THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

The Study of Latin and Greek—Invention of Printing—Caxton—New Schools and Colleges—Architecture, Military, Ecclesiastical, and Domestic—Sculpture, Painting, and Gilding—The Art of War—Commerce and Shipping—Coinage.

It might be very reasonably supposed that during a century spent almost entirely in war, and during the second half of it in the most rancorous intestine strife, there could not be much national progress. There is no doubt but that the population was greatly decreased. It was calculated that at the beginning of the century the population of England and Wales amounted to about 2,700,000. At the end of it, it is supposed that there were not 2,500,000.

In these depopulating wars, there can be no question that, besides the actual destruction of so many men, there must have been terrible sufferings inflicted, and an immense interruption of all those peaceful transactions by which nations become wealthy and powerful.

During this century, two events of the highest importance to art and learning took place—the introduction of the knowledge of Greek and the invention of printing.

If the knowledge of Greek had not entirely died out in western Europe, it had nearly so till this century. The crusades, leading the Christians of western Europe to the east, had opened up an acquaintance betwixt the people of the Greek empire and those of the West. The destruction of that empire in this century drove a number of learned men into Italy, where they taught their language and literature. Amongst these were Theodore Gaza, Cardinal Bessarion, George of Trebizond, Demetrius Chalcondyles, John Argyropulus, and Johannes Lascaris. Before that time some knowledge of the Greek philosophy had reached us through the Arabians, but till the fourteenth century very little of the literature of Greece was known in the western nations, not even the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" of Homer. In Italy Petrarch and Boccaccio learned the language and studied the writings of Greece, and an enthusiasm for Greek literature spread over all Europe. Grocyn studied it in Italy in 1488, under Chalcondyles, and came and taught it in England.

At the same moment that Greek began to be studied, Latin in Europe was in the lowest and most degraded state. Though it still continued the language of divines, lawyers, philosophers, historians, and even poets, it had lost almost every trace of its original idiom and elegance. Latin words were used, but in the English order, and where words were wanting, they Anglicised them.

But that wonderful art which was destined to chase this darkness like a new sun was already on its way from Germany to this country. The Chinese had printed from engraved wooden blocks for many centuries, when the same idea suggested itself to a citizen of Haarlem, named Laurent Janszoon Coster. Coster, who was keeper of the cathedral, first cut his letters in wood, then made separate wooden letters, and employed them in printing books by tying them together with strings. From wood he proceeded to cut his letters in metal, and finally to cast them in the present fashion. Coster concealed his secret with great care, and was anxious to transmit it to his children; but in this he was disappointed, for at his death one of his assistants, John Gensfleisch, the Gutenberger, went off to Mayence, carrying with him movable types of Coster's casting.

That is the Dutch story, but the Germans insist on Gutenberg being the originator of printing. They contend that Coster's were only the wooden blocks which had long been in use for the printing of playing cards, and manuals of devotion. They even insinuate that all that the Dutch claim had probably been brought from China by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, who had seen the paper-money thus printed there in letters of vermilion, and that Holland had no share in the invention at all. But we know that the Germans have a vast capacity for claiming. It is notorious that all the earliest block-printing, the BibliÆ Pauperum, the Bibles of the Poor, the Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis, with its fifty pictures, and other block works, were all done in the Low Countries in the century we are reviewing.

Taking a broad view, however, it is certain that Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, were the men who first printed any known works in movable types, and from Mayence, in 1445, diffused very soon the knowledge of the present art of printing over the whole world. The first work which they are supposed to have printed was the Bible, an edition of the Latin Vulgate, known by the name of the Mazarin Bible, of which various copies remain, though without date or printer's name.

