Notes on the Medieval Period

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The Old English Period and the Medieval Period: From Legend to History (A.D. 449 to 1485)

Change in Society

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) was the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. During his life, the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) occurred, a struggle between Edward III of England and Philip VI of France over the French crown and English-owned land in France. The war led to a national struggle, not just an aristocratic quarrel.

The Yeoman and the Longbow

Independent farmers in England called yeomen used the longbow to defeat the mounted knight, a symbol of feudalism. The longbow originated in Wales, was 6 feet tall, and required a force of 100 pounds to draw it. It could fire arrows 200 yard and changed warfare by replacing the aristocracy with professionals. At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the English archers used the longbow to attack the French knights and their swords and axes to attack the main French force, resulting in hardly any English causalities, 1,500 French knights, and 4,500 other French soldiers dead.

The Use of English

English became the national language when the Normans, descendants of the Vikings, invaded England in 1066. Under the Normans, French was the language of the ruling classes, Latin was the language of church and learning, and commoners used English. A few years after the English victory at Crécy, France (1346), schoolteachers began to translate sentences from Latin into England, and in 1361, English replaced French in the courts of law in the Statute of Pleading. Parliament gained power through the wars by receiving legislative body powers and privileges in return for war money.

More Deadly Than the Longbow

The flea spread the Black Death, a plague that decimated populations throughout the 1300s and 1400s. Servants and laborers could ask for and get higher wages because of the loss of labor. Attempts by landlords to freeze wages, with taxes levied on poor laborers, led to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

A Fourteen-Year-Old King

Fourteen-year-old Richard II, the king of England, stopped the peasants by promising to reform the feudal system, which he did not carry through, after they rioted, looted, and murdered. The need for money to finance the Hundred Years’ War and the agricultural downturn caused by the Black Death caused the government to tax the export of wool and support the country’s textile industry. The Textile industry began to have different stages of production handled by different contractors, a new way of business that was brought about by the rising class of merchants and manufacturers.

Poet and Merchant’s Son

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in the merchant class. His father was a wine merchant, and Geoffrey grew up in the business atmosphere. As a teenager, he served an aristocratic household, which would be a precursor to his job as a capable administrator.

Eye and Ear for Character

The Canterbury Tales was written as an exchange of tales among pilgrims journeying to the shrine of martyr Thomas à Beckett at Canterbury. His humorous and realistic description of medieval society moved literature beyond the themes of courtly love and knightly adventures and made him into a modern writer.

A Variety of Tales

Although only 20 of the 120 tales were completed, they tell stories of knights, millers, reeves, nuns, merchants, and the Parson. Chaucer told his stories in rhyme and was able to lose himself in the life of his characters.

The Final Tale

Chaucer may have realized after his twentieth story that his work and writing career were ending. Chaucer was a devout Christian whose true voice showed through the character of the Parson.

The Story of the Times (A.D. 449–1485)

Historical Background

The Conquest of Britain

Between 800 and 600 B.C., two Celtics groups from southern Europe, the Brythons and the Gaels, invaded the British Isles and settled on Britain and Ireland, respectively. The Celts were farmers and hunters who organized themselves into clans and pledged loyalty to the chieftain. When the clans had an argument amongst themselves, priests known as Druids settled their disputes. In 55 and 56 B.C., the Romans, led by Julius Caesar, invaded Britain and spread out over the island, establishing camps. The last Roman legions left Britain in A.D. 407 after barbarians invaded Italy and increased pressure on Rome itself. The German Anglo-Saxons invaded next. They were deep-sea fishermen and farmers who gradually took over England.

The Coming of Christianity

During the fourth century, the Romans had accepted Christianity and introduced it to Britain. A century later, the Celts fled from the Anglo-Saxons and took their Christian faith with them. Even though Rome fell to barbarians in A.D. 476, the Christian church survived. In the late sixth century, a soldier and abbot named Columba and other monks established monasteries in the north and converted the locals. In 597, Roman cleric St. Augustine converted King Ethelbert of Kent, who then set up a cathedral at Canterbury. He preached his faith to his followers, promoting peace and unity.

