16. Edward's Triumph. 1347.—Edward's return after the surrender of Calais was followed by an outburst of luxury. As the sea-rovers of Normandy and Calais had formerly plundered Englishmen, English landsmen now plundered Normandy and Calais. "There was no woman who had not gotten garments, furs, feather-beds, and utensils from the spoils." Edward surrounded himself with feasting and jollity. About this time he instituted the Order of the Garter, and his tournaments were thronged with gay knights and gayer ladies in gorgeous attires. The very priests caught the example, and decked themselves in unclerical garments. Even architecture lent itself to the prevailing taste for magnificence. The beautiful Decorated style which had come into use towards the end of the reign of Edward I.—and which may be seen[19] in the central tower of Lincoln Cathedral (see p. 227), in the west front of Howden Church (see p. 230), and in the nave of York Minster (see p. 238)—was, in the reign of Edward III., superseded by the Perpendicular style, in which beauty of form was abandoned for the sake of breadth, as in the choir of Gloucester and the nave of Winchester (see pp. 244, 276). Roofs become wide, as in the Hall of Penshurst (see p. 246), and consequently halls were larger and better adapted to crowded gatherings than those at Meare and Norborough (p. 247).

18. The Statute of Labourers. 1351.—This enormous destruction of life could not fail to have important results on the economic condition of the country. The process of substituting money rents for labour service, which had begun some generations before (see p. 168), had become very general at the accession of Edward III. so that the demesne land which the lord kept in his own hands was on most estates cultivated by hired labour. Now, when at least half of the labourers had disappeared, those who remained, having less competition to fear, demanded higher wages, whilst at the same time the price of the produce of the soil was the same or less than it had been before. The question affected not merely the great lords but the smaller gentry as well. The House of Commons, which was filled with the smaller gentry and the well-to-do townsmen—who were also employers of labour—was therefore as eager as the House of Lords to keep down wages. In 1351 the Statute of Labourers was passed, fixing a scale of wages at the rates which had been paid before the Black Death, and ordering punishments to be inflicted on those who demanded more. It is not necessary to suppose that the legislators had any tyrannical intentions. For ages all matters relating to agriculture had been fixed by custom; and the labourers were outrageously violating custom. Custom, however, here found itself in opposition to the forces of nature, and though the statute was often renewed, with increasing penalties, it was difficult to secure obedience to it in the teeth of the opposition of the labourers. The chief result of the statute was that it introduced an element of discord between two classes of society.

19. The Statute of Treasons. 1352.—In 1352 was passed the Statute of Treasons, by which the offences amounting to treason were defined, the chief of them being levying war against the king. As no one but a great nobleman was strong enough even to think of levying war against the king, this statute may be regarded as a concession to the wealthier landowners rather than to the people at large.

20. The Black Prince in the South of France. 1355.—In 1350 Philip VI. of France died, and was succeeded by his son John. The truce (see p. 243) was prolonged, and it was not till 1355 that war was renewed. Edward himself was recalled to England by fresh troubles in Scotland, but the Black Prince landed at Bordeaux and marched through the south of France, plundering as he went. Neither father nor son seems to have had any idea of gaining their ends except by driving the French by ill-treatment into submission. "You must know," wrote a contemporary in describing the condition of southern Languedoc, "that this was, before, one of the fat countries of the world, the people good and simple, who did not know what war was, and no war had ever been waged against them before the Prince of Wales came. The English and Gascons found the country full and gay, the rooms furnished with carpets and draperies, the caskets and chests full of beautiful jewels; but nothing was safe from these robbers." The Prince returned to Bordeaux laden with spoils.

21. The Battle of Poitiers. 1356.—In 1356 the Black Prince swept over central France in another similar plundering expedition. He was on his way back with his plunder to Bordeaux with no more than 8,000 men to guard it when he learnt as he passed near Poitiers that King John was close to him with 50,000. He drew up his little force on a rising ground amidst thick vineyards, with a hedge in front of him behind which he could shelter his archers. As at Creçy, the greater part of the English horsemen were dismounted, and John, thinking that therein lay their secret of success, ordered most of his horsemen to dismount as well, not having discovered that though spearmen on foot could present a formidable resistance to a cavalry charge, they were entirely useless in attacking a strong position held by archers. Then he sent forward 300 knights who retained their horses, bidding a strong body of dismounted horsemen to support them. The horsemen, followed by the footmen, charged at a gap in the hedge, but the hedge on either side was lined with English bowmen, and men and horses were struck down. Those who survived fled and scattered their countrymen behind. Seeing the disorder, the Black Prince ordered the few knights whom he had kept on horseback to sweep round and to fall upon the confused crowd in the flank. The archers advanced to second them, and, gallantly as the French fought, their unhorsed knights could accomplish nothing against the combined efforts of horse and foot. King John was taken prisoner and the battle was at an end.

