate in French. This is the case with the ambassadors sent by Henry IV., that same Henry of Lancaster who had claimed the crown by an English speech, to Flanders and France in 1404. They beseech the "Paternitates ac Magnificentias" of the Grand Council of France to answer them in Latin, French being "like Hebrew" to them; but the Magnificents of the Grand Council, conforming to a tradition which has remained unbroken down to our day, refuse to employ for the negotiation any language but their own.[397] Was it not still, as in the time of Brunetto Latini, the modern tongue most prized in Europe? In England even, men were found who agreed to this, while rendering to Latin the tribute due to it; and the author of one of the numerous treatises composed in this country for the benefit of those who wished to keep up their knowledge of French said: "Sweet French is the finest and most graceful tongue, the noblest speech in the world after school Latin, and the one most esteemed and beloved by all people.... And it can be well compared to the speech of the angels of heaven for its great sweetness and beauty."[398]

In spite of these praises, the end of French, as the language "most esteemed and beloved," was near at hand in England. Poets like Gower still use it in the fourteenth century for their ballads, and prose writers like the author of the "Croniques de London"[399]; but these are exceptions. It remains the idiom of the Court and the great; the Black Prince writes in French the verses that will be graven on his tomb: these are nothing but curious cases. Better instructed than the lawyers and suitors in the courts of justice, the members of Parliament continue to use it; but English makes its appearance even among them, and in 1363 the Chancellor has opened the session by a speech in English, the first ever heard in Westminster.

The survival of French was at last nothing but an elegance; it was still learnt, but only as Madame de Sevigne studied Italian, "pour entretenir noblesse." Among the upper class the knowledge of French was a traditional accomplishment, and it has continued to be one to our day. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the laws were still, according to habit, written in French; but complaints on this score were made to Henry VIII., and his subjects pointed out to him that this token of the ancient subjection of England to the Normans of France should be removed. This mark has disappeared, not however without leaving some trace behind, as laws continue to be assented to by the sovereign in French: "La Reine le veut." They are vetoed in the same manner: "La Reine s'avisera"; though this last manner is less frequently resorted to than in the time of the Plantagenets.

French disappears. It does not disappear so much because it is forgotten as because it is gradually absorbed. It disappears, and so does the Anglo-Saxon; a new language is forming, an offspring of the two others, but distinct from them, with a new grammar, versification, and vocabulary. It less resembles the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred's time than the Italian of Dante resembles Latin.

The vocabulary is deeply modified. It numbered before the Conquest a few words of Latin origin, but not many; they were words recalling the great works of the Romans, such as street and chester, from strata and castrum, or else words borrowed from the language of the clerks, and concerning mainly religion, such as mynster, tempel, bisceop, derived from monasterium, templum, episcopus, &c. The Conquest was productive of a great change, but not all at once; the languages, as has been seen, remained at first distinctly separate; then in the thirteenth, and especially in the fourteenth century, they permeated each other, and were blended in one. In 1205, only fifty words of Latin origin were found in the sixteen thousand long lines of Layamon's "Brut"; a hundred can be counted in the first five hundred lines of Robert of Gloucester about 1298, and a hundred and seventy in the first five hundred lines of Robert Mannyng of Brunne, in 1303.[400]

As we advance further into the fourteenth century, the change is still more rapid. Numerous families of words are naturalised in England, and little by little is constituted that language the vocabulary of which contains to-day twice as many words drawn from French or Latin as from Germanic sources. At the end of Skeat's "Etymological Dictionary,"[401] there is a table of the words of the language classified according to their derivation; the words borrowed from Germanic or Scandinavian idioms fill seven columns and a half; those taken from the French, and the Romance or classic tongues, sixteen columns.

It is true the proportion of words used in a page of ordinary English does not correspond to these figures. With some authors in truth it is simply reversed; with Shakespeare, for instance, or with Tennyson, who exhibit a marked predilection for Anglo-Saxon words. It is nevertheless to be observed: first, that the constitution of the vocabulary with its majority of Franco-Latin words is an actual fact; then that in a page of ordinary English the proportion of words having a Germanic origin is increased by the number of Anglo-Saxon articles, conjunctions, and pronouns, words that are merely the servants of the others, and are, as they should be, more numerous than their masters. A nearer approach to the numbers supplied by the lists of Skeat will be made if real words only are counted, those which are free and independent citizens of the language, and not the shadow nor the reflection of any other.

The contributive part of French in the new vocabulary corresponds to the branches of activity reserved to the new-comers. From their maternal idiom have been borrowed the words that composed the language of war, of commerce, of jurisprudence, of science, of art, of metaphysics, of pure thought, and also the language of games, of pastimes, of tourneys, and of chivalry. In some cases no compromise took place, neither the French nor the Anglo-Saxon word would give way and die, and they have both come down to us, alive and irreducible: act and deed; captive and thrall; chief and head, &c.[402] It is a trace of the Conquest, like the formula: "La Reine le veut."

