y character, eleven
belonged to the clergy, and seventeen were of the common people. A
century before Chaucer's time, when the feudal spirit was still
all-powerful, there were but two classes of men thought worthy of
consideration, the knighthood and the clergy; and in the romances of
chivalry knights and priests exclusively composed the _dramatis
personae_. But the slow progress of the masses, in whom lies the chief
strength of a nation, becomes visible in Chaucer's time. In the towns
the tradesmen were rising to wealth and consideration. In the country
the yeomanry--the laborers and farmers--were throwing off their
serfdom, and emerging from the chrysalis of obscurity in which they had
long been hidden. At Cressy and Poitiers the English archers disputed
with the knighthood the honors of victory. While Chaucer was planning
the "Canterbury Tales," introducing into his gallery of contemporary
portraits more figures of tradesmen than of knights or priests, the
Peasant Revolt took place; the common people, long trodden in the dust,
rose in defence of their rights as men, and John Ball, the "mad priest
of Kent," asked questions of the yeomen about him which showed how
surely the Middle Ages were becoming a part of the past. "By what right
are they whom we call lords greater folk than we? * * * If we all came
of the same father and mother, of Adam and Eve, how can they say or
prove that they are better than we, if it be not that they make us gain
for them by our toil what they spend in their pride?" * * * "When Adam
delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"[26] As in the history
of Chaucer's time, so in his "Canterbury Tales" we perceive the decline
of feudal and priestly tyranny which had gone hand in hand: the one
keeping up a perpetual state of war and violence; the other limiting
and enfeebling the human intellect, the activity of which could alone
raise mankind out of barbarism.

The passion for war and for a military life which had kept Europe in a
state of constant disturbance during the Middle Ages, which had brought
about the Hundred Years' struggle between England and France, and which
had found its worst issue in the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth
century, had, in the sixteenth century largely spent its force. The
pomp and luxury of chivalry had lessened the activity of military
feelings. The expense entailed by chivalric pageantry had diminished
the power of the nobles over their dependents. Many feu