23. Misery of France. 1356—1359.—In 1356, the year in which the Black Prince fought at Poitiers, his father ravaged Scotland. Edward, however, gained nothing by this fresh attempt at conquest. In his retreat he suffered heavy loss, and in 1357, changing his plan, he replaced David Bruce (see p. 242) on the throne, and strove to win the support of the Scots instead of exasperating them by violence. In the meanwhile the two years' truce brought no good to France. The nobles wrung from the peasants the sums needed to redeem their relatives, who were prisoners in England, and the disbanded soldiers, French and English, formed themselves into free companies and plundered as mercilessly as the Black Prince had done in time of war. Worn down with oppression, the French peasants broke into a rebellion known as the Jacquerie, from the nickname of Jacques-Bonhomme, which the gentry gave to them. After committing unheard-of cruelties the peasants were repressed and slaughtered. An attempt of the States-General—a sort of French Parliament which occasionally met—to improve the government failed. Peace with England was talked of, but Edward's terms were too hard to be accepted, and in 1359 war began again.

24. Edward's Last Invasion. 1359—1360.—So miserably devastated was France that Edward, when he invaded the country in 1359, had to take with him not only men and munitions of war, but large stores of provisions. He met no enemy in the field, but the land had been so wasted that his men suffered much from want of food, in spite of the supplies which they had taken with them. "I could not believe," wrote an Italian who revisited France after an absence of some years, "that this was the same kingdom which I had once seen so rich and flourishing. Nothing presented itself to my eyes but a fearful solitude, an extreme poverty, land uncultivated, houses in ruins. Even the neighbourhood of Paris manifested everywhere marks of destruction and conflagration. The streets were deserted; the roads overgrown with weeds; the whole a vast solitude." In the spring of 1360 Edward moved on towards the banks of the Loire, hoping to find sustenance there. Near Chartres he was overtaken by a terrible storm of hail and thunder, and in the roar of the thunder he thought that he heard the voice of God reproving him for the misery which he had caused. He abated his demands and signed the treaty of Bretigni.

25. The Treaty of Bretigni. 1360.—By the treaty of Bretigni John was to be ransomed for an enormous sum; Edward was to surrender his claim to the crown of France and to the provinces north of Aquitaine, receiving in return the whole of the duchy of Aquitaine together with the districts round Calais and Ponthieu, all of them to be held in full sovereignty, without any feudal obligation to the king of France. Probably it cost Edward little to abandon his claim to the French crown, which had only been an after-thought; and it was a clear gain to get rid of those feudal entanglements which had so frequently been used as a pretext of aggression against the English kings. It was hardly likely, however, that England would long be able to keep a country like Aquitaine, which was geographically part of France and in which French sympathies were constantly on the increase. "We will obey the English with our lips," said the men of Rochelle, when their town was surrendered, "but our hearts shall never be moved towards them."[Back to Contents]

2. The Spanish Troubles. 1364—1368.—John's eldest son and successor, Charles V., known as the Wise, or the Prudent, was less chivalrous, but more cautious than his father, and soon found an opportunity of stirring up trouble for the Black Prince without exposing his own lands to danger. Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile, who had for some time been the ally of England, had murdered his wife, tyrannised over his nobles, and contracted an alliance with the Mohammedans of Granada. The Pope having excommunicated him, his own illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamara, claimed the crown, and sought aid of the king of France. Charles V. sent Bertrand du Guesclin, a rising young commander, to his help. Du Guesclin's army was made up of men of the Free Companies (see p. 252), which still continued to plunder France on their own account after the Peace of Bretigni. In this way Charles got rid of a scourge of his own country at the same time that he attacked an ally of the English. In 1366 Du Guesclin entered Spain. The tyrannical Pedro took refuge at Bayonne, where he begged the Black Prince to help him. The Gascon nobles pleaded with the Prince to reject the monster, but the Prince was not to be held back. "It is not a right thing or reasonable," he said, when they urged him to keep aloof from the unjust undertaking to which he invited them, "that a bastard should hold a kingdom, and thrust out of it, and of his heritage, a brother and heir of the land by legal marriage. All kings and sons of kings should never agree nor consent to it, for it is a great blow at the royal state." In 1367 the Black Prince entered Spain, and with the help of his English archers thoroughly defeated Henry at Navarrete. Then vengeance overtook him on the side on which he had sinned. Pedro was as false as he was cruel, and refused to pay the sums which he had engaged to furnish to the Prince's troops. Sickness broke out in the English ranks, and the Black Prince returned to Bordeaux with only a fifth part of his army, and with his own health irretrievably shattered. In 1368 Henry made his way back to Spain, defeated and slew Pedro, and undid the whole work of the Black Prince to the south of the Pyrenees.