Chaucer, in whose time these double survivals were naturally far more numerous than they are to-day, often uses both words at once, sure of being thus intelligible to all:

They callen love a woodnes or a folye.[403]

Versification is transformed in the same proportion; here again the two prosodies arrive at a compromise. Native verse had two ornaments: the number of accents and alliteration; French verse in the fourteenth century had also two ornaments, the number of syllables and rhyme. The French gave up their strict number of syllables, and consented to note the number of accents; the natives discarded alliteration and accepted rhyme in its stead. Thus was English verse created, its cadence being Germanic and its rhyme French, and such was the prosody of Chaucer, who wrote his "Canterbury Tales" in rhymed English verse, with five accents, but with syllables varying in number from nine to eleven.

The fusion of the two versifications was as gradual as that of the two vocabularies had been. Layamon in the thirteenth century mingled both prosodies in his "Brut," sometimes using alliteration, sometimes rhyme, and occasionally both at once. The fourteenth century is the last in which alliterative verse really flourished, though it survived even beyond the Renaissance. In the sixteenth century a new form was tried; rhyme was suppressed mainly in imitation of the Italians and the ancients, and blank verse was created, which Shakespeare and Milton used in their masterpieces; but alliteration never found place again in the normal prosody of England.

Grammar was affected in the same way. In the Anglo-Saxon grammar, nouns and adjectives had declensions as in German; and not very simple ones. "Not only had our old adjectives a declension in three genders, but more than this, it had a double set of trigeneric inflexions, Definite and Indefinite, Strong and Weak, just like that which makes the beginner's despair in German."[404] Verbs were conjugated without auxiliaries; and as there was no particular inflection to indicate the future, the present was used instead, a very indifferent substitute, which did not contribute much to the clearness of the phrase. Degrees of comparison in the adjectives were marked, not by adverbs, as in French, but by differences in the terminations. In short, the relations of words to each other, as well as the particular part they had to play in the phrase, were not indicated by other special words, prepositions, adverbs or auxiliaries, those useful menials, but by variations in the endings of the terms themselves, that is, by inflections. The necessity for a compromise with the French, which had lost its primitive declensions and inflections, hastened an already begun transformation and resulted in the new language's possessing in the fourteenth century a grammar remarkably simple, brief and clear. Auxiliaries were introduced, and they allowed every shade of action, action that has been, or is, or will be, or would be, to be clearly defined. The gender of nouns used to present all the singularities which are one of the troubles in German or French; mona, moon, was masculine as in German; sunne, sun, was feminine; wif, wife, was not feminine but neuter; as was also maeden, maiden. "A German gentleman," as "Philologus," has so well observed, "writes a masculine letter of feminine love to a neuter young lady with a feminine pen and feminine ink on masculine sheets of neuter paper, and encloses it in a masculine envelope with a feminine address to his darling, though neuter, Gretchen. He has a masculine head, a feminine hand, and a neuter heart."[405] Anglo-Saxon gentlemen were in about the same predicament, before William the Conqueror came in his own way to their help and rescued them from this maze. In the transaction which took place, the Anglo-Saxon and the French both gave up the arbitrariness of their genders; nouns denoting male beings became masculine, those denoting female beings became feminine; all the others became neuter; wife and maiden resumed their sex, while nation, sun and moon were neuter. Nouns and adjectives lost their declensions; adjectives ceased to vary in their endings according to the nouns they were attached to, and yet the clearness of the phrase was not in the least obscured.

In the same way as with the prosody and vocabulary, these changes were effected by degrees. Great confusion prevailed in the thirteenth century; the authors of the "Brut" and the "Ancren Riwle" have visibly no fixed ideas on the use of inflections, or on the distinctions of the genders. Only under Edward III. and Richard II. were the main principles established upon which English grammar rests. As happened also for the vocabulary, in certain exceptional cases the French and the Saxon uses have been both preserved. The possessive case, for instance, can be expressed either by means of a proposition, in French fashion: "The works of Shakespeare," or by means of the ancient genitive: "Shakespeare's works."

Thus was formed the new language out of a combination of the two others. In our time, moved by a patriotic but rather preposterous feeling, some have tried to react against the consequences of the Conquest, and undo the work of eight centuries. They have endeavoured to exclude from their writings words of Franco-Latin origin, in order to use only those derived from the Anglo-Saxon spring. A vain undertaking: the progress of a ship cannot be stopped by putting one's shoulder to the bulkheads; a singular misapprehension of history besides. The English people is the offspring of two nations; it has a father and a mother, whose union has been fruitful if stormy; and the parent disowned by some to-day, under cover of filial tenderness, is perhaps not the one who devoted the least care in forming and instructing the common posterity of both.

