The age of Chaucer extended over the period from 1340 to 1400. This age witnessed a meeting of two divergent periods- the old and the new, the medieval and the renaissance. Though the spirit of the middle ages had not yet passed away, the seeds of modernity were being sown. This period of transition and turbulence witnessed striking social, religious and political changes, which directly inspire literary scenarios of the time.
To understand the writings of Chaucer and his contemporaries, we will have to understand the changes which were happening at that time. We know England was quickly left out of the feudal system as opposed to France. The fall of feudalism infused new energy in European society. Although the English people still lived mostly in small, self-sufficient towns, the very fact that Chaucer was a modern poet already indicates a change.
The Socio-Economic and Political Tension:
We should begin by looking at the growing importance and wealth of cities as a result of trade and commerce. In many places, agricultural land was converted into pastures for rearing sheep in order to make more profit from the wool trade. Due to the lucrative wool trade, people no longer needed workers in the fields, and a large number of people started to migrate from the fields to the city. Of course, these mechanisms of social change do not take place abruptly: Thomas More continues to attack the' enclosure' scheme in the reign of Henry VIII, that is to say, the conversion of arable land into pasture. But at least three historical events which have triggered change can be identified: the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and the Peasants' Revolt.
The Hundred Years' War:
In a way, the Hundred Years' War between England and France is a facet of the feudal system of European society. The suggestion of a modern nation-state comes from the transition from medieval to Renaissance Europe. Earlier, the kings used matrimonial alliances to claim the property in a foreign land. And they often called for their throne. English claims on French soil were thus the root cause of the conflict between England and France. During this time, the British Army won its honor by winning the war with France and Scotland. While the war honored the British monarchy on one side, the resources of the Crown on the other side were also depleted. The barons, by this, were becoming powerful and rich. Taking advantage of this changed situation, the barons often made the rich and princes partner in their trade.
Edward II was a weak and capricious king, and after his assassination, Edward III resorted to foreign campaigns to bring back the lost honor of his kingdom. At that time, Edward III's relationship with the King of France was going on in the conflict. Flanders, who was the largest merchant of English wool, played the role of Consiliatore. The alliances of Edward against France in the Netherlands and Rhineland (Germany) were matched by the alliances of Philip VI, the French monarch. The immediate pretext of the protracted Hundred Years ' War was Edward's claim to the French throne through his mother, Isabella, challenging that of Philip VI. Ironically, the same Philip was crowned in 1327 and Edward had made a homage for Gascony in 1329.
In the mid-fourteenth century, a string of successes bolstered English confidence. The Crushing defeat of the Scots at Neville's Cross was immediately followed by the success at Crecy (1346), where English yeomen archers and Welsh knifemen demolished French chivalry. In the triumph of the Black Prince, son of Edward, over the French near Poitiers (1356), where the French king was taken prisoner, military glory and patriotic fanaticism that accompanied these successes reached a peak. Bretigny's peace in 1360 made Edward king of one-third of France, but on England began to tell the financial burden of the war.
Black Death:
On the one hand, where the triumphant war filled the coffers of different upper classes because of the high wages; on the other hand, the whim of nature swapped millions of masses in the form of Black Death (1348-49), a lethal form of highly infectious bubonic plague borne by black rats throughout Europe. Due to the lack of sanitary conditions, the city was more affected than the villages that killed the poor like flies. After the end of 1349, the epidemic revived in 1361, 1362, and 1369. However, with advances in medicine, the black rat was forced out by brown rats who did not carry the disease. The effects of black death; however, decreased the population and labour too became less, but it made rooms for many ecclesial posts fell vacant. Those who had survived started demanding increased wages. It was believed that 40% of England's priests died in the epidemic. This left a large gap, which was hastily filled with underqualified applicants, which ensued the decline in church power and influence that culminated in the English Reformation.
The Peasants' Revolt:
It was, therefore, a time of political unrest and uncertainty: we must not forget that, in the fourteenth century, two kings, Edward III and Richard II, were deposed and executed. In this history, one must see the Peasants ' Revolt of 1381. But let's get some idea of the poor's condition in England first. By 1381, over half of the people did not possess the rights that the Magna Carta (1215) by King John's reign had granted to every ' freeman.' The serf and the villein had livestock status in the household of the master although the above-mentioned factors had begun to push them out of bondage to the comparative freedom of crafts in towns. Theoretically, the workers had an elected representative, the Reeve, supposedly to counterbalance the Steward or the Bailiff. But as the wealth of the towns often dispersed the absentee landlord, the Reeve became the feared enemy of the people, as in the portraits of Chaucer and Langland. The poor had to pay marriage fines or send a son to school, and the inhuman heriot or death-bed tax was responsible for much resentment.
The Poll Tax or head tax was the initial catalyst for the rebellion. The financial burden of the wars forced the government to demand that Parliament approve heavy taxes. But as such taxes usually affected the property classes that controlled Parliament, taxes were levied on even the poorest in 1380. The unexpected outbreak of revolt under Wat Tyler's leadership culminated in the peasants, accustomed to levies for French campaigns, invading London, destroying property and putting the Canterbury archbishop to death. The uprising collapsed equally suddenly, partly because of King Richard II's cleverness and courage, who promptly returned to his promises as soon as the rebels dispersed.
What was the situation in the towns?
Apart from London, all the English cities were smaller than the industrial cities of Flanders and northern Italy. A medium-sized 6 percent English town would have only 3,000 or 4,000 inhabitants, and a city and a country. The other one flowed into size. They had been fortified by walls since there were no policemen in the modern sense. Their social and economic life was dominated by merchants and golds. The merchant guilds were the most powerful and the most important; the craft gilds took second place. Parish golds have also been organized for charitable work. Also engaged in rivalry and competition— in the thirteen-eighties there was practically a battle between the gilds of the old food trade and the newer gilds of the cloth— the gilds were easily identified by their distinctive liveries. They also fought with each other to put up the lively pageantry of Miracles and Moralities on Feast Days, a drama based on the Bible and the lives of the saints.
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