his Travels in English about 1356. I give a brief extract from the earliest of the English prose-writers: "Forasmuch," says Mandeville, in his Prologue-"for als moche as the lond beyonde the see, that is to saye the holy lond, that men callen the lond of primyssioun or of beheste, passynge alle other londes, is the most worth lond, most excellent lady and sovereign of all other laudes, and is blessed and hallowed of the precyous body and blood of our Lord Ihesu Crist; in which londe," etc. Chaucer wrote better prose than Mandeville, and Wycliffe's Bible is the foundation of our present translation. John de Trevisa (about 1387) wrote in prose a translation of Higden's Chronicle; and several anonymous poems and prose pieces belong to Chaucer's age, a proof of its literary activity.

Richard II.-Richard II., Chaucer's king, to whom he addresses several wise admonitions, reigned from 1377 to 1399, the most productive and varied period of the poet's life. Richard is one of the most remarkable and the least understood of England's monarchs, his age the most important and the most obscure of all. When a boy, he stood at the head of Wat Tyler's armed mob; he saw the germs of a revolution; he

suppressed it with great decision. As he grew up, he found himself surrounded by the violent factions of a barbarous nobility and the intrigues of his ambitious uncles. He showed something of the cruel nature of his father, the Black Prince; he shared in the murder of his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, who, perhaps, deserved his fate; and over his savage nobles he ruled with merciless vigor. He was wasteful, and fond of wild extravagance; he spared no enemy in his rage; he was violent, weak, ungovernable. Chaucer spoke to him in vain of generosity or justice; his "good queen Ann" from Bohemia, all mercy and tenderness, failed to teach him humanity. His people groaned under intolerable taxes, and hated him; his nobles conspired to destroy him. Yet, in Richard's reign, toleration, literature, reform, were introduced into England under the shelter of the king's protection; and his brief period, sown with political changes, was the period of the real dawn of English letters.

Richard's Period.-Chaucer, as a member of the court, Member of Parliament, connected by marriage with the Duke of Lancaster, was familiar, of necessity, with the royal circle, the youthful king, the gentle

HARSH MANNERS.

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Duke of York, the cruel and restless Gloucester, with Hereford, Suffolk, and all the savage throng of English barons. It was an age of violence and open cruelty, when men joined in fierce frays in the streets of London, and when every man must be ready to defend himself; when women were as rude as the men, and "mine host" complains that a Prudence or a Griselda was something altogether unknown. Harshness, cruelty, inhumanity, were the common traits of domestic life. Parents treat their children with strange brutality; children rebel against their parents. In the Paston Letters,* we are told of an Elizabeth Paston, twenty years old, and her mother's treatment of her: "She hathe, since Easter, the most part been beaten once in the week or twice in one day, and her head broken in two or three places." Lady Jane Grey, in Henry VIII.'s reign, was trained in study and needle-work by pinches and bruises. A blow was the common reply to slight provocations, and human life was little valued: the

*Paston Letters, Gairdner, 1872, give the manners of the fifteenth century. Justice Paston (1423) is surrounded by enemies. For Elizabeth Paston, see Introduction, p. cxvi.

noble could murder without any fear of punishment. The Pastons sometimes live in constant danger from their enemies. The respect for law had not penetrated the barbarous age.

Richard's Uncles.-Shakspeare enumerates the members of the court in which Chaucer shone.

The Duke of York speaks:

York. Then thus:

Edward the Third, my lords, had seven sons:

The first, Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales;
The second, William of Hatfield; and the third,
Lionel, Duke of Clarence; next to whom
Was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster;
The fifth was Edmond Langley, Duke of York;

The sixth was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Glos

ter;

William of Windsor was the seventh, and last
Edward, the Black Prince, died before his father;
And left behind him Richard, his only son, etc.*

The Houses. -In Richard's reign the houses of the people were of wood, thatched with straw in London the upper stories projected over the narrow and noisome streets. Pestilence was seldom absent from the land; physical strength was impaired,

* Second Part of King Henry VI., act ii., scene 2.

health destroyed, and life shortened by the common ignorance. Men soon grew old. Harsh and painful lives, violence, brutality, destroyed early the mental and physical powers.

Dress of the Time.-From their comfortless homes, clay cottages, beds of straw, and pillows of wood, our ancestors came out to meet each other arrayed in a splendor that was as barbarous as their manners. In Richard II.'s reign their cloaks or gowns of costly material trailed in the filth of the streets, and excited the rage of the satirists; they wore damask, sometimes satin, or double worsted or costly cloth; their shoes were covered with designs borrowed from the stainedglass windows of Westminster, and the long pointed toe reaching to the knee was bound to it by a gold or silver clasp; gay gowns of green were common, and an anonymous author complains that the women could not be distinguished from the men. The young Squire of the Canterbury Tales is covered with embroidery; the monk has his hood fastened with a gold pin of curious form; the dress in which Chaucer himself appears in his portrait is a plain gown, buttoned hood, and simple hose. The king and the court set the example of extravagance; it