II.

The race and the language are transformed; the nation also, considered as a political body, undergoes change. Until the fourteenth century, the centre of thought, of desire, and of ambition was, according to the vocation of each, Rome, Paris, or that movable, ever-shifting centre, the Court of the king. Light, strength, and advancement in the world all proceeded from these various centres. In the fourteenth century, what took place for the race and language takes place also for the nation. It coalesces and condenses; it becomes conscious of its own limits; it discerns and maintains them. The action of Rome is circumscribed; appeals to the pontifical Court are prohibited,[406] and, though they still continue to be made, the oft-expressed wish of the nation is that the king should be judge, not the pope; it is the beginning of the religious supremacy of the English sovereigns. Oxford has grown; it is no longer indispensable to go to Paris in order to learn. Limits are established: the wars with France are royal and not national ones. Edward III., having assumed the title of king of France, his subjects compel him to declare that their allegiance is only owed to him as king of England, and not as king of France.[407] No longer is the nation Anglo-French, Norman, Angevin, or Gascon; it is English; the nebula condenses into a star.

The first consequences of the Conquest had been to bind England to the civilisations of the south. The experiment had proved a successful one, the results obtained were definitive; there was no need to go further, the ties could now without harm slacken or break. Owing to that evolutionary movement perpetually evinced in human affairs, this first experiment having been perfected after a lapse of three hundred years, a counter-experiment now begins. A new centre, unknown till then, gradually draws to itself every one's attention; it will soon attract the eyes of the English in preference to Rome, Paris, or even the king's Court. This new centre is Westminster. There, an institution derived from French and Saxonic sources, but destined to be abortive in France, is developed to an extent unparalleled in any other country. Parliament, which was, at the end of the thirteenth century, in an embryonic state, is found at the end of the fourteenth completely constituted, endowed with all its actual elements, with power, prerogatives, and an influence in the State that it has rarely surpassed at any time.

Not in vain have the Normans, Angevins, and Gascons given to the men of the land the example of their clever and shrewd practice. Not in vain have they blended the two races into one: their peculiar characteristics have been infused into their new compatriots: so much so that from the first day Parliament begins to feel conscious of its strength, it displays bias most astonishing to behold: it thinks and acts and behaves as an assembly of Normans. The once violent and vacillating Anglo-Saxons, easily roused to enthusiasm and brought down to despair, now calculate, consider, deliberate, do nothing in haste, act with diplomatic subtlety, bargain. All compromises between the Court and Parliament, in the fourteenth century, are a series of bargains; Parliament pays on condition that the king reforms; nothing for nothing; and the fulfilling of the bargain is minutely watched. It comes to this at last, that Parliament proves more Norman than the Court; it manoeuvres with more skill, and remains master of the situation; "a Normand, Normand et demi." The Plantagenets behold with astonishment the rise of a power they are now unable to control; their offspring is hardy, and strong, and beats its nurse.

After the attempts of Simon de Montfort, Edward I. had convened, in 1295, the first real Parliament. He had reasserted the fundamental principle of all liberties, by appropriating to himself the old maxim from Justinian's code, according to which "what touches the interests of all must be approved by all."[408] He forms the habit of appealing to the people; he wants them to know the truth, and decide according to truth which is in the right, whether the king or his turbulent barons[409]; he behaves on occasion as if he felt that over him was the nation. And this strange sight is seen: the descendant of the Norman autocrats modestly explains his plans for war in Flanders and in France, excuses himself for the aid he is obliged to ask of his subjects, and even condescends to solicit the spiritual benefit of their prayers: "He the king, on this and on the state of himself and of his realm, and how the business of his realm has come to nothing, makes it known and wants that all know the truth, which is as follows.... He can neither defend himself nor his realm without the help of his good people. And it grieves him sorely to have them, on this account, so heavily charged.... And he prays them to take as an excuse for what he has done, that that he did not do in order to buy lands and tenements, or castles and towns, but to defend himself, and them, and the whole kingdom.... And as he has great faith that the good prayers of his good people will help him very much in bringing this business to a good end, he begs that they will intently pray for him and those that with him go."[410]

