Excerpt from Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, Vol. 1: Composed During the Period From the Accession of Edw. III. To That of Ric. III One circumstance strikes us especially when we mm our eye through this collection of Political Poems and Songs - the entire disappearance of the anglo-norman language. Throughout the whole series there are only two pieces in any dialect of the French language, and those, though intimately connected with English poli tics and history, were both composed abroad. On the other hand, the Latin language predominates largely during the whole of the fourteenth century, and even during the earlier part of the fifteenth. This indicates, no doubt, the very deep interest and active part taken by the educated classes - those whose minds had been formed in the Universities - in the political events of the time, and it shows further a considerable degree of mental cultivation among the aristocracy in general, to Whom many of these Latin poems are addressed. It is probable that this was much less the case as we approach the age of the Wars of the Roses, when we find Latin rarely used in these Political Poems, and the few cases in which it is used are of a specially clerical character. Thus, a monk of St. Alban's re counts in Latin verse some of the events of the Wars of the Roses which had happened chiefly in that part of the country, but his object was evidently to remind the monks of that house of the ill-treatment it had experienced, especially from the men of the north. The first poem of this collection introduces us to the commencement of the wars with. France which formed the grand feature of the reign of Edward III. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.