the
tales of other travelers, is a diverting tissue of fables about
gryfouns that fly away with yokes of oxen, tribes of one-legged
Ethiopians who shelter themselves from the sun by using their monstrous
feet as umbrellas, etc.

During the 15th century English prose was gradually being brought into
a shape fitting it for more serious uses. In the controversy between
the Church and the Lollards Latin was still mainly employed, but Wiclif
had written some of his tracts in English, and, in 1449, Reginald
Peacock, Bishop of {48} St. Asaph, contributed, in English, to the same
controversy, _The Represser of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy_. Sir
John Fortescue, who was chief-justice of the king's bench from
1442-1460, wrote during the reign of Edward IV. a book on the
_Difference between Absolute and Limited Monarchy_, which may be
regarded as the first treatise on political philosophy and
constitutional law in the language. But these works hardly belong to
pure literature, and are remarkable only as early, though not very
good, examples of English prose in a barren time. The 15th century was
an era of decay and change. The Middle Age was dying, Church and State
were slowly disintegrating under the new intellectual influences that
were working secretly under ground. In England the civil wars of the
Red and White Roses were breaking up the old feudal society by
decimating and impoverishing the baronage, thus preparing the way for
the centralized monarchy of the Tudors. Toward the close of that
century, and early in the next, happened the four great events, or
series of events, which freed and widened men's minds, and, in a
succession of shocks, overthrew the mediaeval system of life and
thought. These were the invention of printing, the Renascence, or
revival of classical learning, the discovery of America, and the
Protestant Reformation.

William Caxton, the first English printer, learned the art in Cologne.
In 1476 he set up his press and sign, a red pole, in the Almonry at
Westminster. Just before the introduction of printing the demand {49}
for MS. copies had grown very active, stimulated, perhaps, by the
coming into general use of linen paper instead of the more costly
parchment. The scriptoria of the monasteries were the places where the
transcribing and illuminating of MSS. went on, professional copyists
resorting to Westminster Abbey, for example, to make their copies of
books belonging to the monastic libr