, in literary
charm, and in genial appreciation of the externals of his age. He
recorded with an eye-witness's precision of colour, though with utter
indifference to exactness, the tournaments and fetes, the banquets and
the _largesses_ of the noble lords and ladies of the most brilliant
court in Christendom. He celebrated the courtesy of the knightly class,
their devotion to their word of honour, the liberality with which
captive foreigners was allowed to share in their sports and pleasures,
and the implicit loyalty with which nearly all the many captive knights
repaid the trust placed on their word. To him Edward was the most
glorious of kings, and Philippa, his patroness, the most beautiful,
liberal, pious, and charitable of queens. For nine years he enjoyed the
queen's bounty, and described with loyal partiality the exploits of
English knights. With the death of his patroness and the beginning of
England's misfortunes, the light-minded adventurer sought another
master in the French-loving Wenceslaus of Brabant. The first edition of
his chronicle, compiled when under the spell of the English court,
contrasts strongly with the second version written at Brussels at the
instigation of the Luxemburg duke of Brabant.

Even Froissart saw that all was not well in England. The common people
seemed to him proud, cruel, disloyal, and suspicious. Their delight was
in battle and slaughter, and they hated the foreigner with a fierce
hatred which had no counterpart in the cosmopolitan knightly class.
They were the terror of their lords and delighted in keeping their
kings under restraint. The Londoners were the most mighty of the
English and could do more than all the rest of England. Other writers
tell the same tale. The same fierce patriotism that Froissart notes
glows through the rude battle songs in which Lawrence Minot sang the
early victories of Edward from Halidon Hill to the taking of Guines,
and inspired Geoffrey le Baker to repeat with absolute confidence every
malicious story which gossip told to the discredit of the French king
and his people. It was under the influence of this spirit that the
steps were taken, which we have already recorded, to extend the use of
English, notably in the law courts. Yet the old bilingual habit clave
long to the English. Despite the statute of 1362, the lawyers continued
to employ the French tongue, until it crystallised into the jargon of
the later _Year Books_ or of Littleton's _Tenure