Edward, after Poitiers and the capture of the French king, seemed to have brought his kingdom to the height of its power. The country increased in wealth, especially in the wealth which it derived from the wool trade with Flanders. The association of England with the Flemings was close, and many of that nation came over at this time and established a weaving industry in the towns of our eastern counties. But probably the great bulk of the wool that was grown on the backs of English sheep was still taken to the Continent in the unworked state. We may picture to ourselves the long strings of pack-horses, led by carriers, going along the bridle-paths, as we might call them now, bearing the wool to the port whence it should be shipped across Channel. Wheeled vehicles were known and were in use, but it is tolerably certain that most of the carrying was on horseback, until a river was reached which was navigable by the small ships of that day. The roads were not adapted for carts—in spite of the old road-making of the Romans.
A considerable portion of the revenue of the Crown came from the "duties," that is to say the money due according to the arrangements of the law, that were paid to the king's officials by the merchants on the exported wool.
There had been Counts of Flanders ever since the tenth century, and the King of France was their overlord. When the King of England claimed to be King of France, the Count of Flanders, like other feudal vassals, was ready enough to take what advantage he could get from changing his allegiance from one master to the other. The industrial cities of Flanders, such as Ghent and Bruges, had secured great privileges for themselves. Like our own city of London, they had gained most of their privileges in return for sums of money given at one time or another to help their sovereigns in distress. The large degree of independence claimed by these cities, and the power which their wealth gave them, made the position of the rulers of Flanders constantly difficult. They were not independent States, like the Italian cities; but they had far more independence than our London.
England had become by this time a land possessing many beautiful buildings. Even the first of these three Plantagenet Edwards had been a great builder. It is one of the many curious facts about the story of these Middle Ages, in which fighting was almost continual, that they were the date of the building of some of the most stately cathedrals and ecclesiastical buildings both in England and all over Europe. In Spain, nearly from the time that the Moslems first came there, there was building showing much of the Byzantine style, as it was called, from Byzantium or Constantinople.
BYZANTINE STYLE OF ARCHITECTURE.
Capital and column from St. Sophia.
But the most beautiful and impressive buildings were in what is known as the Gothic style, which had many varieties, but of which the striking feature is that the tops, the highest points, of the arches came to an angle, or peak, and were not rounded as was the style of the arch in the older buildings, called Norman, which were before them. Arch is from Latin arcus, a bow, and the Norman arch was of the rounded shape of a bow when the string is pulled back to discharge the arrow. The Gothic form of the arch is said to have been copied by its builders from the form which the corner poles of the primitive Gothic houses naturally took when they were brought together at the top to form the angle of the roof, as described on [p. 100]. This name of Gothic for this glorious architecture is a little confusing, first because we made the acquaintance of the Goths a long time before we read of the Normans, and yet what is called the Norman style of building is older than that which is called Gothic; and secondly because the very words Goth and Gothic are apt to suggest to our minds a very barbarous and uncultivated folk.
And so they were, when they came first into this story, from their homes east of the Rhine, but they acquired, by degrees, civilisation from the Roman world which they conquered, and this particular science and art of architecture was carried to great perfection at the date to which we have brought the story now. It is almost enough, to impress upon our minds the idea of that perfection, to remember that the building of Westminster Abbey, as we see it now, was undertaken in the reign of Henry III. in the thirteenth century, and that the beautifully decorated chapel of Henry VII. attached to it was added later, as the name of the king after whom it is called, indicates. There are some traces left of Norman and still older Saxon building in the cloisters, for the original building was a monastery, established in Saxon times, of Benedictine monks.