Danish Invasion

In the ninth century, the Vikings, consisting of the Norwegian Norse and the Danish Danes, invaded the British Isles, with the Norse capturing Northumbria, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland and the Danes taking eastern and southern England. The Vikings sacked and plundered monasteries, destroyed manuscripts, and stole sacred religious objects en route to conquering most of north, east, and central England. In 886, King Alfred the Great of Wessex signed a truce that divided England into the Danish-controlled east and north and the Saxon-controlled south. Alfred preserved the remnants of pre-Danish civilization and encouraged a rebirth of learning and education. During the late tenth century, more Danes from Europe attempted to recapture and widen the Danelaw, the eastern and northern sections of England under Danish control. Once they succeeded, they forced the Saxons to select Danish kings. In 1042, the line of succession returned to a descendant of Alfred the Great, Edward the Confessor, whose death in 1066 would end the Anglo-Saxon period of history.

The Norman Conquest

The Normans were descendants of Vikings who invaded the coast of France in the ninth century. Duke William of Normandy was related to Edward the Confessor, but the Saxon council of elders chose Harold II as king. William claimed that Edward had promised him the throne and invaded and conquered England in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings. Over the next five years, William suppressed the Anglo-Saxon nobility and took their lands. He made the government be controlled by Normans and that business be conducted in Norman French or Latin. Feudalism began on the European continent when no central government was strong enough to keep order. All the land belonged to the king, who gave his powerful supporters pieces of land, nominal titles, and special privileges. Each baron paid certain taxes and supplied knights if the king required them. Knights received smaller pieces of land called manors in return for their service. The peasants who worked on the manors were called serfs and were the lowest social class.

Reign of the Plantagenet

Norman rule ended in 1154 with Henry Plantagenet of Anjou, who became Henry II. Henry appointed his friend Thomas Beckett to archbishop of Canterbury. Becket defied the king and appealed to the Pope, who agreed with him, angering Henry. In 1170, four of Henry’s knights mistakenly killed Becket in his cathedral. Henry condemned the crime and tried to atone for it by making a pilgrimage to Becket’s tomb, resulting in it becoming a common English means of showing religious devotion.

The Magna Carta

The next king, Richard I, spent his reign fighting in the Crusades, causing his successor, King John, to inherit the debts. He tried to raise money by ordering taxes, causing the barons to resist. To avoid further trouble, John agreed to their demands and signed the Magna Carta. By signing it, the king promised to never tax without meeting the barons, the beginning of a constitutional government in England.

The Lancasters, Yorks, and Tudors

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Lancasters of Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI, replaced the Plantagenets, but were then replaced by the Yorks.

The Decline of the Feudal System

After the Black Death swept across Europe in 1348 and 1349, the resulting labor shortage increased the value of a peasant’s work. Cash payments gave workers a greater sense of freedom. In 1381, due to discriminatory laws and heavy taxation, peasants in southern England revolted and demanded an end to serfdom, but were stopped. In 1453, the War of the Roses began as a conflict between the Yorks and the Lancasters and ended when Henry Tudor, a cousin and supporter of the Lancasters, led a rebellion against the unpopular Yorkist king Richard III and killed him. Tudor became Henry VII and united the houses of York and Lancaster by marrying Richard’s niece.

Literature of the Period

Saxon Literature

Anglo-Saxon literature began with spoken verse and incantations that were recited on ceremonial occasions. This literature was divided into two main categories: heroic poetry, such as Beowulf, recounted the achievements of warriors and elegiac poetry, such as “The Wanderer,” lamented the deaths of loved ones and the loss of the past. Beowulf is an epic and is considered the national epic of England. Before Alfred the Great, all important prose in the British Isles was written in Latin, where monks transcribed the works into the vernacular.

Literature of the English Middle Ages

Lyrics poems in this time were majorly secular, religious, or ballads. During early Norman times, the Church sponsored plays as religious services. The plays moved from the church to the churchyard to the marketplace, and many of the earlier ones were miracle plays with the older ones mostly being morality plays.

An Emerging National Identity

In 1454, German silversmith Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press that used movable type. English literature was no longer needed to be hand copied. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in Middle English.

The Changing English Language: The Beginning of English

English

The large sea tribes of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes sailed to Britannia from northern Europe around A.D. 449. They settled there and brought their Low Germanic tongue that became Anglo-Saxon or Old English. In A.D. 827, King Egbert named Britannia Englaland after the Angles. The language became Englisc, a very hard to understand language.

Middle English

Two centuries after Egbert, the Normans invaded England from northern France and brought French and their customs with them. Their triouveurs, or minstrels, sang the Song of Roland and the legends of King Charlemagne. William the Conqueror’s 1066 win at the Battle of Hastings changed Old Englisc into Middle English by infusing French words into the language.