becomes restive in his bonds, and at length turns in blind
fury on his oppressors, striking mad blows with his manacled hands.
Trodden into the dust by the iron heel of a tyrannical feudal power, the
peasantry of France had turned on their oppressors, and wreaked a brief
but savage vengeance for ages of wrong. The atrocious cruelties and mad
excesses of the revolted Jacquerie could only have been committed by
those who had been so long treated as brutes that they had acquired
brutish passions and instincts. The English peasantry had not yet
followed the example of their French compeers; but the gathering storm
already darkened the sky, and the mutterings of the thunder were heard.
Superstitiously religious, they hated the ministers of religion who
violated its principles. Born slaves and hopelessly debased and
ignorant, they began to ask the question,--

"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who then was the gentleman?"

Occasionally a rude ballad found its way among the people fiercely
expressive of their scorn of the clergy and their hatred of the rich.
One that was very popular, and has been transmitted to our day, asked,--

"While God was on earth
And wandered wide,
What was the reason
Why he would not ride?
Because he would have no groom
To go by his side,
Nor grudging of no gadeling[2]
To scold nor to chide.

* * * * *

"Hearken hitherward, horsemen,
A tiding I you tell,
That ye shall hang
And harbor in hell!"

But no leader had as yet arisen to give proper voice to the desire for
reformation that burned in the hearts of the common people. The writers
of that age were breathing the intoxicating air of court favor, and
heeded not the sufferings of the common rabble. Froissart, the courtly
canon and chronicler of deeds of chivalry, was writing French madrigals
and amorous ditties for the ear of Queen Philippa, and loved too well
gay society, luxurious feasts, and dainty attire, not to shrink with
disgust from thought of the dirty, uncouth, and miserable herd of
"greasy caps." Gower was inditing fashionable love-songs. Chaucer, who
years after was to direct such telling blows in his Canterbury Tales at
the vices and corruptness of the clergy, was a favorite member of the
retinue of the powerful "John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster," and had
as yet only written long and stately poems on the history of Troilus