A History of English Literature

and set up a press near Westminster Abbey in 1476. Most of the eighty books he
printed were religious, but the first was his translation of a history of Troy; he also
printed a Canterbury Talesin 1477. He translated from French works such as The
Book of the Order of Chivalry, a guide to knightly conduct, addressed ‘not to every
comyn man ... but to noble gentylmen’. Common men could not read, but ‘quality’
marketing had begun. Chivalry was dying, but manners could be learned.

Scottish poetry

In the late 15th century the best verse in English, part of the poetic tradition of
England as well as Scotland, came from Scotland. This kingdom, united under
Malcolm Canmore in the late 11th century, had four tongues: Highland Gaelic,
lowland English, clerkly Latin, and lordly Anglo-Norman French. Since the 7th
century, English had been spoken on the east coast from the River Tweed to
Edinburgh. Its speakers called the tongue of the Gaels, who since the 5th century had
come into Argyll from Ireland,Scottis. A Gael was in Latin Scotus, a name then
extended to Lowlanders, who called the northern English they spoke Inglis. After the
14th century, a century of war with England, the Lowlanders called their own speech
Scottis, and called the Gaelic of the original Scots Ersche, later Erse(Irish).
The first Scottish literature, whether its language be called Scottisor Inglis, is the
BrusofJohn Barbour(c.1325–1395), an archdeacon of Aberdeen who studied in
Oxford and Paris. The Brus(c.1375) is a heroic life of Robert the Bruce, whose defeat
of Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314 made him King of Scotland. This lively chron-
icle has nearly 14,000 octosyllabics, the most quoted of which is ‘A! fredome is a
noble thing!’ This echoes the Scots’ Declaration of Arbroath (1320), a Latin appeal
to the Pope: ‘It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting,
but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.’
Bruce tells his men before Bannockburn that they have three advantages: ‘The first
is,that we have the richt;/ And for the richt ilk man suld ficht [each man ought to
fight].’ The second is that ‘we’ will have the great wealth the English have brought
with them – ‘Gif that we wyn, as weill may fall.’

The thrid is, that we for our lyvis

And for our childer and our wifis,

And for the fredome of our land,

Ar strenyeit in battale for to stand ... obliged

Right, profit, family feeling and independence – a good Lowland Scots combination.
Universities were founded: St Andrews in 1411, Glasgow in 1451, Aberdeen in

1495. The successors of the Brusinclude the Kingis Quair(c.1424), Sir Richard
      Holland’s Boke of the Howlat[Owlet] (c.1460) and Blind Harry’s Wallace(c.1460),
      inferior to the Brusbut more popular. Then come Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas,
      sometimes called ‘Scottish Chaucerians’. They call Chaucer their father and their
      language Inglis, yet their only imitative poem is the fine Kingis Quair, a poem in
      southern English deriving from Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, supposedly written by King
      James I of Scotland during his stay as a hostage in England. (Chaucer’s Scots admir-
      ers, sometimes known as the Scottish Chaucerians, wished not to rival him but to
      master the inter national style. Another hostage, found alive among the dead on the
      field of Agincourt, was a greater poet,Charles d’Orléans(1394–1465), who wrote in
      English as well as French, but is not called a ‘French Chaucerian’.)

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