TO A.D. 1422] THE LOLLARDS. 181 and liberal in many things, and in this lighter poem, written in English and in Chaucer's stanza, seeking to find out the wrong and get it undone, with as much earnestness as Gower in his "Vox Clamantis," while he pointed to the corruption of the clergy-was, like Gower, an orthodox maintainer of Church doctrine. We find, therefore, that he assented to the new endeavour to save as it was thought many from the everlasting fire by giving some to be burnt publicly in this world. 9. In the second year of Henry V., in 1414, a new law passed against the Lollards, which ordained that they should forfeit all the lands they had in fee-simple, and all their goods and chattels, to the king. The same Act decreed that whatsoever they were that should read the Scriptures in their mother tongue, they should forfeit "land, catel, lif, and godes from their heyres for ever, and so be condempned for heretykes to God, enemies to the crowne, and most errant traitors to the lande." On Christmas morning, in 1417, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, a brave knight of unblemished life, who held the tenets of Wiclif, and had opened his doors at Cowling Castle to the persecuted teachers of the Lollards, was hung up by the middle in an iron chain upon a gallows in St. Giles's Fields, and burnt alive while thus suspended. The last words heard from him were praise of God, into whose hands he resigned his soul. Chichele was then primate, violent as Arundel in vindictive dread of Lollard attacks on the Church temporalities. It was he who led his clergy when they urged the ready King Henry V., who was twenty-five years old and had a military genius, to follow his father's counsel, and divert attention of the people from domestic needs by foreign war. The war was based upon unjust claims of dominion over France; claims which the English primate and his party declared to be just and lawful. Henry V., although essentially a soldier and intemperate in war, was temperate in life, well taught, and had respect for scholars. His ambassador in Spain in 1422 was William Lindwood, an Oxford divinity professor, who wrote the Constitutions of the Archbishops of Canterbury, from Langton to Chichele. Lindwood was made Bishop of St. Davids in 1434, and died in 1446. He had been preceded in his bishopric by an astronomer, named Rocleve, who had been among the friends of Henry V., and to whom the king gave that see. But most closely attached to Henry V. was the most famous English theologian of his day, Thomas Netter, of Saffron Walden, in [A.D. 1413 Essex, who was born in 1380, and educated at Oxford, where he was Doctor of Divinity, and publicly disputed against Wiclif's doctrines. He became a Carmelite in London, went to the Council of Pisa, in 1414 became Provincial of the Carmelites in England, and as such was a distinguished member of the Council of Constance (§ 3). Thomas Netter, of Walden, was regarded by the orthodox as prince of controversialists in the fifteenth century. The chief of his numerous works was a Doctrinale, which is a long and systematic theological assertion of Church doctrine against Wiclif heresies. He also put together Fasciculi Zizaniorum-Bundles of Master John Wiclif's tares with wheat-which contain the statute for the burning of heretics; the bull of John XXIII. against Wiclif's heresies; condemned opinions of Wiclif; sentence passed on him and on John Huss; accusations against Jerome of Prague; divers condemned errors of Lollards and others; the latest topic being the examination of William White, September 13th, 1428, at which Thomas of Walden was himself present, two years before his death. This theologian was Inquisitor-General in England for the punishing of heretics. He had business in Lithuania after the close of the Council of Constance, in 1418, and upon his return was made confessor to King Henry V. 10. In August, 1415, Henry had crossed to France. On the 25th of the following October he won the battle of Agincourt, and closed the victory with a barbarous massacre of prisoners. Two chroniclers of English history were present at the fight. One, John de Wavrin, fought on the French side, but two years later joined the French allies of England. He wrote afterwards a chronicle of English history from the earliest years, which he brought down to the year 1471. He is also probably the anonymous continuer (from 1443) of the chronicle of Monstrelet, who died in 1453. The other soldier of Agincourt who has left us a chronicle was an Englishman, John Harding. He was born in 1378; at the age of twelve was admitted into the house of Sir Henry Percy, known as Hotspur, and served as a volunteer under Percy in the battle of Homildon. After Percy's death John Harding followed the banner of Sir Robert Umfraville, who died in 1436, and became constable of one of his castles. John Harding, in and after the reign of Henry V., was much employed in procuring documents-some of them forgeries-in support of the claim on the kings of Scotland for homage to the kings of England. His English rhyming Chronicle was not written TO A.D. 1422] CHRONICLERS 183 until after the reign of Henry V. But Henry V. was King of England when a rhyming chronicle was written in English of the north, the Oryginale Cronykil of Scotland, by Andrew of Wyntoun, a regular canon of St. Andrew's, and prior of one of the five subordinated monasteries of St. Andrew's, that of St. Serf, in the island of Lochleven, once a religious house of the Culdees. Andrew of Wyntoun crowded into his nine books of ingenious eight-syllabled doggrel a great number of facts and traditions. II. We had English verse also from William of Nassington, in Northamptonshire, a proctor in the Eccle siastical Court of York, who translated into English rhyme a Latin metrical treatise on the Trinity and Unity, called The Mirror of Life. The translation was made before the year 1400 The original, in several thousand verses, was by John of Waldly, in Yorkshire, an Augustine Friar, provincial of his order in England, and active in controversy against Wiclif. 