Mediaeval and modern history . class of English society. Theprologue, containing characterizations of the different membersof the company, is the most valuable part of the as in a gallery we have shown to us faithful portraits ofour ancestors of the fourteenth century. 2l8 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS 229. William Langland.—The genial Chaucer shows us thepleasant, attractive side of English society and life; WilliamLangland, another writer of the same period, in a poem calledthe Vision of Piers the Plowman (1362), lights up for us the worldof the poor and the oppressed. This poem quiv
Mediaeval and modern history . class of English society. Theprologue, containing characterizations of the different membersof the company, is the most valuable part of the as in a gallery we have shown to us faithful portraits ofour ancestors of the fourteenth century. 2l8 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS 229. William Langland.—The genial Chaucer shows us thepleasant, attractive side of English society and life; WilliamLangland, another writer of the same period, in a poem calledthe Vision of Piers the Plowman (1362), lights up for us the worldof the poor and the oppressed. This poem quivers with sympathy for the hungry, labor-wornpeasant, doomed to a life of weary routine and hopelessness,despised by haughty lords and robbed by shameless long wars with France had demoralized the nation ; the BlackDeath had just reaped its awful harvest among the ill-clad, ill-fed,and ill-housed poor. Occasional outbursts of wrath against thefavored classes are the mutterings of the storm soon to burst upon. Fig. 42. — Plowing Scene. (From a manuscript of thefourteenth century) the social world in the fury of the Peasants Revolt, and later uponthe religious world in the upheavals of the Reformation. 230. John Wycliffe (i324-1384) and the Lollards. — Foremostamong the reformers and religious writers of the period underreview was John Wycliffe, called the Morning Star of the Ref-ormation. This bold reformer attacked first many of the prac-tices and then certain of the doctrines of the Church. He gave theEnglish people the first translation of the entire Bible in the Englishlanguage. There was no press at this time to multiply editions ofthe book, but by means of manuscript copies it was widely circu-lated and read. Its influence was very great, and from its appear-ance may be dated the beginnings of the Reformation in England. Wychffe did not wholly escape persecution in life, and hisbones were not permitted to rest in peace. His enemies attrib-uted to his
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