,
When that they any Fleming meant to kill.

Assuredly, again, there is an unmistakably conservative tone in the
"Ballad" purporting to have been sent by him "to King Richard," with
its refrain as to all being "lost for want of steadfastness," and its
admonition to its sovereign to

...shew forth the sword of castigation.

On the other hand, it would be unjust to leave unnoticed the passage,
at once powerful and touching, in the so-called "Parson's Tale" (the
sermon which closes the "Canterbury Tales" as Chaucer left them), in
which certain lords are reproached for taking of their bondmen
amercements, "which might more reasonably be called extortions than
amercements," while lords in general are commanded to be good to their
thralls (serfs), because "those that they clept thralls, be God's
people; for humble folks be Christ's friends; they be contubernially
with the Lord." The solitary type, however, of the labouring man
proper which Chaucer, in manifest remembrance of Langland's allegory,
produces, is one which, beautiful and affecting as it is, has in it a
flavour of the comfortable sentiment, that things are as they should
be. This is--not of course the "Parson" himself, of which most
significant character hereafter, but--the "Parson's" brother, the
"Ploughman". He is a true labourer and a good, religious and
charitable in his life,--and always ready to pay his tithes. In short,
he is a true Christian, but at the same time the ideal rather than the
prototype, if one may so say, of the conservative working man.

Such were some, though of course some only, of the general currents of
English public life in the latter half--Chaucer's half--of the
fourteenth century. Its social features were naturally in accordance
with the course of the national history. In the first place, the slow
and painful process of amalgamation between the Normans and the English
was still unfinished, though the reign of Edward III went far towards
completing what had rapidly advanced since the reigns of John and Henry
III. By the middle of the fourteenth century English had become, or
was just becoming, the common tongue of the whole nation. Among the
political poems and songs preserved from the days of Edward III and
Richard II, not a single one composed on English soil is written in
French. Parliament was opened by an English speech in the year 1363,
and in the previous year the proceedings in the law courts were ordered
to be