Chaucer | Page 9

out went With spear in hand, and with
their big bows bent.
No wonder that when the battles were fought by the people itself, and
when the cost of the wars was to so large an extent defrayed by its self-
imposed contributions, the Scottish and French campaigns should have
called forth that national enthusiasm which found an echo in the songs
of Lawrence Minot, as hearty war-poetry as has been composed in any
age of our literature. They were put forth in 1352, and considering the
unusual popularity they are said to have enjoyed, it is not impossible
that they may have reached Chaucer's ears in his boyhood.
Before the final collapse of the great King's fortunes, and his death in a
dishonoured old age, the ambition of his heir, the proudest hope of both
dynasty and nation, had overleapt itself, and the Black Prince had
preceded his father to the tomb. The good ship England (so sang a
contemporary poet) was left without rudder or helm; and in a kingdom
full of faction and discontent the future of the Plantagenet throne
depended on a child. While the young king's ambitious uncle, John of
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (Chaucer's patron), was in nominal
retirement, and his academical ally, Wyclif, was gaining popularity as
the mouthpiece of the resistance to the papal demands, there were
fermenting beneath the surface elements of popular agitation, which
had been but little taken into account by the political factions of
Edward the Third's reign, and by that part of its society with which
Chaucer was more especially connected. But the multitude, whose turn

in truth comes but rarely in the history of a nation, must every now and
then make itself heard, although poets may seem all but blind and deaf
to the tempest as it rises, and bursts, and passes away. Many causes had
concurred to excite the insurrection which temporarily destroyed the
influence of John of Gaunt, and which for long cast a deep shade upon
the effects of the teaching of Wyclif. The acquisition of a measure of
rights and power by the middle classes had caused a general swaying
upwards; and throughout the peoples of Europe floated those dreams
and speculations concerning the equality and fraternity of all men,
which needed but a stimulus and an opportunity to assume the practical
shape of a revolution. The melancholy thought which pervades
Langland's "Vision" is still that of the helplessness of the poor; and the
remedy to which he looks against the corruption of the governing
classes is the advent of a superhuman king, whom he identifies with the
ploughman himself, the representative of suffering humility. But about
the same time as that of the composition of this poem--or not long
afterwards--Wyclif had sent forth among the people his "simple
priests," who illustrated by contrast the conflict which his teaching
exposed between the existing practice of the Church and the original
documents of her faith. The connexion between Wyclif's teaching and
the peasants' insurrection under Richard II is as undeniable as that
between Luther's doctrines and the great social uprising in Germany a
century and a half afterwards. When, upon the declaration of the Papal
Schism, Wyclif abandoned all hope of a reform of the Church from
within, and, defying the injunctions of foe and friend alike, entered
upon a course of theological opposition, the popular influence of his
followers must have tended to spread a theory admitting of very easy
application ad hominem--the theory, namely, that the tenure of all
offices, whether spiritual or temporal, is justified only by the personal
fitness of their occupants. With such levelling doctrine, the Socialism
of popular preachers like John Balle might seem to coincide with
sufficient closeness; and since worthiness was not to be found in the
holders of either spiritual or temporal authority, of either ecclesiastical
or lay wealth, the time had palpably come for the poor man to enjoy his
own again. Then, the advent of a weak government, over which a
powerful kinsman of the king and unconcealed adversary of the Church
was really seeking to recover the control, and the imposition of a tax

coming home to all men except actual beggars, and filling serfdom's
cup of bitterness to overflowing, supplied the opportunity, and the
insurrection broke out. Its violence fell short of that of the French
Jacquerie a quarter of a century earlier; but no doubt could exist as to
its critical importance. As it happened, the revolt turned with special
fury against the possessions of the Duke of Lancaster, whose
sympathies with the cause of ecclesiastical reform it definitively
extinguished.
After the suppression of this appalling movement by a party of Order
comprehending in it all who had anything to lose, a period of reaction
ensued. In the reign of