English History in the Secondary School
C. B. NEWTON, Editor.
III. ADVANCE AND RETROGRESSION; THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR.
Progress is the keynote of the period we have now reached. The rise of the House of Commons, extending over the last of the thirteenth and first of the fourteenth centuries, the great laws of Edward I’s reign, the growth of commerce, the national spirit induced by the national triumphs at Crecy and Poitiers are some of the larger landmarks in the forward march of the English nation during the hundred years following Henry III. Even the troubled years which followed the black death, the upheavals in society and religion in the latter fourteenth century, were the throes of progress. Then, but for the brief glories of Henry V, comes a time of halting—the miserable end of the long and useless conflict with France, the turbulence and lawlessness of the baronage, the weakness of the king, all combine to bring about a period of retrogression, when the pulse of the nation beats low and the tides of progress were stayed. Soon the purging bloodshed of the Wars of the Roses and the strong hand of the Tudors started once more the healthy growth which had been checked. Some such general survey, presented, perhaps on the blackboard by a line of the kind used to indicate seismic disturbances, or given in some brief direct notes taken down verbatim, will serve as a clearer of the atmosphere, an indicator of the trend of things during this difficult period.