a more
dazzling height, for which there have also been some expensive
reckonings since. He introduced a new and higher dignity into nobility
by the title of Duke, which he bestowed upon his sons; the great
landholders or barons, having until that time constituted a body in
which all were peers. {58} He has been the idol of heroic England.
But he awoke the dream of French conquest, and bequeathed to his
successors a fatal war, which lasted for 100 years.

The "Black Prince" died, and the "Black Death," a fearful pestilence,
desolated a land already decimated by protracted wars. The valiant old
King, after a life of brilliant triumphs, carried a sad and broken
heart to the grave, and Richard II., son of the heroic Prince Edward,
was king.

This last of the Plantagenets had need of great strength and wisdom to
cope with the forces stirring at that time in his kingdom, and was
singularly deficient in both. The costly conquests of his grandfather,
were a troublesome legacy to his feeble grandson. Enormous taxes
unjustly levied to pay for past glories, do not improve the temper of a
people. A shifting of the burden from one class to another arrayed all
in antagonisms against each other, and finally, when the burden fell
upon the lowest order, as it is apt to do, it rose in fierce rebellion
under the leadership of Wat Tyler, a blacksmith (1381).

Concessions were granted and quiet {59} restored, but the people had
learned a new way of throwing off injustice. There began to be a new
sentiment in the air. Men were asking why the few should dress in
velvet and the many in rags. It was the first English revolt against
the tyranny of wealth, when people were heard on the streets singing
the couplet--

"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"

As in the times of the early Saxon kings, the cause breeding
destruction was the widening distance between the king and the people.
In those earlier times the people unresistingly lapsed into decadence,
but the Anglo-Saxon had learned much since then, and it was not so safe
to degrade him and trample on his rights.

Then, too, John Wickliffe had been telling some very plain truths to
the people about the Church of Rome, and there was developing a
sentiment which made Pope and Clergy tremble. There was a spirit of
inquiry, having its centre at Oxford, looking into the title-deeds of
the great ecclesiastical {60} despotism. Wickliffe heretically clai