lodged, ill fed, and scantily clothed, disease cut them down like grass before the scythe. A deadly pestilence swept over the land in 1348, carrying off about two thirds of the people; and nearly all the victims were from among the poorest classes. In 1361, another pestilence carried off thousands, again spreading terror and dismay through the country. Seven years later a third visitation desolated England. Here and there one of the better class fell a victim to the destroyer; but the great mass were from the ranks of the half-starved and poorly lodged laborers.
The morality of the poor was, as might be expected, at a low ebb. Modesty, chastity, and temperance could scarcely be looked for in wretched mud huts, where all ages and sexes herded together like swine. Men and women alike fled from their miserable homes to the ale-house, where they drank long draughts of cheap ale, and, in imitation of their superiors in station, listened to a low class of "japers" who recited "rhymes of Robin Hood," or told coarse and obscene stories for the sake of a share of the ale, or such few small coins as could be drawn from the ragged pouches of the bacchanals.
Between proud wealth and abject poverty there can be no friendly feeling. Stolid, brutish ignorance can alone render the bonds of the slave endurable. As his eyes are slowly opened by increasing knowledge, and he can compare his condition with that of the freeman, his fetters gall him, he becomes restive in his bonds, and at length turns in blind fury on his oppressors, striking mad blows with his manacled hands. Trodden into the dust by the iron heel of a tyrannical feudal power, the peasantry of France had turned on their oppressors, and wreaked a brief but savage vengeance for ages of wrong. The atrocious cruelties and mad excesses of the revolted Jacquerie could only have been committed by those who had been so long treated as brutes that they had acquired brutish passions and instincts. The English peasantry had not yet followed the example of their French compeers; but the gathering storm already darkened the sky, and the mutterings of the thunder were heard. Superstitiously religious, they hated the ministers of religion who violated its principles. Born slaves and hopelessly debased and ignorant, they began to ask the question,—
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who then was the gentleman?"
Occasionally a rude ballad found its way among the people fiercely expressive of their scorn of the clergy and their hatred of the rich. One that was very popular, and has been transmitted to our day, asked,—
"While God was on earth
And wandered wide,
What was the reason
Why he would not ride?
Because he would have no groom
To go by his side,
Nor grudging of no gadeling[1]
To scold nor to chide.
*****
"Hearken hitherward, horsemen,
A tiding I you tell,
That ye shall hang
And harbor in hell!"
But no leader had as yet arisen to give proper voice to the desire for reformation that burned in the hearts of the common people. The writers of that age were breathing the intoxicating air of court favor, and heeded not the sufferings of the common rabble. Froissart, the courtly canon and chronicler of deeds of chivalry, was writing French madrigals and amorous ditties for the ear of Queen Philippa, and loved too well gay society, luxurious feasts, and dainty attire, not to shrink with disgust from thought of the dirty, uncouth, and miserable herd of "greasy caps." Gower was inditing fashionable love-songs. Chaucer, who years after was to direct such telling blows in his Canterbury Tales at the vices and corruptness of the clergy, was a favorite member of the retinue of the powerful "John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster," and had as yet only written long and stately poems on the history of Troilus and Cressida, the Parlia-
- ↑ Vagabond.
