Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/436

 Hijiory of Domcjiic Manners for its wonderful pomp and niagnificence, and for its oftentatious difplay of wealth ; it was confidered the model of lordly courtefy and high breeding, and was the centre of literature and art ; and circumftances had brought the court of England into intimate connexion with it, fo that the influence of Burgundian fafliions was greater during this period in England than that of the falhions of the court of France. There can be no doubt, too, that the focial charader in England and in France were now beginning to diverge widely from each other. The condition of the lower clafs in France was becoming more and more miferable, and the upper claffes were becoming more licentious and immoral ; whereas, in England, though ferfdom or villanage ftill exilted in name, and in law, the peafantry had been largely enfranchifed, and it was gradually difap- pearing as a fad 5 and their landlords, the country gentry, lived among them in more kindly and more intimate intercourfe, inftead of treating them with tyrannical cruelty, and dragging them off to be flaughtered in their private wars. Increafed commerce had fpread wealth among the middle clalfes, and had brought with it, no doubt, a confiderable increafe of focial comfort. Social manners were ftill very coarfe, but it is quite evident that the efforts of the religious reformers, the Lollards, were improving the moral tone of fociety in the middle and lower claffes. People had, moreover, begun now to dilcufs great focial queftions. The example of this had been given in England in the celebrated poem of "Piers Ploughman," in the middle of the fourteenth century, and fuch queftions were mooted very extenlively by the Lollards, who held as a principle the natural equality of man. This was a dotlrine which was accepted very llowly, and was certainly difcountenanced by the Roman Catholic preachers, who encouraged the belief that the divifion of fociety into diftinft clalTes was a permanent judgment of God, and even invented legends to account for its origin. Long after feudalifm had ceafed, it was difficult to difabufe people of the opinion that the blood which flowed in the veins of a gentleman was of a different kind from that of a peafant, or even from that of a burgher. One of the legendary explanations of thefe diviiions of blood is given by a poetical writer of the reign of Henry VIL, named Alexander Barclay, who has left us feven