renounce the proud position of a conquering power. In 1363 he had
celebrated the completion of his fiftieth year; and three suppliant kings
had at that time been gathered as satellites round the sun of his success.
By 1371 he had lost all his allies, and nearly all the conquests gained by
himself and the valiant Prince of Wales; and during the years remaining to
him his subjects hated his rule and angrily assailed his favourites. From
being a conquering power the English monarchy was fast sinking into an
island which found it difficult to defend its own shores. There were
times towards the close of Edward's and early in his successor's reign
when matters would have gone hard with English traders, naturally desirous
of having their money's worth for their subsidy of tonnage and poundage,
and anxious, like their type the "Merchant" in Chaucer, that "the sea were
kept for anything" between Middelburgh and Harwich, had not some of them,
such as the Londoner John Philpot, occasionally armed and manned a
squadron of ships on their own account, in defiance of red tape and its
censures. But in the days when Chaucer and the generation with which he
grew up were young, the ardour of foreign conquest had not yet died out in
the land, and clergy and laity cheerfully co-operated in bearing the
burdens which military glory has at all times brought with it for a
civilised people. The high spirit of the English nation, at a time when
the decline in its fortunes was already near at hand (1366), is evident
from the answer given to the application from Rome for the arrears of
thirty-three years of the tribute promised by King John, or rather from
what must unmistakeably have been the drift of that answer. Its terms are
unknown, but the demand was never afterwards repeated.

The power of England in the period of an ascendancy to which she so
tenaciously sought to cling, had not been based only upon the valour of
her arms. Our country was already a rich one in comparison with most
others in Europe. Other purposes besides that of providing good cheer for