THE HARVARD CLASSICS

Edited By
CHARLES W. ELIOT, LLD

CHRONICLE AND ROMANCE

FROISSART—MALORY—HOLINSHED

WITH INTRODUCTIONS, NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

1910

BY P.F. COLLIER & SON NEW YORK

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CONTENTS

THE CHRONICLES OF FROISSART,
Translated by Lord Berners
Edited by G.C. Macaulay

• The Campaign of Crecy
• The Battle of Poitiers
• Wat Tyler's Rebellion
• The Battle of Otterburn

 

THE HOLY GRAIL
by Sir Thomas Malory
From The Caxton Edition of The Morte D'Arthur

 

A DESCRIPTION OF ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
Written by William Harrison
for Holinshed's Chronicles

CHAPTER

I.	Of Degrees of People
II.	Of Cities and Towns
III.	Of Gardens and Orchards
IV.	Of Fairs and Markets
V.	Of the Church of England
VI.	Of Food and Diet
VII.	Of Apparel and Attire
VIII.	Of Building and Furniture
IX.	Of Provision for the Poor
X.	Of Air, Soil, and Commodities
XI.	Of Minerals and Metals
XII.	Of Cattle Kept for Profit
XIII.	Of Wild and Tame Fowls
XIV.	Of Savage Beasts and Vermin
XV.	Of Our English Dogs
XVI.	Of the Navy of England
XVII.	Of Kinds of Punishment
XVIII.	Of Universities

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THE CHRONICLES OF FROISSART

By
Jean Froissart

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF MANY OF THE BATTLES OF THE HUNDRED YEAR'S WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Jean Froissart, the most representative of the chroniclers of the later Middle Ages, was born at Valenciennes in 1337. The Chronicle which, more than his poetry, has kept his fame alive, was undertaken when he was only twenty; the first book was written in its earliest form by 1369; and he kept revising and enlarging the work to the end of his life. In 1361 he went to England, entered the Church, and attached himself to Queen Philippa of Hainault, the wife of Edward III, who made him her secretary and clerk of her chapel. Much of his life was spent in travel. He went to France with the Black Prince, and to Italy with the Duke of Clarence. He saw fighting on the Scottish border, visited Holland, Savoy, and Provence, returning at intervals to Paris and London. He was Vicar of Estinnes-au-Mont, Canon of Chimay, and chaplain to the Comte de Blois; but the Church to him was rather a source of revenue than a religious calling. He finally settled down in his native town, where he died about 1410.

Froissart's wandering life points to one of the most prominent of his characteristics as a historian. Uncritical and often inconsistent as he is, his mistakes are not due to partisanship, for he is extraordinarily cosmopolitan. The Germans he dislikes as unchivalrous; but though his life lay in the period of the Hundred Years' War between England and France, and though he describes many of the events of that war, he is as friendly to England as to