12. The chief Latin chronicler of the reign of Henry V. was Thomas Walsingham, precentor and chief copyist, or scriptorarius, in St. Albans Abbey, where in his time, by his advice, a new Scriptorium was built. He used records produced in the form of chronicle by preceding monks of St. Albans-William Rishanger, John of Trokelowe, Henry of Blaneford, William Wyntershylle,—in the formation of an English history, Historia Anglicana, which extends from 1272 to the end of the reign of Henry V., in 1422. He also compiled, about the year 1419, his Ypodgima Neustria, or Demonstration of Events in Normandy," dedicated to Henry V. in compliment upon his recent conquests of Normandy; but the affairs of Normandy form only a small portion of the work. 66 13. We may now pass out of the reign of Henry V., who died at the end of August, 1422. When the penitential psalms were being read to him on his death-bed, the words "Thou shalt build the walls of Jerusalem" put into his head more fighting, and he said, “If I had finished the war in France, and established peace, I would have gone to Palestine to redeem the holy city from the Saracens." He left an infant son, Henry VI. (1422—1461), King of England, and he named his brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, regent of England. Parliament gave chief power to the Duke of Bedford, who was made Regent of France, and the Duke of Gloucester was made President of the Council, as 66 Protector of the Realm and Church of England,” when Redford was away in France. This Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was the patron of John Lydgate, who died about 1460. For him Lydgate wrote, in the reign of Henry VI., his Falls of Princes, a long poem in Chaucer's seven-lined stanza, founded upon Boccaccio's Latin prose work in nine books, "De Casibus Illustrium Virorum;" but Lydgate said that he followed Boccaccio through the version of a Frenchman, Laurent, that is Laurent de Premierfait, who translated also the "Decameron" for Jeanne, Queen of Navarre. Lydgate interspersed his work with occasional prologues and balades of his own, while he retold the stories, not as a mere rhyming translator, but as a man who had an honest gift of song and felt their poetry. There passes through the reader's mind a funeral pomp of men who have been carried high on Fortune's wheel, and then been bruised to death by its descending stroke. The poem warns the mighty to be humble, and the lowly to be well content. The Storie of Thebes is told by Lydgate as another “Canterbury Tale." After a sickness he went in a black cope, “on palfrey slender, long, and lean," with rusty bridle, and his man before him carrying an empty pack, to the shrine at Canterbury, and by accident put up there at the inn where Chaucer's pilgrims were assembled. There he saw the host of the "Tabard," who thought him lean for a monk, prescribed nut-brown ale after supper, with anise, cummin, or coriander seed at bedtime. But the best medicine was cheerful company. So Dan John supped with the pilgrims, went home with them next day, and helped to amuse them with the story of the "Thebaid" of Statius, as it had been manipulated by the romancers of the Middle Ages. Lydgate's Troy Book is a metrical version from a French translation of the "Historia Trojana" of Guido della Colonna, a Sicilian poet and lawyer of Messina, who came to England in 1287 with Edward I., when he returned from his war in Asia. Colonna's "Trojan History" was a version from the "Fall of Troy" ascribed to Dares (ch. iii. § 21). 14. The author of the " King's Quair," James I. of Scotland, went home to his Scotch throne not very long after the death of Henry V. His love was first crowned by marriage to Jane Beaufort with royal state; he was then allowed to proceed to his kingdom, and was crowned at Scone in May of the year 1424. He sought to maintain peace and order in his kingdom, TO A.D. 1461] LYDGATE. JAMES I. CIVIL WAR 185 endeavoured to bring law and justice within reach of the poor, regulated weights and measures, established a survey of property with a view to justice in taxation, and made careful inquiry into titles. He tried to suppress with a strong hand the violence of faction. But the enlarged liberties of the people pressed on the feudal rights of the nobles. Many a rough-handed chief looked also with concern at the inquiry into titles. Sir Robert Graham, who had denounced the king as a tyrant for his encroachment on the nobles, at last broke in upon him with three hundred Highlanders, on the 20th of February, 1437, caught him unarmed, and killed him. He defended himself bravely, and his wife Jane, who sought to shelter him, was wounded in the struggle. He had written of her truly in the "King's Quair:" "And thus this floure... So hertly has unto my help attendit, That from the deth hir man sche has defendit." There remained only a six year old son to be the king's successor. Some writers ascribe to James I. of Scotland, and some to James IV., two humorous old Scottish poems describing the rough holiday life of the people. They are called Peeblis to the Play and Christis Kirk of the Green. If they were really by James I., he must have had a range of power that would place him first among the poets of his time. 15. The death of Charles VI. of France made the infant Henry VI. of England, by the Treaty of Troyes, sovereign of France; but this claim was resisted. Then followed contention, wasting life and honour; the patriotic inspiration, the success, and the disgrace to England of the burning of Jeanne d'Arc, after her abandonment and sale by men of her own country. Slowly the French ground was reconquered by the French, and England fell under the plague of civil war. In this contest between the rival lines of York and Lancaster first blood was drawn in the battle of St. Albans, on the 22nd of May, 1455; but after this there was, during four or five years, rest from the actual clash of arms, while strife continued for supremacy under the feeble rule of a king whose mind, weak through disease, swayed in its clearer hours towards a kindly piety. 16. During this interval Reginald Pecock, author of the most important English prose work written in the reign of Henry VI., was called to account for the free spirit shown not |