English Prose in the Fifteenth Century

THE work of popularising prose was a slow and humble process. In the “century of the commons” literature was consistently homely. Works of utility—books of manners and of cookery, service books and didactic essays, as well as old romances copied and modernised and chronicles growing ever briefer and duller—familiarised the middle classes with books. Dictionaries prove the spread of study; and, though verse was more popular reading than prose, countless letters and business papers remain to show that soldiers, merchants, servants and women were learning to read and write with fluency. The House of Commons and the king’s council now conducted business in English; and, in the latter part of the century, politicians began to appeal to the sense of the nation in short tracts. In the meantime, the art of prose writing advanced no further. The Mandeville translations mark its high tide, for even The Master of Game, the duke of York’s elaborate treatise on hunting, was, save for the slightest of reflections—“imagynacioun (is) maistresse of alle werkes”—purely technical. A fashionable treatise, as the number of manuscripts proves, it was, in the main, a translation of a well known French work; it is chiefly interesting for its technical terms, mostly French, and as witness to the excessive elaborateness of the hunting pleasures of the great. 1 Save for the solitary and unappreciated phenomenon of Pecock, Latin, for the greater part of the century, maintained its position as the language of serious books. The other two learned men of the itme wrote first in Latin, and seem to have been driven to use English by the political ascendency of a middle-class and unlettered faction. The praises of Henry V are recorded in Latin; nearly two dozen Latin chronicles were compiled to some seven in English; the books given by the duke of Gloucester and the earl of Worcester to the universities were in Latin, and so were the volumes purchased by the colleges themselves.

John Capgrave, the learned and travelled friar of Lynn in Norfolk, was the best known man of letters of his time. His reputation was based upon comprehensive theological works, which comprised commentaries upon all the books of the Bible. Condensed from older sources, besides a collection of lives of saints, leves of the Famous Henries and a life of his patron Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. All these were in Latin. But he composed in English, for the simple, a life of St. Katharine in verse and one of St. Gilbert of Sempringham in prose, as well as a guide for pilgrims to Rome and a volume of Annals, presented to Edward IV. 3 Capgrave’s chronicle, so far as originality goes, makes some advance on Trevisa, being a compilation from a number of sources with an occasional observation of the writer’s own. He seems to have regarded it in the nature of notes: “a schort remembrauns of elde stories, that whanne I loke upon hem and have a schort touch of the writing I can sone dilate the circumstaunces.” Valuable historically, as an authority on Henry IV, it also attracts attention by the terseness of its style. It “myte,” says the author. “be cleped rather Abbreviacion of Cronicles than a book”; but graphic detail appears in the later portain, dealing with Capgrave’s own times. It is he who tells us that Henry V “after his coronacion was evene turned onto anothir man and all his mociones inclined to vertu,” though this is probably in testimony to the peculiar sacredness of the anointing oil. Capgrave was a doctor in divinity and provincial of his order, the Austin Friars Hermit; he was extremely orthodox, violently abusive of Wyclif and Oldcastle, an apologist of archbishops, yet, like other chroniclers, restive under the extreme demands of the papacy. 4 Even apart from his signal achievement in literature, the lively character and ironical fate of Reginald Pecock must attract interest. A learned man original thinker, he was yet astoundingly vain. Though Humphrey of Gloucester was his first patron, he was raised to the episcopate by the party which ruined the duke, and shared that party’s unpopularity. An ardent apologist of the newest papal claims and of the contemporary English hierarchy, he was, nevertheless, persecuted by the bishops and deserted by the pope. Finally, his condemnation on the score of heretical opinions was brought about by the malice of a revengeful political party.

