t them in idleness and vice. It was not the
doctrine, but the practice which they condemned. With the accession of the
house of Plantagenet, the people were made to feel that the Norman
monarchy was a curse, without alloy. Richard I. was a knight-errant and a
crusader, who cared little for the realm; John was an adulterer, traitor,
and coward, who roused the people's anger by first quarrelling with the
Pope, and then basely giving him the kingdom to receive it again as a
papal fief. The nation, headed by the warlike barons, had forced the great
charter of popular rights from John, and had caused it to be confirmed and
supplemented during the long reign of his son, the weak Henry III.

Edward I. was engaged in cruel wars, both in Wales and Scotland, which
wasted the people's money without any corresponding advantage.

Edward II. was deposed and murdered by his queen and her paramour
Mortimer; and, however great their crime, he was certainly unworthy and
unable to control a fierce and turbulent people, already clamorous for
their rights. These well-known facts are here stated to show the
unsettled condition of things during the period when the English were
being formed into a nation, the language established, and the earliest
literary efforts made. Materials for a better organization were at hand in
great abundance; only proper master-builders were needed. We have seen
that everything now betokened the coming of a new era, in State, Church,
and literature.

The monarch who came to the throne in 1327, one year before the birth of
Chaucer, was worthy to be the usher of this new era to England: a man of
might, of judgment, and of forecast; the first truly _English_ monarch in
sympathy and purpose who had occupied the throne since the Conquest:
liberal beyond all former precedent in religion, he sheltered Wiclif in
his bold invectives, and paved the way for the later encroachments upon
the papal supremacy. With the aid of his accomplished son, Edward the
Black Prince, he rendered England illustrious by his foreign wars, and
removed what remained of the animosity between Saxon and Norman.

REFORM IN RELIGION.--We are so accustomed to refer the Reformation to the
time of Luther in Germany, as the grand religious turning-point in modern
history, that we are apt to underrate, if not to forget, the religious
movement in this most important era of English history. Chaucer and Wiclif
wrote nearly half a century before John Huss