Printing was introduced into England in 1474, according to all the chief authorities of or near that time, by William Caxton. Caxton was a native of the weald of Kent. He served his apprenticeship to a mercer of London, and left England in 1441 to transact business in the Low Countries. There he was greatly regarded by Margaret, the Duchess of Burgundy, Edward IV.'s sister, who retained him as long as she could at her court. Caxton was now upwards of fifty years of age, but his inquisitive and active temperament led him to learn, amongst other things, the whole art of printing from one Colard Manson. He saw its immense importance, and he translated Raoul le Feure's "Recueil des Histoires de Troye," and printed it in folio. This great work he says himself that he began in Bruges, and finished in Cologne in 1471. The first work which he printed in England was the "Game and Playe of Chesse," which was published in 1475. From this time till 1490, or till nearly the date of his death in 1491 or 1492, a period of sixteen years, the list of the works which Caxton passed through his press is quite wonderful. Thomas Milling, the Abbot of Westminster, was his most zealous patron; and at Westminster, in the Almonry, he commenced his business. Earl Rivers, brother to the queen of Edward IV., another of his friends and patrons, translated the "Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers" for his nephew, the Prince of Wales, and introduced Caxton, when it was printed, to present it to the king and royal family.

But while Caxton was thus busy he saw others around him also as hard at work with their presses: Theodore Rood, John Lettow, William Machelina, and Wynkyn de Worde, foreigners, and Thomas Hunt, an Englishman. A schoolmaster of St. Albans set up a press there, and several books were printed at Oxford in 1478, and to the end of the century. There is no direct evidence of any work being printed in Scotland during this century, though such may have been the case, and all traces of the fact obliterated in the almost universal destruction of the cathedral and conventual libraries at the Reformation. James III. was known to collect the most superb specimens of typography, and Dr. Henry mentions seeing a magnificent edition of "Speculum Moralitatis," which had been in that king's possession, and contained his autograph.

Not less meritorious benefactors of their country, next to the writers and printers of books, were those who collected them into libraries, and the most munificent patron and encourager of learning in this manner was the unfortunate Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. He gave to the University of Oxford a library of 600 volumes in 1440, valued at £1,000. Some of these very volumes yet remain in different collections. Duke Humphrey not only bought books, but he employed men of science and learning to translate and transcribe. He kept celebrated writers from France and Italy, as well as Englishmen, to translate from the Greek and other languages; and is said to have written himself on astronomy, a scheme of astronomical calculations under his name still remaining in the library of Gresham College. The great Duke of Bedford, likewise, when master of Paris, purchased and sent to this country the royal library, containing 853 volumes, valued at 2,223 livres.

The schools and colleges founded during this century were the following:—Lincoln College, Oxford, founded in 1427, by Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, and completed by Thomas Scott, of Rotherham, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1475. All Souls' College, Oxford, was founded by Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1437. He expended upon its erection £4,545, and procured considerable revenues for it out of lands of the alien priories dissolved just before that time. Magdalene College, Oxford, was founded by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, in 1458, and soon became one of the richest colleges in Europe. King's College, Cambridge, was founded by Henry VI. in 1441. Queens' College, Cambridge, was founded by Margaret of Anjou, in 1448; and Catherine Hall, Cambridge, was founded by Robert Woodlark, third provost of King's College, in 1473.

Besides these, Henry VI. founded Eton College, and Thomas Hokenorton, Abbot of Osney, founded the schools in Oxford, in 1439. Before that time the professors of several sciences in both universities read their lectures in private houses, at very inconvenient distances from each other. To remedy this inconvenience, schools were erected in both universities at this period. Hokenorton's schools comprehended the teaching of divinity, metaphysics, natural and moral philosophy, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, music, logic, rhetoric, and grammar. They required liberal aid from other benefactors, and they found these in the noble Humphrey of Gloucester, and the two brothers Kemp, the one Archbishop of York and the other Bishop of London. They were completed in 1480, including Duke Humphrey's noble library, the nucleus of the present Bodleian, which was refounded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1597. The quadrangle, containing the schools of Cambridge, was completed in 1475.