Reginald Pecock was a Welshman, a student in the university of Oxford, where he became a fellow of Oriel and took holy orders. He was early celebrated for his finished learning and, before 1431, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, it seems, drew the rising man to London where, in that year, he was made Master of Whittington College near the Tower, the recent foundation of the famous mayor. 6 London was still thick with Lollards, and it became Pecock’s lifelong aim to overcome their heresy by persuasion. Before ten years were passed he had issued a number of books or pamphlets to cope with those which the heretics were pouring forth. In 1444, he was made bishop of St. Asaph, and he was so active in his diocese, in preaching and in other ways, as to rouse opposition. He had not, however, withdrawn from the public life of London; and, in 1447, he preached a sermon at Paul’s Cross which provoked much antagonism. He defended episcopal non-residence and neglect of preaching on the ground that the conduct of the ecclesiastical organisation was a prior buty; but he also justified papal “provisions” to benefices and the payment of annates to Rome upon grounds most displeasing to the English hierarchy. He put the substance of his discourse in writing and gave it to his friends. Yet not only the populace but many scholars, clergy and friars called him a heretic. His apology was controverted from Paul’s Cross by the celebrated Millington, Provost of King’s, Cambridge, and archbishop Stafford, though personally friendly, was obliged to investigate Pecock’s opinions. Pecock was not censured; but his translation to Chichester on the murder of Moleyns perhaps marked him as a member of the court party who might conveniently be thrust into a thankless post of danger. The mob hated him as one of Suffolk’s friends, and he had the distinction of mention in the lively ballad on the duke’s death, The Dirge of Jack Napes. As a privy councillor and trier of petitions, Pecock took his share in the unpopular work of government, but he continued to put forth short popular books against the Lollards and, at length, a complete and reasoned work, The Repressor of overmuch blaming of the clergy. This elaborate book, which its author thought would destroy Lollardy and prevent further criticism of the hierarchy, brought about his ruin.

Sir John Fortescue, the intrepid chief justice of Henry VI and the earliest Englishg constitutional lawyer, occupies, in the sphere of political iterature, a position not unlike that of Pecock in religious controversy. But the larger part of his works, which aim at justifying the title of the house of Lancaster, are in Latin. The arguments of the smaller tracts are historical; but his large work, De Natura Legis Naturae, is mainly philosoph cal. In this book the actual claim of Henry VI is made to rest upon the large foundation of that law of nature which resolves the succession to all kingdoms. He discovers three “natural” kinds of governemtn: absolute monarchy (dominium regale), republicanism (domunïum politicum) and constitutional monarchy (dominium polïticum et regale). The right of the Lancastrian House, therfore, is bound up with the English constitution. Even when he reaches the second part of the book and deals with the struggle then being waged, Fortescue keeps to an abstract form of argument. “Justice” is to settle the claim to a kingdom in Assyria preferred by three personages, the brother, daughter and daughter’s son of the deceased monarch. the reader reflects on Edward III, but Fortescue throws over the claim to France and the settlement of Scotland; there is no inheritance through a female, and “Justice” assigns the kingdom to the brother. 28 Such an attempt to solve the problem of the time by referring it to a general law is something in the manner of Pecock. The consideration of the “natural” forms of government an dthe decision that the constitution of England is a dominium politicum et rage became, with Fortescue, a firm conviction. Though the cause he had at heart, and for which he risked fortune and life and went into exile, was not advanced by his reasoning but hopelessly crushed by the cogent arguments of archery and cannon, he was able to exercise a perhaps unsatisfying activity in the composition of two works which might teach Englishmen better to understand and value that noble constitution to which the Yorkist conqueror certainly paid little enough attention. His book De Laudibus Legum angliae was written 1468-70, and, like its predecessor, was meant for the use of the yound prince Edward, whose education Fortescue seems to have had in charge, and who sustains a part in the dialogue. His travels with the fugitive royal family had shown the observant chief justice something of Scottish, and more of French, modes of government. As he compares the French absolute system with the noble constitution of England, his philosophy becomes practical, and he endeavours to apply theory to the actual conduct of government, giving us by the way pictures of the life and the law courts of England as he had known it. 29 But Tewkesbury field left the Lancastrians without a cause, and Fortescue could do no more than bow to the inevitable and lay before the new sovereign de facto his last treatise upon his favourite subject. It is in English. The house of York, possibly from lack of learning as well as from a perception of the importance now pertaining to the common people’s opinions, always dealt with politics in the vulgar tongue. The treatise, sometimes entitled Monarchia, and sometimes The Difference between as Absolute and a Limited Monarchy combines a eulogy of the English theoretical system of government with advice for its practical reformation. It was probably finished in 1471 or a little later, though there are reasons for thinking that it was orifinally intended for Henry VI. Fortescue again distinguishes between the two kinds of monarchy, absolute and constitutional, and praises the advantages of the latter. Not that an absolute monarch is necessarily a tyrant: Ahab offered Naboth the full price for the vineyard. 30 The all important question for a constitutional king is revernue, and with this his subjects are bound to provide him: “As every servant owith to have is sustenance off hym that he serveth so ought the pope to be susteyned by the chirche and the kyng by his reaume.” The expenses of the English king are of three kinds; (1) “kepynge of the see,” provided for specially by the nation in the poundage and tonnage duties, “that the kynge kepe alway some grete and myghty vessels, ffor the brekynge off an armye when any shall be made ayen hym apon the see. Ffor thanne it shall be to late to do make such vessailes”; (2) ordinary royal charges, household, officials, etc.; (3) extraordinary, including ambassadors, rewards and troops on a sudden necessity: there is a no thought of a permanent army. The dangers of royal poverty and overgreat subjects are pointed out, with examples discreetly taken from French and old English history. How shall the revenue be increased? Not by direct taxes on food, as abroad, “his hyghness shall have heroff but as hadd the man that sherid is hogge, much crye and litel woll.” Let the king’s “livelode” come of his lands: as did Joseph in Egypt, on the plan which yet keeps the “Saudan off Babilon” (Cairo) so wealthy. (Is this a reminiscence of Mandeville?) It is a method within the king’s competence, for an English king can never alienate his lands permanently; which, says the philosophic judge, only proves his supreme power: “ffor it is no poiar to mowe alience and put away, but it is poiar to mowe have and kepe to hym self. As it is no poiar to mowe synne and to do ylle or to mowe be seke, wex old or that a man may hurte hym self. Ffor all thes poiars comen of impotencie.” 31 The danger of impoverished subjects is discussed next. Poor commons are rebellious, as in Bohemia. A poor nation could not afford to train itself in marksmanship as the English all do at their own costs. Why, then, do not the povertystricken French rebel? Simply from “cowardisse and lakke off hartes and corage, wich no Frenchman hath like unto a Englysh man.” The French are too cowardly to rob: “there is no man hanged in Scotland in vij yere to gedur ffor robbery.… But the English man is off another corage,” for he will always dare to take what he needs from one who has it. Fortescue glories in the prowess of our sturdy thieves. An interesting plan for forming the council of salaried experts, to the exclusion of the great nobles, brings the little book to a close, with a prophetical “anteme” of rejoicing, which a grateful people will sing when Edward IV shall on these lines have reformed the government and revenue. A quaint postscript seems to deprecate the possible distaste of king Edward for the parliamentary nature of the rule described. 32 Fortescue had to make his peace with the new king by retracting his former arguments against the house of York. This he did in the form of a dialogue with a learned man in a Declaration upon “certayn wrytyngs … ayenst the Kinges Title to the Roialme of Englond,” wherein, not without dignity, he admitted fresh evidence from the learned man and declared himself to have been mistaken. This, and a few other and earlier Latin pamphlets, are of purely historical interest. His last work was, probably, the dialogue between Understanding and Faith, a kind of meditation upon the hard fate of the righteous and the duty of resignation.