3. The Taxation of Aquitaine. 1368—1369.—Worse than this was in store for the Black Prince. As his soldiers clamoured for their wages, he levied a hearth tax to supply their needs. The Aquitanian Parliament declared against the tax, and appealed to the king of France to do them right. In 1369 Charles, who knew that the men of Aquitaine would be on his side, summoned the Black Prince to Paris to defend his conduct, on the pretext that, as there had been some informality in the treaty of Bretigni, he was himself still the feudal superior of the Duke of Aquitaine. "Willingly," replied the Black Prince when he received the summons, "we will go to the court of Paris, as the king of France orders it; but it shall be with helmet on head and sixty thousand men with us."

4. The Renewed War. 1369—1375.—Edward, by the advice of Parliament, resumed the title of King of France, and war broke out afresh in 1369. The result of the first war had been owing to the blunders of the French in attacking the English archers with the feudal cavalry. Charles V. and his commander, Du Guesclin, resolved to fight no battles. Their troops hung about the English march, cut off stragglers, and captured exposed towns. The English marched hither and thither, plundering and burning, but their armies, powerful as they were when attacked in a defensive position, could not succeed in forcing a battle, and were worn out without accomplishing anything worthy of their fame. The Black Prince, soured by failure and ill-health, having succeeded in 1370 in recapturing Limoges, ordered his men to spare no one in the town. "It was great pity," wrote the chronicler Froissart, "for men, women, and children threw themselves on their knees before the Prince, crying 'Mercy! mercy! gentle Sire!'" The Prince, who had waited at table behind a captive king, hardened his heart. More than three thousand—men, women and children—were butchered on that day. Yet the spirit of chivalry was strong within him, and he spared three gentlemen who fought bravely merely in order to sell their lives dearly. In 1371 the Black Prince was back in England. His eldest surviving brother, John of Gaunt—or Ghent—Duke of Lancaster, continued the war in France. In 1372 the English lost town after town. In 1373 John of Gaunt set out from Calais. He could plunder, but he could not make the enemy fight. "Let them go," wrote Charles V. to his commanders; "by burning they will not become masters of your heritage. Though storms rage over a land, they disperse of themselves. So will it be with these English." When the English reached the hilly centre of France food failed them. The winter came, and horses and men died of cold and want. A rabble of half-starved fugitives was all that reached Bordeaux after a march of six hundred miles. Aquitaine, where the inhabitants were for the most part hostile to the English, and did everything in their power to assist the French, was before long all but wholly lost, and in 1375 a truce was made which put an end to hostilities for a time, leaving only Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, Bayonne, and Bordeaux in the hands of the English.

5. Anti-Papal Legislation. 1351—1366.—The antagonism between England and France necessarily led to an antagonism between England and the Papacy. Since 1305 the Popes had fixed their abode at Avignon, and though Avignon was not yet incorporated with France, it was near enough to be under the control of the king of France. During the time of this exile from Rome, known to ardent churchmen as the Babylonian captivity of the Church, the Popes were regarded in England as the tools of the French enemy. The Papal court, too, became distinguished for luxury and vice, and its vast expenditure called for supplies which England was increasingly loth to furnish. By a system of provisions, as they were called, the Pope provided—or appointed beforehand—his nominees to English benefices, and expected that his nominees would be allowed to hold the benefices to the exclusion of those of the patrons. In 1351 the Statute of Provisors[20] attempted to put an end to the system, but it was not immediately successful, and had to be re-enacted in later years. In 1353 a Statute of Præmunire[21] was passed, in which, though the Pope's name was not mentioned, an attempt was made to stop suits being carried before foreign courts—in other words before the Papal court at Avignon. Another claim of the Popes was to the 1,000 marks payable annually as a symbol of John's vassalage, a claim most distasteful to Englishmen as a sign of national humiliation. Since 1333, the year in which Edward took the government into his own hands, the payment had not been made, and in 1366 Parliament utterly rejected a claim made by the Pope for its revival.