Up to this period Scotland had possessed no university whatever, and its youth had been obliged to travel to foreign universities for their education. But now the University of St. Andrews was founded in 1410, and obtained a charter in 1411 from Bishop Wardlaw, which was confirmed by the Pope in 1412, and by James I. in 1431. The great need of such an institution was soon evidenced by the university becoming famous. In 1456 Kennedy, the successor of Wardlaw, founded the College of St. Salvator in that city; and in 1450 William Turnbull, the Bishop of Glasgow, founded the University of that city; and in the same year was founded the college or faculty of arts in Glasgow, King James II. taking both college and university under his especial patronage and protection. This college received a handsome endowment from James, Lord Hamilton, and his lady, Euphemia, Countess of Douglas, in 1459.

The castles erected during this period are few. The wars of the Roses brought the force of cannon and gunpowder against the massive erections of the barons of past ages, and many a terrible stronghold was demolished. But there was, from the beginning of these wars, little leisure for repairing, or for building new castles. The proprietors, for the most part, were killed or reduced to ruin, and the workmen shared the same fate, so that labour became too scarce and dear for such great undertakings. Scotland was affected by similar circumstances.

The castles of this period bear unmistakable traces of the Perpendicular style, which was prevalent in the ecclesiastical architecture of the age. That portion of Windsor built by William of Wykeham, though much altered, retains some marked and good features of this age. The exterior of Tattershall Castle, in Lincolnshire, remains nearly unaltered. All the castles of this time blend more or less of the domestic character, and tended towards that style which prevailed in the next century under the name of Tudor. Another great change in the castellated architecture of this period was the use of brick in their construction. Bricks, though introduced into Britain by the Romans, had gone almost out of use till the reign of Richard II.; now they were in such favour that the castles of Tattershall, Hurstmonceux, and Caistor were built chiefly of them, as Thornbury Castle was in the next century. Hurstmonceux, in Sussex, was erected in 1448 on the plan of Porchester Castle. It was a stupendous building, of which the ruins now remain, forming a regular parallelogram of 180 feet square, flanked by seventeen octagon towers, and with a fine machicolated gateway forming the keep. Tattershall, in Lincolnshire, built in 1455, is erected in the style of the ancient keep, a huge square tower with polygonal turrets at the angles. Caistor, in Norfolk, erected about 1450, was remarkable for two very large circular brick towers at the northern angle, one of which remains.

But the castles and the mansions of this period possessed frequently so many features and qualities in common, that some of them are actual hybrids, the uniting links of the two kinds of houses. They had alike towers, battlements, and moats, and the chief apartments looked into the interior quadrangle as the safest. Oxburgh Hall, in Norfolk, is one of this mixed class. Though called a hall, it is moated, and has a massive gateway of a remarkable altitude. Raglan Castle, built in the reign of Edward IV., has more of the true castellated style; Warwick and Windsor, more of the union of the two styles. At the same time such castles as had their gateways battered down, and rebuilt at this period, present in them all the older characteristics of castellated buildings. Such is the gateway of Carisbrooke Castle, built in the reign of Edward IV., and the west gate of Canterbury, built towards the close of the fourteenth century, which retain the stem old circular towers, lighted only by mere loopholes and oeillets.

The style of ecclesiastical architecture prevailing through this century, and to the middle of the next, is that called the Perpendicular. It appears to have commenced about 1377, or at the commencement of the reign of Richard II., just twenty years prior to this century, and it terminated at the Reformation, in the reign of Henry VIII. The Reformation was anything but a reformation in architecture. That great convulsion broke up the period of a thousand years, during which, from the first introduction of Christianity into this island, this peculiar character of architecture, often called Gothic, but more properly Christian, had been progressing and perfecting itself. The Western princes and prelates, evidently copying the Grecian in their columns, but adding curves and ornaments unknown to the Greeks, and introducing principles of pliancy, and of long and lofty aisles, from the suggestions of the forests, in which they were accustomed to wander, and the linden groves which they planted, originated a new school of architecture, in many particulars far exceeding that of the classic nations. No church took up and perpetuated this noble Christian architecture more cordially and more inspiredly than the Catholic. Over the whole of Europe, wherever the Roman Church prevailed, it erected its churches and monasteries in a spirit of unrivalled grandeur and beauty. In architecture, in music, and in painting, it acquitted itself royally towards the public, however it might fail in spirit, in doctrine, or in discipline. The remains of painted windows, to say nothing of the productions of such men as Raphael, Michael Angelo, Guido, and a host of others, who drew their inspiration from the devotions of that church, are sufficient to excite our highest admiration; and the sublime anthems which resounded through their august and poetical temples, through what are called "the Dark Ages," were well calculated to enchain the imagination of minds not deeply reflective or profoundly informed.