The Introduction of Printing into England and the Early Work of the Press

William Caxton, the first printer, was born in the weald of Kent between the years 1421 and 1428, probably nearer the earlier date. The weald was largely inhabited by descendants of the Flemish clothmakers who had been induced by Edward III to settle in that district, and this would, no doubt, have a certain effect on the English spoken there, which Caxton himself describes as “broad and rude.” He received a good education, though we are not told where, and, having determined to take up the business of a cloth merchant, was apprenticed, in 1438, to Robert Large, one of the most wealthy and important merchants in London and a leading member of the mercer’s company. 3 Here Caxton continued until the death of Large, in 1441, and, though still an apprentice, appears to have left England and gone to the Low Countries. For the next few years we have little information as to his movements; but it is clear that he prospered in business for, by 1463, he was acting as governor of the merchant adventurers. In 1463, he gave up this post to enter the service of the duchess of Burgundy, and, in the leisure which this position afforded him, he turned his attention to literary work. A visit to Cologne in 1471 marks an important event in Caxton’s life, for there, for the first time, he saw a printing press at work. If we believe the words of his apprentice and successor Wynkyn de Worde, and there seems no reason to doubt them, he even assisted in the printing of an edition of Bartholomaeus de Proprietatibus Rerum in order to make himself acquainted with the technical details of the art. 4 A year or two after his return to Bruges, he determined to set up a press of his own and chose as an assistant an illuminator named Colard Mansion. Mansion is entered regularly as an illuminator in the guild-books of Bruges up to the year 1473, which points to Caxton’s preparations having been made in 1474. Mantion was despatched to obtain the necessary type and other materials, and it appears most probable that the printer who supplied them was John Veldner of Louvain. Furnished with a press and two founts of type, cut in imitation of the ordinary book hand, Caxton began to print.

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