The Fifteenth Century.
There is little in England’s story during the fifteenth century which is memorable or striking. The brief glories of Agincourt, to be sure, inflated the national pride, but whatever the splendors of Henry V’s reign, they were swallowed up in the gloom and disaster of the following decades—the loss of French possessions, the helplessness of the crown, the turbulence of the nobles, the cruel strife of the Roses, the selfish reign of Edward IV, and the monstrosity of Richard III. No new light in literature or religion, no really great name in statecraft appears—nothing until the end of the century, when the first rays of the renaissance were beginning to lighten the horizon, to relieve the dullness and darkness of this profitless century. It has always seemed to me the proverbial dark hour before the dawn.