Edward the Confessor

 Edward III (1327-77) was only 15 when he came to the throne. Isabella and Roger Mortimer ruled as regents for three years until Edward rebelled and had Mortimer hanged. Edward proved to be a popular, approachable king.

 In 1337, he began the conflict with France known as The Hundred Years War. Actually, it lasted, on and off, for 116 years, and despite early successes at Crecy and Poitiers, it was to end with the loss of virtually all English possessions on the mainland.

As is usual in times of war, Parliament grew in power, forcing royal concessions in return for grants of money. During Edward’s reign the custom evolved of separate sittings for the Commons (burgesses and knights) and a Great Council of prelates and magnates. The system of Justices of the Peace, chosen from among the local nobility, also dates from this time. They became a sort of amateur body carrying on local administration and government for the next 500 years. 

In 1348, the Black Death reached England. So named for the black tumours which appeared in a victim’s armpits and groin, this flea-born disease was carried to an unprepared Europe by rats on ships arriving from the Far East. The effect of the Black Death on England and the rest of Europe cannot be overstated. In some places up to one-half the population died. This accelerated tremendous social change. 

There was a drastic shortage of labour on the land. Many landowners began to enclose their lands, turning to sheep raising rather than labour intensive traditional farming. Increased sheep farming meant that fewer farm labourers were needed, so lords often allowed villeins to purchase their freedom from feudal obligation. The villeins became free labourers, and many gravitated to towns. 

The first great literary work in the English language appeared in 1362, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, which was an indictment of social inequality and injustice. Langland was followed a few years later by Geoffrey Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales remain a vivid and insightful look at medieval English society. The idea of the relationships between Chaucer and Langland--or more generally, late fourteenth century English authors--has been a problem at least since J. A. Burrow’s Ricardian Poetry appeared in 1971. He locates this lack of a sense of a norm for the period both in “the nature, the polycentricity, of the period itself” and also in the “posthumous fortunes so various” of the poets of this period. The differences are particularly visible between poems from the two different verse forms of the period: those verse forms, usually borrowed or adapted from continental poetry, thought of as London, courtly verse forms; and the alliterative line, usually associated with Northern or Northwestern poets, and treating religious or political matters rather than love. The circumstances of their reception, coupled with real differences in content, form, and poetic and historical concerns, can make it difficult indeed to see similarities between these poets, particularly between Langland and Chaucer. There are obvious differences in concern and form. Langland wrote in the alliterative line while Chaucer adopted continental verse forms, both French and Italian.     

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