separating England from the political ties of France
and, to a less degree, from ecclesiastical bondage to Rome, the mutual
distrust and jealousy which had divided nobles and commons were momentarily
swept aside by a wave of patriotic enthusiasm. The French language lost its
official prestige, and English became the speech not only of the common
people but of courts and Parliament as well.

The second movement is social; it falls largely within the reign of
Edward's successor, Richard II, and marks the growing discontent with the
contrast between luxury and poverty, between the idle wealthy classes and
the overtaxed peasants. Sometimes this movement is quiet and strong, as
when 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 enemies, and that now felt itself oppressed
by a social and industrial tyranny in its own midst.

Aside from these two movements, the age was one of unusual stir and
progress. Chivalry, that mediaeval institution of mixed good and evil, was
in its Indian summer,--a sentiment 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 became 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 appearance 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 Langland, voicing the social
discontent, preaching the equality of men and the dignity of labor; Wyclif,
greatest of English religious 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, criticising this vigorous
life and plainly afraid