At first, Parliament is astonished: such excess of honour alarms it; then it understands the chance that offers, and guesses that in the proffered bargain it may very well be the winner. This once understood, progress is rapid, and from year to year can be observed the growth of its definitive privileges. The Commons have their Speaker, "M. Thomas de Hungerford, knight, who had the words for the Commons of England"[411]; they want deputies to be elected by "due election," and they protest against all interference of the Government; against official candidatures, and against the election of royal functionaries. On difficult questions, the members request to be allowed to return to their counties and consult with their constituents before voting.[412] In spite of all the aristocratic ideas with which they are still imbued, many of those audacious members who clamour for reforms and oppose the king are very inconsiderable people, and such men are seen taking their seats at Westminster as "Walterus l'espicer," "Paganus le tailour," "Radulphus le teynturer," "Ricardus orfevre."[413]

Great is the power of this mixed gathering. No new taxes can be levied without its consent; every individual, every personage, every authority having a petition to present, or a complaint to make, sends it to the assembly of Westminster. The king consults it on peace or war: "So," says the Chamberlain to the Commons in 1354, "you are willing to assent to a permanent treaty of peace, if one can be obtained? And the said Commons answered entirely and unanimously: Yes, yes! (Oil! Oil!)"[414]

Nothing is too great or too small for Parliament to attend to; the sovereign appeals to it, and the clergy too, and beggars also. In 1330, the poor, the "poverail" of Greenwich, complain that alms are no longer bestowed on them as formerly, to the great detriment, say they, of the souls of the benefactors of the place "who are in Purgatory."[415] Convents claim privileges that time has effaced; servants ask for their wages; the barber of Edward II. solicits the maintenance of favours granted by a prince he had bled and shaved for twenty-six years.[416]

And before the same gathering of men, far different quarrels are brought forth. The king's ministers, Latymer and Neville, are impeached; his mistress Alice Perrers hears sentence[417]; his household, personal attendants and expenses are reformed; and from then can be foreseen a time when, owing to the tread of centuries, the king will reign but no longer govern. Such is almost the case even in the fourteenth century. Parliament deposes Richard II., who fancied himself king by right divine, and claimed, long before the Stuarts, to hold his crown, "del doun de Dieu," as a "gift of God."[418] In the list of grievances drawn up by the assembly to justify the deposition, figures the assertion attributed to the king "that the laws proceeded from his lips or from his heart, and that he alone could make or alter the laws of his kingdom."[419] In 1399 such language was already held to be criminal in England. In 1527 Claude Gaillard, prime President of the Parliament of Paris, says in his remonstrance to Francis I., king of France: "We do not wish, Sire, to doubt or question your power; it would be a kind of sacrilege, and we well know you are above all law, and that statutes and ordinances cannot touch you.... "[420] The ideas on political "sacrilege" differed widely in the two countries.

From the end of the fourteenth century, an Englishman could already say as he does to-day: My business is not the business of the State, but the business of the State is my business. The whole of the English constitution, from the vote on the taxes to the habeas corpus, is comprised in this formula. In France the nation, practical, lucid, and logical in so many things, but easily amused, and too fond of chansons, neglected the opportunities that offered; the elect failed to attend the sittings; the bargains struck were not kept to. The Westminster Parliament voted subsidies on condition that reforms would be instituted; the people paid and the king reformed. In France, on the contrary, during the Middle Ages, the people tried not to pay, and the king tried not to reform. Thus the levying of the subsidy voted by the States-General of 1356-7, was the cause of bloody riots in France; the people, unenlightened as to their own interests, did their best to destroy their defenders: the agents of the States-General were massacred at Rouen and Arras; King John "the Good" published a decree forbidding the orders of the States to be fulfilled, and acquired instant popularity by this the most tyrannic measure of all his reign.

These differences between the two political bodies had important consequences with regard to the development of thought in the two countries; they also excited the wonder and sometimes the admiration of the French. "The king of England must obey his subjects," says Froissart, "and do all they want him to."[421] "To my mind," writes Commines, "of all the communities I know in the world, the one where public business is best attended to, where the people are least exposed to violence, where there are no buildings ruined and pulled down on account of wars, that one is England."[422] "The English are the masters of their king," writes Ambassador Courtin in 1665, in almost the same words as Froissart, "their king can do nothing, unless what he wants is what they will."[423]

III.