7. Piers the Plowman. 1362.—Cruel as had been the direct results of the English victories in France, they had indirectly contributed to the overthrow of that feudalism which weighed heavily upon France and upon all Continental Europe. The success of the English had been the success of a nation strong in the union of classes. The cessation of the war drove the thoughts of Englishmen back upon themselves. The old spiritual channels had been, to a great extent, choked up. Bishops were busy with the king's affairs; monks had long ceased to be specially an example to the world; and even the friars had fallen from their first estate, and had found out that, though they might personally possess nothing, their order might be wealthy. The men who won victories in France came home to spend their booty in show and luxury. Yet, for all the splendour around, there was a general feeling that the times were out of joint, and this feeling was strengthened by a fresh inroad of the Black Death in 1361. To the prevalent yearning for a better life, a voice was given by William Langland, whose Vision of Piers the Plowman appeared in its first shape in 1362. In the opening of his poem he shows to his readers the supremacy of the Maiden Meed—bribery—over all sorts and conditions of men, lay and clerical. Then he turns to the purification of this wicked world. They who wish to eschew evil and to do good inquire their way to Truth—the eternal God—and find their only guide in 'Piers the Plowman.' The simple men of the plough, who do honest work and live upright lives, know how to find the way to Truth. That way lies not through the inventions of the official Church, the pardons and indulgences set up for sale. "They who have done good shall go into eternal life, but they who have done evil into eternal fire." Langland's teaching, in short, is the same as that of the great Italian poet, Dante, who, earlier in the century, had cried aloud for the return of justice and true religion. He stands apart from Dante and from all others of his time in looking for help to the despised peasant. No doubt his peasant was idealised, as no one knew better than himself; but it was honesty of work in the place of dishonest idleness which he venerated. It was the glory of England to have produced such a thought far more than to have produced the men who, heavy with the plunder of unhappy peasants, stood boldly to their arms at Creçy and Poitiers. He is as yet hardly prepared to say what is the righteousness which leads to eternal life. It is not till he issues a second edition in 1377 that he can answer. To do well, he now tells us, is to act righteously to all in the fear of God. To do better is to walk in the way of love: "Behold how good a thing it is for brethren to dwell in unity." To do best is to live in fellowship with Christ and the Church, and in all humility to bring forth the fruits of the Divine communion.

8. The Anti-Clerical Party. 1371.—Langland wished to improve, not to overthrow, existing institutions, but for all that his work was profoundly revolutionary. They who call on those who have left their first love to return to it are seldom obeyed, but their voice is often welcomed by the corrupt and self-seeking crowd which is eager, after the fashion of birds of prey, to tear the carcase from which life has departed. A large party was formed in England, especially amongst the greater barons, which was anxious to strip the clergy of their wealth and power, without any thought for the better fulfilment of their spiritual functions. In the Parliament of 1371 bishops were declared unfit to hold offices of state. Amongst others who were dismissed was William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester. He was a great architect and administrator, and having been deprived of the Chancellorship used his wealth to found at Winchester the first great public school in England. By this time a Chancellor was no longer what he had been in earlier days (see p. 127), a secretary to the king. He was now beginning to exercise equitable jurisdiction—that is to say, the right of deciding suits according to equity, in cases in which the strict artificial rules of the ordinary courts stood in the way of justice.

9. The Duke of Lancaster. 1374—1376.—In 1374, as soon as the Duke of Lancaster returned from his disastrous campaign (see p. 257), he put himself at the head of the baronial and anti-clerical party. He was selfish and unprincipled, but he had enormous wealth, having secured the vast estates of the Lancaster family by his marriage with Blanche, the granddaughter of the brother of Thomas of Lancaster, the opponent of Edward II. Rich as he was he wished to be richer, and he saw his opportunity in an attack upon the higher clergy, which might end in depriving them not only of political power, but of much of their ecclesiastical property as well. His accession to the baronial party was of the greater importance because he was now practically the first man in the state. The king was suffering from softening of the brain, and had fallen under the influence of a greedy and unscrupulous mistress, Alice Perrers, whilst the Black Prince was disqualified by illness from taking part in the management of affairs. A bargain was struck between the Duke and Alice Perrers, who was able to obtain the consent of the helpless king to anything she pleased. She even sat on the bench with the judges, intimidating them into deciding in favour of the suitors who had bribed her most highly. It seemed as if Langland's Meed (see p. 259) had appeared in person. The king's patronage was shared between her and Lancaster.