In every country we find, moreover, a different style in all these arts—music, painting, and architecture; demonstrating the exuberance of genius turned into these channels during long centuries, when all others, except warfare, seemed closed. England had its distinctive style in these matters, and in architecture this Perpendicular style was the last. During its later period it considerably deteriorated, and with the Reformation it went out. In England sufficient power and property were left to the Anglican Church to enable it to preserve the majority of its churches, and many of its conventual buildings: in Scotland the destruction was more terrible. There public opinion took a great leap from Catholicism to the simplicity and sternness of the school of John Knox; and in consequence of his celebrated sermon at Perth, in which he told his congregation that to effectually drive away the rooks they must pull out their nests, almost every convent and cathedral, except that of Glasgow, was reduced to a ruin.

Of the Perpendicular style we have many churches throughout the country, and still more into which it has been more or less introduced into those of earlier date in repairs and restorations. Every county, and almost every parish, can show us specimens of this style, if it be only in a window, a porch, or a buttress. Rickman is of opinion that half the windows in English edifices over the kingdom are of this style. Whilst our neighbours on the Continent were indulging themselves in the flamboyant style, and loading their churches with the most exuberant ornament, as in the splendid cathedrals of Normandy and Brittany, our ancestors were enamoured of this new and more chaste style. There are writers who regard the perpendicular lines of this style as an evidence of a decline in the art. We cannot agree with that opinion. The straight, continuous mullions of the Perpendicular are—combined with the rich and abundant ornaments of other portions of the buildings, as the spandrils enriched with shields, the finely-wrought and soaring canopies, and crocketed finials, the canopied buttresses, the groined roofs and fan-tracery of ceilings—a pleasure to the eye, when chastely and richly designed.

The windows of this style at once catch the observation of the spectator. The mullions, running through from bottom to top, give you, instead of the flowing tracery of the Decorated style, a simple and somewhat stiff heading; but the stiffness is in most instances relieved by the heading of each individual section being cuspated, and the upper portions of the window presenting frequent variations, as in the grand western window of Winchester Cathedral. Some of these windows, with their cinquefoils and quatrefoils, approach even to the Decorative. Amongst the finest windows of this kind are those of St. George's, Windsor, of four lights; the clerestory windows of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, of five. The east window of York Cathedral is of superb proportions. The window of the Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, is extremely rich and peculiar in its character. Those of the Abbey Church of Bath have the mullions alternating, by the perpendicular line being continued from the centre of each arch beneath it.

The mullions in this style are crossed at right angles by transoms, converting the whole window into a series of panels; for panelling in the Perpendicular style is one of its chief characteristics, being carried out on walls, doors, and, in many cases, even roofs and ceilings. Take away the arched head of a window, and you convert it at once into an Elizabethan one.

Every portion of a Perpendicular building has its essential characteristics: its piers, its buttresses, its niches, its roofs, porches, battlements, and ornaments, which we cannot enumerate here. They must be studied for themselves. We can only point out one or two prominent examples.

Many of the buildings of this style are adorned with flying buttresses, which are often pierced, and rich in tracery, as those of Henry VII.'s Chapel. The projection of the buttresses in King's College Chapel, Cambridge, is so great that chapels are built between them. Many of these buttresses are very rich with statuary niches and wrought canopies. Pinnacles are used profusely in this style; but in St. George's, Windsor, and the Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, the buttresses run up, and finish square.

