is hand he bare a mighty bow.

The use of the bow was specially favoured by both Edward III and his
successor; and when early in the next century the chivalrous Scottish
king, James I (of whom mention will be made among Chaucer's poetic
disciples) returned from his long English captivity to his native land,
he had no more eager care than that his subjects should learn to
emulate the English in the handling of their favourite weapon. Chaucer
seems to be unable to picture an army without it, and we find him
relating how, from ancient Troy,--

Hector and many a worthy wight out went
With spear in hand, and with their big bows bent.

No wonder that when the battles were fought by the people itself, and
when the cost of the wars was to so large an extent defrayed by its
self-imposed contributions, the Scottish and French campaigns should
have called forth that national enthusiasm which found an echo in the
songs of Lawrence Minot, as hearty war-poetry as has been composed in
any age of our literature. They were put forth in 1352, and
considering the unusual popularity they are said to have enjoyed, it is
not impossible that they may have reached Chaucer's ears in his boyhood.

Before the final collapse of the great King's fortunes, and his death
in a dishonoured old age, the ambition of his heir, the proudest hope
of both dynasty and nation, had overleapt itself, and the Black Prince
had preceded his father to the tomb. The good ship England (so sang a
contemporary poet) was left without rudder or helm; and in a kingdom
full of faction and discontent the future of the Plantagenet throne
depended on a child. While the young king's ambitious uncle, John of
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (Chaucer's patron), was in nominal retirement,
and his academical ally, Wyclif, was gaining popularity as the
mouthpiece of the resistance to the papal demands, there were
fermenting beneath the surface elements of popular agitation, which had
been but little taken into account by the political factions of Edward
the Third's reign, and by that part of its society with which Chaucer
was more especially connected. But the multitude, whose turn in truth
comes but rarely in the history of a nation, must every now and then
make itself heard, although poets may seem all but blind and deaf to
the tempest as it rises, and bursts, and passes away. Many causes had
concurred to excite the insurrection which temporarily destroyed the
influence of J