Now are the vanquished and the victors of Hastings blended into one nation, and they are endowed with a Parliament as a safeguard for their liberties. "This is," Montesquieu said later, "the nation in the world that has best known how to avail itself at the same time of those three great things: religion, trade, and liberty."[424] Four hundred years before Montesquieu it already availed itself of these three great things; under Edward and Richard Plantagenets, England was what it has ever been since, a "merchant island."[425]

Its mines are worked, even those of "sea-coal," as it was then called, "carboun de meer."[426] It has a numerous mercantile navy which carries to the Baltic, to Iceland, to Flanders, to Guyenne, and to Spain, wool, skins, cloth, wheat, butter and cheese, "buyre et furmage." Each year the galleys of Venice come laden with cotton, silks from Damascus, sugar, spices, perfumes, ivory, and glass. The great commercial houses, and the merchant corporations are powers in the State; Edward III. grants to the London gilds the right of electing members to Parliament, and they preserved this right until the Reform Bill of 1832. The wealthy merchants lent money to the king; they were called to his councils; they behaved as great citizens. Anthony Blache lends Edward III. 11,720 pounds; the Blankets of Bristol gather enormous wealth; John Blanket dies in 1405, bequeathing a third of his fortune to his wife, a third to his children, and a third to the poor; John Philpot, a grocer of London, embarks on his ships and fights for the kingdom; Richard Whittington, he of the legendary cat, is famed in history for his wealth and liberality, and was mayor of London in 1398, 1406, and 1419. These merchants are ennobled, and from their stock spring earls and dukes; the De la Poles, wool-merchants of Hull, mortgage their property for the king. William de la Pole rescues Edward III., detained in Flanders by want of money, and is made a knight-banneret; his son Michael is created earl of Suffolk; one of his grandsons is killed at Agincourt; another besieges Orleans, which is delivered by Joan of Arc; he becomes duke of Suffolk, is impeached in 1450 for high treason and beheaded; no honour is lacking to the house.

From the time of the Edwards, the Commons are very touchy upon the subject of the maritime power and glory of their country; they already consider the ocean as their appointed realm. Do they observe, or fancy they observe, any diminution in the strength of England? They complain to the king in remonstrances more than once heard again, word for word, within the halls of Westminster: "Twenty years ago, and always before, the shipping of the Realm was in all the ports and good towns upon the sea or rivers, so noble and plenteous that all the countries held and called our said sovereign, the King of the Sea."[427] At this time, 1372, the country is, without possibility of doubt, the England of the English.

From that period the English are found either singly or in small bands on all the seas and on all the highways.[428] Their nature has been modified; the island no longer suffices them as it sufficed the Anglo-Saxons. "Il ne sait rien, qui ne va hors"—he knows nothing who stirs not out—think they with Des Champs; they are keen to see what goes on elsewhere, and like practical folks to profit by it. When the opportunity is good they seize it, whatsoever its nature; encountering Saracens they slay them: so much towards Paradise; moving about in Italy they are not long in discovering the advantages offered by a condottiere's existence. They adopt and even perfect it, and after their death are magnificently buried in the cathedral of Florence, and Paolo Uccello paints their portrait on the wall.[429] On every occasion they behave like Normans; in the halls of Westminster, in their City counting houses, on the highroads of Italy and on the ocean they everywhere resemble the rulers whose spirit has passed into them, and prove themselves to be at once adventurous and practical. "They are good walkers and good horsemen," said Ralph Higden of them in the fourteenth century, adding: "They are curious, and like to tell the wonders they have seen and observed." How many books of travel we owe to this propensity! "They roam over all lands," he continues, "and succeed still better in other countries than in their own.... They spread over the earth; every land they inhabit becomes as their own country."[430] They are themselves, and no longer seek to be any one else; they cease by degrees to francigenare. This combination of boldness and obstinacy that is theirs, is the blend of qualities by which distant settlements can be established and kept; to these qualities must be traced the founding of the English colonial empire, and the power which allowed the Plantagenet kings to aspire, as early as the fourteenth century, to be the "Rois de la Mier."

Trade brings luxury, comfort, and the love of art in its train. The same happened in London as in Venice, Florence, and Bruges; these merchants and nobles were fond of beautiful things. It is an era of prosperity for imagers, miniaturists, painters, and sculptors.[431] The wealthy order to be chiselled for themselves ivory Virgins whose tender, half-mundane smile, is not less charming for the doubt it leaves whether it is of earth or of heaven; devotional tablets in painted ivory, in gold, or translucid enamels; golden goblets with figures, silver cups "enamelled with children's games," salt-cellars in the shape of lions or dogs, "golden images of St. John the Baptist, in the wilderness,"[432] all those precious articles with which our museums are filled. Edward II. sends to the Pope in 1317, among other gifts, a golden ewer and basin, studded with translucid enamels, supplied by Roger de Frowyk, a London goldsmith, for the price of one hundred and forty-seven pounds, Humphrey de Bohun, who died in 1361, said his prayers to beads of gold; Edward III. played chess on a board of jasper and crystal, silver mounted. The miniaturists represent Paradise on the margin of missals, or set forth in colours some graceful legend or fantastic tale, with knights, flowers, and butterflies.[433] In spite of foreign wars, local insurrections, the plague that returns periodically, 1349, 1362, 1369, 1375, the great uprising of the peasantry, 1381, the troubles and massacres which followed, art prospers in the fourteenth century, and what chiefly characterises it is that it is all a-smile.