Panelling, as we have said, is one of the most striking features of the Perpendicular style. This is carried to such an extent in most of the richly-ornamented buildings, that it covers walls, windows, roofs; for the doors and windows are only pierced panels. St. George's, Windsor, is a fine example of this; but still finer is Henry VII.'s Chapel, which, within and without, is almost covered with panelling. King's College Chapel, Cambridge, is another remarkable example, which is all panelled, except the floor. The roof of this chapel is one of the richest specimens of the fan-tracery in the kingdom. Amongst the most graceful ornaments of this style are the angels introduced into cornices, and as supporters of shields and corbels for roof-beams, rich foliated crockets, and flowers exquisitely worked, conspicuous amongst them being the Tudor flower.

Some of the finest steeples in the country belong to this style. First and foremost stands the unrivalled open-work tower of St. Nicholas, Newcastle-on-Tyne. This forms a splendid crown in the air, composed of four flying buttresses, springing from the base of octagonal turrets, and bearing at their intersection an elegant lantern, crowned with a spire. From this have been copied that of St. Giles's, Edinburgh, that of the church of Linlithgow, and the college tower of Aberdeen. Boston, Derby, Taunton, Doncaster, Coventry, York, and Canterbury boast noble steeples of this style.

The arches of the Perpendicular are various; but none are so common as the flat, four-centred arch. This in doors, and in windows also, is generally enclosed by a square plane of decoration, appearing as a frame, and this mostly surmounted by a dripstone; the spandrels formed betwixt the arch and frame being generally filled by armorial shields, or ornamental tracery. In some doorways there is an excess of ornament. The Decorative style in this country, or the florid abroad, has nothing richer. Every part is covered with canopy-work, flowers, heraldic emblems, and emblazoned shields. Such is the doorway of King's College Chapel, Cambridge; and such are the chapels of Henry V. and Henry VII. at Westminster.

The groined roofs of the Perpendicular style are noble, and often profusely ornamented. The intersections of the ribs of these groined roofs are often shields richly emblazoned in their proper colours. The vaulted roof of the cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral is studded with above 800 shields, of kings and other benefactors; and the whole presents a perfect blaze of splendour. Some of these groined roofs are adorned with a ramification of ribs, running out in a fan-shape, circumscribed by a quarter or half-circle rib, the intervals filled up with ornament. The cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral present, perhaps, the first specimen of the fan-tracery roof; and after that King's College Chapel, Cambridge, Henry VII.'s Chapel, and the Abbey Church at Bath. The Red Mount Chapel, at Lynn, in Norfolk, is a unique and very beautiful specimen of the Perpendicular, not only having a richly ornamental roof of this kind, but though much injured by time, displaying in every part of it design and workmanship equally exquisite. Henry VII.'s Chapel and the Divinity School at Oxford have pendants which come down as low as the springing line of the fans.

A simpler roof, but quaint and impressive in its appearance, is the open one—that is, open to the roof framing. Here, as all is bare to the eye, the whole framework of beams and rafters has been constructed for effect. The wood-work forms arches, pendants, and pierced panels of various form and ornament. Such are the roofs of Westminster Hall, Crosby Hall (just removed), Eltham Palace, the College of Christ Church, Oxford, and many an old baronial hall and church throughout the country.

Specimens of this style of architecture in whole or in part will meet the reader in every part of England, Wales, and Scotland; and it should be remembered that it is an especial and exclusively English style, no other country possessing it. In Scotland Melrose Abbey and Roslin Chapel present fine specimens of the Perpendicular, the latter one displaying some singular variations, the work of foreign artists.

When we descend from the military castle to more domestic architecture, we find the large houses of the gentry, or nobility, though totally incapable of resisting cannon, yet frequently battlemented, flanked with turrets, and surrounded by the flooded moat. The large houses of this period were generally built round one or two quadrangles. These buildings often possessed much variety of exterior detail: a great arched gateway with the armorial escutcheon above it; projections, recesses, tall chimneys, flanking buttresses, handsome oriel windows, and pointed gables, terminated by some animal belonging to the emblazonry of the family. They were commonly adorned with fanes, in the form of the military banner of the chief, duly emblazoned in proper colours. Within, the great hall, with its open groined roof, the kitchen, and the buttery, cut the principal figure. At the upper end of the hall was the daÏs or raised part, on which stood the table of the lord and his immediate family or particular guests; and below the great salt-cellar sat the remainder of the establishment. At the lower end was commonly a music gallery. The fire was still frequently in the centre of the hall, and there was a hole in the roof to permit the smoke to escape, as at Penshurst, where the front of the music gallery is true Perpendicular. In other houses there were large open fireplaces, the mantelpieces of which were frequently richly carved with the armorial shields of the family.