10. John Wycliffe. 1366—1376.—If Lancaster's character had been higher, he might have secured a widespread popularity, as the feeling of the age was adverse to the continuance of a wealthy clergy. Even as things were, he had on his side John Wycliffe, the most able reasoner and devoted reformer of his age, who, like others before and after him, imagined that a high spiritual enterprise could be achieved with the help of low and worldly politicians. Wycliffe had distinguished himself at Oxford, and had attracted Lancaster's notice by the ability of his argument against the Pope's claim to levy John's tribute (see p. 258). In 1374 he had been sent to Bruges to argue with the representatives of the Pope on the question of the provisions, and by 1376 had either issued, or was preparing to issue, his work On Civil Lordship, in which, by a curious adaptation of feudal ideas, he declared that all men held their possessions direct from God, as a vassal held his estate from his lord; and that as a vassal was bound to pay certain military services, failing which he lost his estate, so everyone who fell into mortal sin failed to pay his service to God, and forfeited his right to his worldly possessions. In this way dominion, as he said, was founded on grace—that is to say, the continuance of man's right to his possessions depended on his remaining in a state of grace. It is true that Wycliffe qualified his argument by alleging that he was only announcing theoretical truth, and that no man had a right to rob another of his holding because he believed him to be living in sin. It is evident, however, that men like Lancaster would take no heed of this distinction, and would welcome Wycliffe as an ally in the work of despoiling the clergy for their own purposes.

11. Lancaster and the Black Prince. 1376.—Ordinary citizens, who cared nothing for theories which they did not understand, were roused against Lancaster by the unblushing baseness of his rule. Nor was this all. The anti-clerical party was also a baronial party, and ever since the Knights Bachelors of England had turned to the future Edward I. to defend them against the barons who made the Provisions of Oxford (see p. 199), the country gentry and townsmen had learnt the lesson that they would be the first to suffer from the unchecked rule of the baronage. They now had the House of Commons to represent their wishes, but as yet the House of Commons was too weak to stand alone. At last it was rumoured that when the Black Prince died his young son Richard was to be set aside, and that Lancaster was to claim the inheritance of the crown, as an earlier John had claimed it in the place of the youthful Arthur. The Black Prince awoke from his lethargy, and stood forward as the leader of the Commons.

13. The Last Year of Edward III. 1376—1377.—Whilst Parliament was still sitting the Black Prince, worn out by his exertions, died. His son, young Richard, was at once recognised as heir to the throne. Lancaster, however, regained his influence over his doting father. Alice Perrers and Lord Latimer found their way back to court. The Speaker of the House of Commons was thrown into prison. Frivolous charges were brought against Wykeham, who was deprived of his temporalities and banished from the court. In 1377 a new Parliament, elected under Lancaster's influence, reversed all the proceedings of the Good Parliament, and showed how little sympathy the baronial party had with the people by imposing a poll tax of 4d. a head on all except beggars, thus making the payment of a labourer and a duke equal. The bishops, unable to strike at Lancaster, struck at Wycliffe, as his creature. Wycliffe was summoned to appear before an ecclesiastical court at St. Paul's, presided over by Courtenay, the Bishop of London. He came supported by Lancaster and a troop of Lancaster's followers. Hot words were exchanged between them and the Bishop. The London crowd took their Bishop's part and the Duke was compelled to flee for his life. In the summer of 1377 Edward III. died, deserted by everyone, Alice Perrers making off, after robbing him of his finger-rings.

14. Ireland from the Reign of John to that of Edward II.—When England was gradually losing its hold on France, what hold it had had on Ireland was gradually slipping away. Henry II. had been quite unable to effect in Ireland the kind of conquest which William the Conqueror had effected in England. William had succeeded because he had been able to secure order by placing himself at the head of the conquered nation. In Ireland, in the first place, the king was a perpetual absentee; and, in the second place, there was no Irish national organisation at the head of which he could have placed himself, even if he had from time to time visited the island. There were separate tribes, each one attached to its own chief and to its own laws and customs. They were unable to drive out their feudal conquerors; but in the outlying parts of the country, they were able to absorb them, just as the English in their own country absorbed their Norman conquerors. The difference was that in England the conquerors were absorbed into a nation: in Ireland they were absorbed into the several tribes. The few who retained the English laws and habits were, for the most part, confined to the part of Ireland in the neighbourhood of Dublin, which was specially accessible to English influences. In 1315 Edward Bruce, the brother of Robert Bruce, invaded Ireland, and, though he was ultimately defeated and slain, he did enough to shatter the power of the English nobility; and it was mainly in consequence of his partial success that the authority of the English government was, for some time to come, limited to a certain district round Dublin, known about a century later as the English Pale, the extent of which varied from time to time.

CHAPTER XVII.
RICHARD II. AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.
1377—1381.