That such things were coeval is not so astonishing as it may seem. Life was still at that time so fragile and so often threatened, that the notion of its being suddenly cut off was a familiar one even from childhood. Wars, plagues, and massacres never took one unawares; they were in the due course of things, and were expected; the possibility of such misfortunes saddened less in prospective than it does now that they have become less frequent. People were then always ready to fight, to kill, and to be killed. Games resembled battles, and battles games: the favourite exercises were tournaments; life was risked for nothing, as an amusement. Innumerable decrees[434] forbade those pastimes on account of the deaths they caused, and the troubles they occasioned; but the amusement was the best available, and the decrees were left unobserved. Edward starts on his war to France, and his knights, following his example, take their falconers and their hounds along with them, as though they were going to a hunt.[435] Never was felt to a greater degree what Rabelais terms "the scorn of fortuitous things." Times have changed, and until we go back to a similar state of affairs, which is not impossible, we come into the world with ideas of peace and order, and of a life likely to be a long one. We are indignant if it is threatened, very sad when the end draws near; with more lasting happinesses we smile less often. Froissart paints in radiant colours, and the subject of his pictures is the France of the Hundred Years' War. The "merry England" of the "Cursor Mundi" and after is the England of the great plagues, and of the rising of the peasants, which had two kings assassinated out of four. It is also the England whose Madonnas smile.

In architecture the English favour the development of that kind of special Gothic of which they are the inventors, the Perpendicular, a rich and well-ordered style, terrestrial, practical, pleasant to look upon. No one did more to secure it a lasting fame than the Chancellor of Edward III. and of Richard II., William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, the restorer of Windsor, founder of New College at Oxford, the greatest builder of the century.[436] The walls and vaulted roofs of chapels are thick inlaid with ornaments; broad windows let in different coloured lights through their stained-glass panes; golden-haired angels start from the cornices; architecture smiles too, and its smile, like that of the Madonnas, is half religious and half mundane.

Less care is taken to raise strong houses than formerly; among the numerous castles with which the land bristles may be seen, in the distant valley where the ancient town of St. David's lies screened, a bishop's palace that would have suited neither William de Longchamp nor Hugh de Puiset, a magnificent dwelling, without towers of defence, or moats, or drawbridges, an exceptional dwelling, built as though the inhabitants were already secure of the morrow.[437]

The outside is less rude, and the inside is adorned and enriched; life becomes more private than it used to be; existence less patriarchal and more refined; those who still cling to old customs complain that the rich man dines in a chamber with a chimney, and leaves the large hall which was made for men to take their meals in together.[438] The walls of these chambers with chimneys are painted or covered with hangings; tapestries represent (as do those of Edward II.) the king surrounded by his nobles,[439] or (like those of the Black Prince) the "Pas de Saladin," or "sea-sirens," with a border of "swans with ladies' heads," in other words, chimeras, "and ostrich feathers"; or, again, like those of Sir John Falstofe, in the following century, the adoration of the shepherds, a hawking scene, the siege of Falaise (taken in 1417), a woman playing the harp near a castle, "a giant piercing a boar with a spear": all of which are the more noticeable as they are nothing but literature put into colours or embroidery.[440]

The conveniences and elegancies of the table are now attended to; cooks write out their recipes in English; stewards draw up in the same language protocols concerning precedence, and the rules which a well-trained servant should observe. Such a one does not scratch his head, and avoids sneezing in the dish; he abstains from wiping the plates with his tongue, and in carving takes the meat in his left hand and the knife in his right, forks being then unknown; he gives each one his proper place, and remembers "that the Pope hath no peere." When the master dresses, he must be seated on a chair by the fire, a "kercheff" is spread over his shoulders, and he is "curteisly" combed with an ivory comb; he is rinsed "with rose-watur warme"; when he takes a bath the air is scented with herbs hanging from the ceiling. When he goes to bed the cats and dogs which happen to be in his room should be driven away, or else a little cloth provided for them.

