CHAPTER IV. THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1350-1400)Wyclif arouses the conscience of England; again it has the
portentous rumble of an approaching tempest, as when John
Ball harangues a multitude of discontented peasants on Black
Heath commons, using the famous text:
When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?and again it breaks out into the violent rebellion of Wat Tyler.
All these things show the same Saxon spirit that had won its
freedom in a thousand years’ struggle against foreign ene-
mies, and that now felt itself oppressed by a social and in-
dustrial tyranny in its own midst.
Aside from these two movements, the age was one of un-
usual stir and progress. Chivalry, that mediæval institution
of mixed good and evil, was in its Indian summer,–a senti-
ment rather than a practical system. Trade, and its resultant
wealth and luxury, were increasing enormously. Following
trade, as the Vikings had followed glory, the English began
to be a conquering and colonizing people, like the Anglo-
Saxons. The native shed something of his insularity and be-
came a traveler, going first to view the places where trade
had opened the way, and returning with wider interests and
a larger horizon. Above all, the first dawn of the Renaissance
is heralded in England, as in Spain and Italy, by the appear-
ance of a national literature.
FIVE WRITERS OF THE AGE.The literary movement of the
age clearly reflects the stirring life of the times. There is Lang-
land, voicing the social discontent, preaching the equality of
men and the dignity of labor; Wyclif, greatest of English reli-
gious reformers, giving the Gospel to the people in their own
tongue, and the freedom of the Gospel in unnumbered tracts
and addresses; Gower, the scholar and literary man, criticis-
ing this vigorous life and plainly afraid of its consequences;
and Mandeville, the traveler, romancing about the wonders