A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

Before the Black Death, French had been the language of the court, Parliament, and the lawcourts. King Edward himself probably did not speak English with any fluency. French was even taught in the schools, much to the resentment of the bourgeois, whose children, according to a complaint of 1340, “are Compelled to leave the use of their own language, a thing which is known in no other country.” When many clerics who could teach French were eliminated by the Black Death, children in the grammar schools began learning their lessons in English—with both profit and loss, in the opinion of John of Trevisa. They learned grammar more quickly than before, he wrote, but, lacking French, they were at a disadvantage when they “scholle passe the se and travayle in strange londes.” Because of its island limits and earlier development of parliamentary power, England was more cohesive than France, with a greater national feeling, enhanced by growing antagonism to the papacy. Now with the ransoms of two kings, Jean of France and David of Scotland, the triumphs in battle and the territorial gains, England had turned the tables on William the Conqueror. Yet beneath the pride and glory and flow of cash, the effects of war were gnawing at the country. The plunderers of France brought home the habit of brigandage. Many in the invasion forces had been outlaws and criminals to begin with who had joined up for a promised pardon. Others were made lawless and violent by the approved daily practice i...