The food is rich and combines extraordinary mixtures. Hens and rabbits are eaten chopped up with pounded almonds, raisins, sugar, ginger, herbs dipped in grease, onions and salt; if the mixture is not thick enough, rice flour is added, and the whole coloured with saffron. Cranes, herons, and peacocks are cooked with ginger. Great attention is paid to outward appearance and to colour; the dishes must be yellow or green, or adorned with leaves of gold and silver, a fashion still preserved in the East. Elaborate cakes, "subtleties" as they were then termed, are also served; they represent:

Maydon Mary that holy virgyne And Gabrielle gretynge hur with an Ave.[441]

People adorn their bodies as well as their houses; luxury in dress is carried to such an excess that Parliament finds it necessary to interfere, and forbids women of the lower classes to wear any furs except cat and rabbit.[442] Edward III. buys of master Paul de Monteflor gowns for the queen, in "stuffs from over the sea," to the enormous amount of 1,330 pounds. He himself wears a velvet waistcoat, on which he has caused golden pelicans to be embroidered by William Courtenay, a London embroiderer. He gives his mistress Alice Perrers 21,868 large pearls, and thirty ounces of smaller ones. His daughter Margaret receives from him two thousand pearls as a wedding present; he buys his sister Alienor a gilded carriage, tapestried and embroidered, with cushions and curtains of silk, for which he pays one thousand pounds.[443] At that time one might for the same sum have bought a herd of sixteen hundred oxen.

The sense of beauty, together with a reverence for and a worship of it, was spreading among the nation whose thoughts shortly before used to run in quite different lines. Attention is paid to physical beauty, such as it had never received before. Men and women wear tight garments, showing the shape of the figure. In the verses he composed for his tomb at Canterbury, the Black Prince mourns over "his beauty which has all gone." Richard II., while still alive, has graven on his tomb that he was "corpore procerus."[444] The taste of the English for finery becomes so well known, that to them is ascribed, even in France, the invention of new fashions. Recalling to his daughters, in order to teach them modesty, that "the deluge in the time of Noah happened for the pride and disguises of men, and mostly of women, who remodelled their shapes by means of gowns and attire," the Knight de la Tour Landry gives the English ladies the credit, or rather the discredit, of having invented the immeasurable head-dresses worn at that day. It is an evil sign; in that country people amuse themselves too much: "In England many there are that have been blamed, the report goes, I know not whether it is wrongly or rightly."[445]

Owing to the attention paid to physical beauty in England, sculptors now begin—a rare thing at that time—to have living models, and to copy the nude. In the abbey of Meaux, "Melsa," near Beverley, on the banks of the Humber, was seen in the fourteenth century a sight that would have been rather sought for by the banks of the Arno, under the indulgent sky of Italy. The abbot Hugh of Leven having ordered a new crucifix for the convent chapel, the artist "had always a naked man under his eyes, and he strove to give to his crucifix the beauty of form of his model."[446]

One last trait may be added to the others: not only the beauty of live beings, but that also of inanimate things is felt and cared for, the beauty of landscapes, and of trees. In 1350-1 the Commons complain of the cutting down of the large trees overshadowing the houses, those large trees, dear already to English hearts, and point out in Parliament the loss of this beauty, the great "damage, loss, and blemish" that results from it for the dwellings.[447]

In nearly every respect, thus, the Englishman of to-day is formed, and receives his chief features, under the Angevin princes Edward III. and Richard II.: practical, adventurous, a lover of freedom, a great traveller, a wealthy merchant, an excellent sailor. We have had a glimpse of what he is; let us now listen to what he says.

FOOTNOTES:

[384] "De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae," book iii. treatise ii. chap. xv. (Rolls, vol. ii. p. 385.) No fine if the defunct is English: "Pro Anglico vero et de quo constari possit quod Anglicus sit, non dabitur murdrum."

[385] "Statutes of the Realm," 14 Ed. III. chap. 4.

[386] "Si rex fuerit litteratus, talis est.... Forma juramenti si Rex non fuerit litteratus: Sire, voilez vous graunter et garder ... les leys et les custumes ... &c." "Statutes of the Realm," sub anno 1311, vol. i. p. 168.

[387] "Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. iii. p. 422; see below, p. 421.

[388] Ralph Higden, "Polychronicon" (Rolls), vol. ii. p. 158. "Haec quidem nativae linguae corruptio provenit hodie multum ex duobus quod videlicet pueri in scolis contra morem caeterarum nationum, a primo Normannorum adventu derelicto proprio vulgari, construere gallice compelluntur; item quod filii nobilium ab ipsis cunabulorum crepundiis ad gallicum idioma informantur. Quibus profecto rurales homines assimilari volentes ut per hoc spectabiliores videantur, francigenare satagunt omni nisu."

[389] "A volume of Vocabularies, from the Xth to the XVth Century," ed. Thomas Wright, London, 1857, 4to, pp. 143 ff. See also P. Meyer, "Romania," vol. xiii. p. 502.

[390]

Vus avet la levere et le levere E la livere et le livere. La levere si enclost les dens; Le levre en boys se tent dedens, La livere sert en marchaundye, Le livere sert en seynt eglise.

