Who was then the gentleman?”
Again, under Henry VI, when the peasants of Kent rose, and their allies the sailors took and beheaded the Duke of Suffolk at sea, a satirical song was composed, became popular and has come down to us. As before killing him they had given a mock trial to the king’s favourite, so in the song they present the comedy of his funeral; {213} nobles and prelates are asked to come and sing their responses, and in this pretended burial service, which is in reality a hymn of joy and triumph, the minstrel calls down heavenly blessings on the murderers. At the end the Commons are represented coming in their turn to sing a sarcastic Requiescant in pace over all English traitors.[282]
The renown of the popular rebel, Robin Hood the outlaw, who lived in the twelfth century if he ever lived at all, went on increasing. His manly virtues were extolled; picturesque companions were, later, invented for him: Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, Little John and all the imaginary inhabitants of Sherwood Forest; listeners were told how this pious man, who, even in the worst danger, waited till mass was over before thinking of his safety, boldly robbed great lords and high prelates, but was merciful to the poor;[283] which was an indirect notice to the brigands of the time that they should be careful to discern in their rounds between the tares and the wheat.
The sympathy of the minstrels for ideas of emancipation, which had made such progress in the fourteenth century, was not only evinced in these songs, but also in the remodelled romances recited by them in presence of the nobles, and which henceforth were full of high-flown declarations on the equality of men. The hearer did not take offence; the greater poets, favourites of all that counted, the king himself in his public statements proclaimed liberal truths which it was hardly expected would be acted upon literally. Thus Chaucer {214} celebrates in his most eloquent verse the only true nobility in his eyes, that which comes from the heart.[284] Thus also King Edward I, on summoning the first true English parliament in 1295, declared that he did so inspired by the old maxim which prescribes that what concerns all should be approved by all, proclaiming a principle whence have since issued the most radical reforms of society, and on which the American insurgents founded, centuries later, their claim to independence.[285]
Such direct appeals from the king to his people contributed early to develop among the English the sense of duty, of political rights and responsibilities. In days of trouble, when parliament scarcely yet existed, the same king thought he should explain his conduct to the people and allow them to form an opinion: “The king about this, and about his estate and as to his kingdom, and how the business of the kingdom has come to naught, makes known and wishes that all should know the truth of it; which ensues . . .”[286]
In France the enunciation of liberal principles was frequent in royal edicts, but the emptiness of these fine words and the interested motives which caused them to {215} be used were scarcely veiled at all. Louis X, “le Hutin,” in his ordinance of July 2, 1315, declares that, “as according to the law of nature every one is born free,” he has resolved to enfranchise the serfs on his own estates. He adds, however, that he will do so for money. Three days later, fearing that his benefit is not sufficiently prized, he supplements his first statement by a new one in which his exalted ideas and his present needs are boldly intertwined: “It may be that some, ill-advised and in default of good counsel, might misunderstand such great benefit and favour and wish rather to remain in the baseness of servitude than to come to free estate: wherefore we order and commit to you that, for the aid of the present war, you levy on such persons according to the amount of their property, and the conditions of servitude of each one, as much and sufficiently as the condition and riches of those persons may bear and as the necessity of our war may require.”[287]
Well then might the minstrels imitate the king himself in repeating axioms so well known, and which, according to appearance, there was so little chance of seeing carried out. But ideas, like the seeds of trees falling on the soil, are not lost, and the noble who had gone to sleep to the murmur of verses chanted by the glee-man waked up one day to the tumult of the crowd collected before London, with the refrain of the priest John Ball for its war-cry. And then he had to draw his sword and show by a massacre that the time was not yet come to apply these axioms, and that there was nothing in them save song.
Still were the trees dropping their seeds. Poets and popular singers had thus an influence over social movements, less through the maxims scattered throughout their great works than by those little unpolished pieces, struck off on the moment, which the lesser among them composed and sang for the people, at the cross-roads in {216} times of trouble, or by the peasants’ hearth in ordinary times, as a reward for hospitality.[288]
40. A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY JUGGLER.