eath, she plucked the rings from his unresisting hands, and
fled from the palace.

248. Summary.

During this reign the following events deserve especial notice:

1. The acknowledgment of the independence of Scotland.
2. The establishment of the manufacture of fine woolens in England.
3. The beginning of the Hundred Years' War, with the victories of
Cre'cy and Poitiers, the Peace of Bre'tigny, and their social and
political results in England.
4. The Black Death and its results on labor.
5. Parliament enacts important laws for securing greater independence
to the English Church.
6. The rise of modern literature, represented by the works of
Mandeville, Langland, and the early writings of Wycliffe and Chaucer.

Richard II--1377-1399

249. England at Richard's Accession.

The death of the Black Prince (SS238, 241, 247) left his son Richard
heir to the crown. As he was but eleven years old, Parliament
provided that the government during his minority should be carried on
by a council; but John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (S247), speedily
got the control of affairs.

He was an unprincipled man, who wasted the nation's money, opposed
reform, and was especially hated by the laboring classes. The times
were critical. War had again broken out with both Scotland and
France, the French fleet was raiding the English coast, the national
treasury had no money to pay its troops, and the government debt was
rapidly accumulating.

250. The New Tax; the Tyler and Ball Insurrection (1381).

In order to raise money, the government resolved to levy a new form of
tax,--a poll or head tax,--which had been tried on a small scale
during the last year of the previous reign. The apttempt had been
made to assess it on all classes, from laborers to lords.

The imposition was now renewed in a much more oppressive form. Not
only every laborer, but every member of a laborer's family above the
age of fifteen, was required to pay what twould be eequal to the wages
of an able-bodied man for at least several days' work.[1]

[1] The tax on laborers and their families varied from four to twelve
pence each, the assessor having instructions to collect the latter
sum, if possible. The wages of a day laborer were then about a penny,
so that the smallest tax for a family of three would represent the
entire pay for nearly a fortnight's labor. See Pearson's "England in
the Fourteenth Century."

We have already seen that, owing to the ravages