The floors were still strewn with fresh rushes instead of a carpet, and the walls were hung with arras, which clothed them, and at the same time kept out cold draughts. Plaster ceilings were yet unknown. The greater portion of these houses, however, was required for the sleeping apartments of the numerous retainers.

In the humbler halls, granges, and farmhouses, the same plan of building round a quadrangle was mostly adhered to, and a large number of such houses were of framed timber, with ornamental gables and porches, and displaying much carving. Great Chatfield manor-house in Wiltshire, Harlaxton in Lincolnshire, Helmingham Hall, Norfolk, Moreton Hall in Cheshire, and probably some of the framed timber houses of Lancashire, as the Hall-in-the-Wood, Smithell's, Speke Hall, &c., in whole or in part, date from this period. Ockwells, in Berkshire, is another of the fine old timber houses of this century.

In the towns the houses were also chiefly of wood. The streets were extremely narrow, and the upper storeys of the houses projected over the lower ones, so that you might almost shake hands out of the third or fourth storey windows. This was the cause of such frequent fires as occurred in London. Many of the small houses in these narrow streets were adorned with abundance of carving. The houses or inns of the great barons, prelates, and abbots were extensive, and surrounded inner courts. Here, during Parliament, and on other grand occasions, the owners came with their vast retinues. We are told that the Duke of York lodged with 400 men in Baynard's Castle, in 1457. The Earl of Warwick had his house in Warwick Lane, still called after it, where he could lodge 800 men. At another house of his called the Herber, meaning an inn, the Earl of Salisbury, his father, lodged with 500 men. Still more extensive must have been the abodes of the Earls of Exeter and Northumberland, who occasionally brought retinues of from 800 to 1,500 men. The sites of these great houses are yet known, and bear the names of their ancient owners, but the buildings themselves have long vanished. The great houses of Scotland still kept up the show of feudal strength and capability of defence. The peels, or Border towers, yet bear evidence of the necessity of stout fortification in those times. We may form some idea of the devastation made amongst private dwellings in the Wars of the Roses, from the statement of John Rous, the Warwick antiquary, who says that no fewer than sixty villages, some of them large and populous, with churches and manor-houses, had been destroyed within twelve miles of that town. From all that we can learn, the common people of this age were but indifferently lodged, and the mansions of the great were more stately than comfortable.

Though such extensive destruction of the statuary which adorned both the exterior and interior of our churches took place at the Reformation, sufficient yet remains to warrant us in the belief that the fifteenth surpassed every prior century in its sculpture. The very opposition which the Wycliffites had raised to the worship and even existence of images, seems to have stimulated the Church only the more to put forth its strength in this direction. Sculptors, both foreign and English, therefore received the highest encouragement, and were in the fullest employ. The few statues which yet remain in niches, on the outside of our cathedrals, especially those on the west end of the Cathedral of Wells, though probably not the best work of the artists, are decided proofs of their ability. The effigies of knights and ladies extended on their altar tombs received grave damage, with the rest of the ecclesiastical art, from the misguided zeal of the reformers, yet many such remain of undoubted beauty, and the chantries, which were in this century erected over the tombs of great prelates, are of the most exquisite design and workmanship. Such are those in Winchester Cathedral of Bishops Wykeham, Beaufort, and Waynflete. The shrine of Bishop Beaufort, in particular, is a mass of Portland stone, carved like the finest ivory, and is a most gorgeous specimen of a tomb of the Perpendicular period. Henry V.'s chantry, in Westminster Abbey, is the only one erected in this period to royalty, and it is a monument of high honour to the age.