[391] Apostrophe of judge John de Moubray, Easter session, 44 Ed. III., "Year-books of Edward I.," ed. Horwood (Rolls), 1863 ff., vol. i. p. xxxi. Judge Hengham interrupts a counsel, saying: "Do not interpret the statute in your own way; we know it better than you, for we made it."—"Ne glosez point le statut; nous le savoms meuz de vous, qar nous le feimes." Ibid.

[392] "Grosso modo et idiomate quocunque communiter intelligibili factum proponant." "Munimenta Academica" (Rolls), p. 77.

[393] "Pur ce qe monstre est souventefoitz au Roi par prelatz, ducs, counts, barons et toute la commune, les grantz meschiefs qe sont advenuz as plusours du realme de ce qe les leyes, custumes et estatutz du dit realme ne sont pas conuz communement en mesme le realme, par cause q'ils sont pledez, monstrez et juggez en lange Franceis q'est trop desconue en dit realme, issint qe les gentz qi pledent ou sont empledez en les courtz le Roi et les courtz d'autres n'ont entendement ne conissance de ce q'est dit por eulx ne contre eulx par lour sergeantz et autres pledours...." that henceforth all plaids "soient pledetz, monstretz, defenduz, responduz, debatuz et juggez en la lange engleise; et q'ils soient entreez et enroullez en latin." 36 Ed. III., stat. i. chap. 15, "Statutes of the Realm." In spite of these arrangements, the accounts of the pleas continued to be transcribed in French into the "Year-books," of which several have been published in the collection of the Master of the Rolls. Writing about the year 1300, the author of the Mirror of Justice had still made choice of French as being the "language best understood by you and the common people."

[394] "Chroniques," ed. Luce, vol. i. p. 306.

[395] "Polychronicon" (Rolls), vol. ii. p. 159 (contains the Latin text of Higden and the English translation of Trevisa).

[396]

And I can no Frenche in feith but of the ferthest ende of Norfolke.

"Visions," ed. Skeat, text B, passus v. line 239. The MS. DD 12.23 of the University Library, Cambridge, contains "a treatise on French conjugations." It does not furnish any useful information as regards the history of French conjugations; "it can only serve to show how great was the corruption of current French in England in the fourteenth century." P. Meyer, "Romania," vol. xv. p. 262.

[397] The ambassadors are: "Thomas Swynford, miles, custos castri villae Calisii et Nicholaus de Rysshetoun, utriusque juris professor." They admit that French is the language of treatises; but Latin was used by St. Jerome. They write to the duchess of Burgundy: "Et quamvis treugae generales inter Angliam et Franciam per Dominos et Principes temporales, videlicet duces Lancastriae et Eboraci necnon Buturiae ac Burgundiae, bonae memoriae, qui perfecte non intellexerunt latinum sicut Gallicum, de consensu eorumdem expresso, in Gallico fuerunt captae et firmatae, litterae tamen missivae ultro citroque transmissae ... continue citra in Latino, tanquam idiomate communi et vulgari extiterunt formatae; quae omnia habemus parata ostendere, exemplo Beati Ieronimi...." In no wise touched by this example, the French reply in their own language, and the ambassadors, vexed, acknowledge the receipt of the letter in somewhat undiplomatic terms: "Vestras litteras scriptas in Gallico, nobis indoctis tanquam in idiomate Hebraico ... recipimus Calisii." "Royal and Historical Letters," ed. Hingeston, 1860 (Rolls), vol. i. pp. 357 and 397. A discussion of the same kind takes place, with the same result, under Louis XIV. See "A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II.," p. 140.

[398] "Doulz francois qu'est la plus bel et la plus gracious language et plus noble parler, apres latin d'escole, qui soit ou monde, et de tous gens mieulx prisee et amee que nul autre.... Il peut bien comparer au parler des angels du ciel, pour la grant doulceur et biaultee d'icel." "La maniere de Langage," composed in 1396, at Bury St. Edmund's, ed. Paul Meyer, "Revue Critique," vol. x. p. 382.

[399] Middle of the fourteenth century, ed. Aungier, Camden Society, 1884, 4to.

[400] As an example of a composition showing the parallelism of the two vocabularies in their crude state, one may take the treatise on Dreams (time of Edward II.), published by Wright and Halliwell, which begins with the characteristic words: "Her comensez a bok of Swevenyng." "Reliquiae Antiquae."

[401] London, 1882.

[402] See a list of such words in Earle, "Philology of the English Tongue," 5th edition, Oxford, 1892, 8vo, p. 84. On the disappearance of Anglo-Saxon proper names, and the substitution of Norman-French names, "William, Henry, Roger, Walter, Ralph, Richard, Gilbert, Robert," see Grant Allen, "Anglo-Saxon Britain," ch. xix., Anglo-Saxon Nomenclature.