Chronicle and Romance

Chronicle and Romance

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Classics
Series), by Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed This
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Title: Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series)
Author: Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
Release Date: October 8, 2004 [EBook #13674]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: _The Battle of Poitiers from the painting by H. Dupray
(See page 52)_]
THE HARVARD CLASSICS
EDITED BY CHARLES W. ELIOT, LLD

CHRONICLE AND ROMANCE
FROISSART--MALORY--HOLINSHED

WITH INTRODUCTIONS, NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
"DR ELIOT'S FIVE FOOT SHELF OF BOOKS"
1910
BY P.F. COLLIER & SON NEW YORK

CONTENTS
THE CHRONICLES OF FROISSART, TRANSLATED BY LORD
BERNERS EDITED BY G.C. MACAULAY
The Campaign of Crecy The Battle of Poitiers Wat Tyler's Rebellion
The Battle of Otterburn
THE HOLY GRAIL BY SIR THOMAS MALORY FROM THE
CAXTON EDITION OF THE MORTE D'ARTHUR
A DESCRIPTION OF ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND WRITTEN BY
WILLIAM HARRISON FOR HOLINSHED'S CHRONICLES


CHAPTER
I. Of Degrees of People II. Of Cities and Towns III. Of Gardens and
Orchards IV. Of Fairs and Markets V. Of the Church of England VI. Of
Food and Diet VII. Of Apparel and Attire VIII. Of Building and
Furniture IX. Of Provision for the Poor X. Of Air, Soil, and
Commodities XI. Of Minerals and Metals XII. Of Cattle Kept for Profit
XIII. Of Wild and Tame Fowls XIV. Of Savage Beasts and Vermin XV.
Of Our English Dogs XVI. Of the Navy of England XVII. Of Kinds of
Punishment XVIII. Of Universities

THE CHRONICLES OF FROISSART
BY
JEAN FROISSART
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF MANY OF THE BATTLES OF
THE HUNDRED YEAR'S WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND

FRANCE.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE Jean Froissart, _the most representative of
the chroniclers of the later Middle Ages, was born at Valenciennes in
1337. The Chronicle which, more than his poetry, has kept his fame
alive, was undertaken when he was only twenty; the first book was
written in its earliest form by 1369; and he kept revising and enlarging
the work to the end of his life. In 1361 he went to England, entered the
Church, and attached himself to Queen Philippa of Hainault, the wife
of Edward III, who made him her secretary and clerk of her chapel.
Much of his life was spent in travel. He went to France with the Black
Prince, and to Italy with the Duke of Clarence. He saw fighting on the
Scottish border, visited Holland, Savoy, and Provence, returning at
intervals to Paris and London. He was Vicar of Estinnes-au-Mont,
Canon of Chimay, and chaplain to the Comte de Blois; but the Church
to him was rather a source of revenue than a religious calling. He
finally settled down in his native town, where he died about 1410.
Froissart's wandering life points to one of the most prominent of his
characteristics as a historian. Uncritical and often inconsistent as he is,
his mistakes are not due to partisanship, for he is extraordinarily
cosmopolitan. The Germans he dislikes as unchivalrous; but though his
life lay in the period of the Hundred Years' War between England and
France, and though he describes many of the events of that war, he is as
friendly to England as to France.
By birth Froissart belonged to the bourgeoisie, but his tastes and
associations made him an aristocrat. Glimpses of the sufferings which
the lower classes underwent in the wars of his time appear in his pages,
but they are given incidentally and without sympathy. His interests are
all in the somewhat degenerate chivalry of his age, in the splendor of
courts, the pomp and circumstance of war, in tourneys, and in
pageantry. Full of the love of adventure, he would travel across half of
Europe to see a gallant feat of arms, a coronation, a royal marriage.
Strength and courage and loyalty were the virtues he loved; cowardice
and petty greed he hated. Cruelty and injustice could not dim for him
the brilliance of the careers of those brigand lords who were his friends
and patrons.

The material for the earlier part of his Chronicles he took largely from
his predecessor and model, Jean Lebel; the later books are filled with
narratives of what he saw with his own eyes, or gathered from the lips
of men who had themselves been part of what they told. This fact,
along with his mastery