The names of some of the artists of this era are preserved. Thomas Colyn, Thomas Holewell, and Thomas Poppehowe, executed, carried over, and erected in Nantes, in 1408, the alabaster tomb of the Duke of Brittany. Of the five artists who executed the celebrated tomb of Richard, Earl of Warwick, in the Beauchamp Chapel, four were English, and the fifth was a Dutch goldsmith. Besides the great image of the earl, there were thirty-two images on this monument. These were all cast by William Austin, a founder of London, clearly a great genius, on the finest latten (brass), and gilded by Bartholomew Lambespring the Dutch goldsmith. The monument and the superb chapel in which it stands cost £2,481 4s. 7d., equivalent to £24,800 now.

Most of the monumental brasses which abound in our churches were the work of this period. There are some of much older date, but, during this century they were multiplied everywhere, and afforded great scope for the talents of founders, engravers, and enamellers.

In painting, the age does not appear to have equally excelled. There was, unquestionably, abundance of religious pictures on the walls of our churches, and the images themselves were painted and gilt; but there do not seem to have existed artists who had a true conception of the sublimity of their pursuit. The painting of such works was undertaken by the job, by painters and stainers. John Prudde, glazier in Westminster, undertook to "import from beyond seas glass of the finest colours, blue, yellow red, purple, sanguine, and violet," and with it glaze the windows of the Beauchamp Chapel. Brentwood, a stainer of London, was to paint the west wall of the chapel "with all manner of devices and imagery;" and Christian Coliburne, painter, of London, was to "paint the images in the finest oil colours." The great Earl of Warwick bargained with his tailor to paint the scenes of his embassy to France, for which he was to receive £1 8s. 6d. The "Dance of Death," so common on the Continent in churches and churchyards, made also so famous by Holbein, was copied from the cloister of the Innocents in Paris, and painted on the walls of the cloister of St. Paul's. It was a specimen of the portrait painting of the age, for it contained the portraits of actual persons, in different ranks of life, in their proper dresses. The portraits of our kings, queens, and celebrated characters, done at this time, are of inferior merit.

Gilding was in great request, not only for ornamenting churches and their monuments, but for domestic use, the precious metals being very scarce, and therefore copper and brass articles were commonly silvered or gilt. But it was in the illumination of manuscripts that the artistic genius of the time was, more than almost in any other department, displayed. The colours used are deemed inferior in splendour to those of the fourteenth century, but the illuminations are superior in drawing and power of expression. The terror depicted in the faces of the Earl of Warwick's sailors in expectation of shipwreck, and the grief in those who witnessed his death, are evidences of the hand of a master. Many of the portraits of the leading characters of the age are to be found in these illuminations; and they afford us the most lively views of the persons and dresses of our ancestors of that day—their arms, ships, houses, furniture, manners, and employments. But the art of printing was already in existence, and before it the beautiful art of illumination fell and died out.

As the feudal system decayed, the kings of England no longer depended on their barons appearing in the field with their vassals, but they bargained with different leaders to furnish men at stated prices, which, as we have shown, were high. It was only in cases of rebellion and intestine struggle that they summoned all their military tenants to raise the people in mass, and the same summonses were issued to the archbishops, bishops, and all the principal clergy, to arm all their followers, lay and clerical, and march to the royal standard.

The pictures of battles and sieges at this period give us an odd medley of bows and arrows, crossbows, spears, cannon, and hand-guns. The old weapons were not left off, because the new ones were too imperfect and too difficult of locomotion to supersede them. The cannons, though often of immense bore and weight, throwing balls of from one to five hundredweight, were, for the most part, without carriages, and therefore difficult and tardy in their operations. The Scots were the first to anticipate the modern gun-carriage, by what they called their "carts of war," which carried two guns each, while many of the guns of the English required fifty horses to drag them. They had, however, smaller guns; as culverins, serpentines, basilisks, fowlers, scorpions, &c. The culverins were a species of hand-gun in general, fired from a rest, or from the shoulder. The Swiss had 10,000 culverins at the famous battle of Morat. These hand-guns are said to have been first brought into England by Edward IV. on his return from Flanders in 1471. Ships were also supplied with small guns.

