ENGLAND 1400 AD TO 1485 AD

Henry VI 1422 AD. Edward IV 1461 AD. Edward V 1483 AD. Richard III 1483 AD. Henry VII 1485 AD. The Plantagenet age.

Caxton (1422 to 1491 AD) was a notable English printer. Notable because he printed English texts instead of Norman-French. In effect he spread the English word like no other. He was a very real English hero. If Chaucer was to come alive and visit during Caxton’s time it would have revealed much that was familiar if a little faded. Pilgrims making their way to holy places. Summoners and pardoners up to their old tricks with the poor folk.  Gentry with hawks and hounds. The battle of Agincourt would stir memories of Crecy, and remind him that an Englishman was worth 3 of any other. And that France was a robbing ground for the English. London and Bristol would have grown, with new masonry built buildings that would have seemed ‘newe guise’ , like Kings College Eton and Queens College Cambridge. In port towns stories of tough English mariners or ‘Shipman’ would have circulated. Of tales of trade and tempest in the English Chanel and the Bay of Biscay. Of the luck of the English pirates preying on Genoese carracks, Breton and Flemish ballingers, and stories of those pirates and corsairs who tried to retaliate! In gentried manors and houses Chaucer would have been amused at seeing people reading his Middle-English poetry, printed by Caxton on the machine he brought from Flanders. But talk of Wars between Red and White Roses would have been unfamiliar.

What were the English Wars of the Roses ? 1455 to 1484 AD.

After English armies were expelled from France for the second time there came The Wars of the Roses which were a series of campaigns involving men numbering 2,000 to 10,000 between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. It ended in a series of battles at St Albans, Towton, Barnet and Bosworth Field. It was not on the scale of the English Civil War of the 1640’s. The Lords of the Roses could not count on such resources.

Life in London and other centres of trade carried on despite the horrendous violence and mutilation of the fighting. What it did do was to provoke the Tudor monarchs to quell the power of such ‘overgreat subjects.’

What was society like in England of the 1400’s ?

Child marriage continued to provide allegiances. Those children who resisted were beaten mercilessly. When Elizabeth Paston of the great Norfolk Paston family resisted marrying a fifty-year-old widower, she was beaten for three months. Yet love and chivalry were known. For this was the age of the knight.  Justice was based on the power of a Lord and his knights and ‘estate jumping’ or theft was known. Power could give immunity. But, Feudalism proper was dying out, as was serfdom. Landlord and Tenant relationships grew. Peasant farmers even saved to increase their land holding. Taken as a whole the 1400’s or the Fifteenth century was a good time for the tenant and a bad time for the landlord. But the country was poorer – due in part to the plagues, which beset the country. But wealth was better distributed than in Chaucer’s time.

Eternal English village life. Dancing round the Maypole. Artist: Mark Taylor

1497 AD. Manor house life.

When married an English woman may expect to become a lieutenant to her husband. In the manor house that meant a large undertaking.

The walls of the manor house would be overlaid with cloth hanging. Walls were often painted in place of framed pictures. Most have gone save the mural on the Eton College chapel painted by the English artist William Baker (1479 to 1488 AD.) They would have been finely painted walls. Chimneys were more common. Girls who were not married were sent to nunneries. But she would have held status there. There were one hundred and eleven nunneries in England and there were around 1500 to 2000 nuns in England in the Fifteenth century.

Grammar schools.

Increased and wider spread wealth led to more need for education. Universities and the failing monasteries were not enough. Municipal gilds or guilds and burghers took pride in forming schools. These English Grammar schools completely undercut any religious / church based education and was the cause of the English Reformation. Not the result of it. Eton Cambridge and Oxford began to dominate. And so in 1477 AD young William Paston went to Eton before Cambridge. In the previous generation, John`Paston went straight to Cambridge to study under James Gloys.

Caxton and education.

Thus the circle is completed when we see Caxton’s work in printing English educational scripts for education in schools. His printing machine would increase the tempo of the spread of the English language, and of fixing its form for educating people. Spelling and grammar could be inconsistent before print! Just see how many variations there were on spelling John Wycliffe’s surname and your own - which probably stems from a very few Saxon stem names.

London.

The Scottish poet Dunbar declared:

‘London thou art the flower of cities all’.

London survived any ravages of The Wars of the Roses. London merchant companies of Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, and Fishmongers grew up. Their chief wealth came from exports of all kinds. Mainly corn, wool and cloth. Even William Caxton had agent in Bruges. The Merchants ruled the capital. Commercially – keeping out of armed politics. Rural clothiers grew too. Men like Thomas Paycocke of Coggeshall.

Manufactured cloth began to exceed raw wool. The Gilds began to supersede the priests for intellectual dominance. They performed Miracle Plays, which illustrated Bible stories.

Life was changing. England was ripe for reformation. The End of The Middle Ages was in sight.