The trade of England continued to flourish and extend itself through this century, in spite of the obstacles and ruinous effects of almost perpetual war. Our kings, however warlike they might be, were yet very sensible of the advantages of commerce, and during this century made numerous treaties in its favour. At the same time, it is curious that, even when two countries were at war, such was the spirit of trade, that the merchants went on trading whenever they could, just as if there was no war at all. This was the case, especially between England and Flanders. Our monarchs were already ambitious of reigning supreme masters of the seas, and this doctrine was as jealously urged upon them by the nation. In a rhyming pamphlet, written about 1433, and to be found in Hakluyt (Vol. I., p. 167), the writer says, that "if the English keep the seas, especially the main seas, they will compell all the world to be at peace with them, and to court their friendship."

Henry IV., though harassed by the difficulties of a usurped crown, strenuously set himself to promote commerce, and to put an end to the continual depredations committed upon each other by the English and the merchants of the Hanse Towns, as well as those of Prussia and Livonia, subject to the grand master of the Teutonic order of knights.

Henry V. was as victorious at sea as on land; and by his fleet, under his brother, the great Duke of Bedford, in 1416, and again in 1417, the Earl of Huntingdon being his admiral, swept the seas of the united fleets of France and Genoa, and made himself complete master of the ocean during his time. This ascendency was lost under the disastrous reign of Henry VI., but was regained by Edward IV., a monarch who, notwithstanding his voluptuous character, was fully alive to the vast benefits accruing to a nation from foreign trade, and thought it no dishonour to be, if not a merchant-prince, a prince-merchant. He had ships of his own, and in time of peace he did not suffer them to remain useless in harbour, but freighted them with goods on his own account, and grew rich by traffic.

Notwithstanding all this, the nation was not yet much more enlightened as to the real principles of trade than it was in the previous century. The same absurd restrictions were in force against foreign merchants. Such foreign merchants were required to lay out all the money received for goods imported in English merchandise. No gold or silver coin, plate or bullion, was, on any account, to be carried out of the kingdom. Banks were now established in most countries, and bills of exchange had been in use since the thirteenth century—so that these remedied, to a large extent, this evil; but it is clear that where the exports of a country exceeded its imports, the balance must be remitted in cash; and the commercial men were clever enough to evade all the laws of this kind. No fact was so notorious as that the coinage of England abounded in all the countries to which she traded.

Besides the prohibition of carrying out any English coin or even bullion, foreign merchants were to sell all the goods they brought within three months, but they were not to sell any of them to other merchant strangers, and when they arrived in any English town they were assigned to particular hosts, and were to lodge nowhere else. Yet, under all these obstacles, our commerce grew, and our merchants extended their voyages to ports and countries which they had not hitherto frequented. In 1413 they fitted out ships in the port of London for Morocco, having a cargo of wool and other merchandise valued at £24,000, or £240,000 of our money. This raised the ire of the Genoese, who seized these precious ships; but Henry IV. soon made ample reprisals by granting to his subjects letters of marque to seize the ships and goods of the Genoese wherever they could be found. And so well did the English kings follow this up, that we find them in Richard III.'s reign not only successfully competing with the Genoese, but obtaining a footing in Italy itself, and establishing a consul at Pisa. Consuls, or, as they were then called, governors, of the English traders abroad, were also employed during this period in Germany, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Flanders.

From the Froissart MS. in the British Museum.

FROISSART PRESENTING HIS BOOK OF LOVE POEMS TO RICHARD II. IN 1395.

ON HIS RETURN TO ENGLAND IN 1395, AFTER AN ABSENCE OF TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS, SIR JOHN FROISSART HAD AN INTERVIEW WITH THE KING, TO WHOM HE PRESENTED HIS BOOK OF LOVE POEMS. "THE ROMANCE OF MELIADOR."