The Political Songs of England: From the Reign of John to that of Edward II

Few historical documents are more interesting or important than the contemporary songs in which the political partizan satirised his opponents and stirred up the courage of his friends, or in which the people exulted over victories gained abroad against their enemies or at home against their oppressors, or lamented over evil counsels and national calamities. Yet, though a few specimens have been published from time to time in collections of miscellaneous poetry, such as those of Percy and Ritson, and have never failed to attract attention, no book specially devoted to ancient Political Songs has yet appeared.

The quantity of such productions has generally varied with the character of the age. They were frequent from a very early period in other countries of Europe, as well as England. It would be easy to produce proofs that in our island they were very numerous in Saxon times,—a few specimens, indeed, have escaped that destruction which visits the monuments of popular and temporary feeling before all others; and for years after the Norman conquest the oppressed people continued to sing the songs of former days at their rustic festivals or amid their everyday labours. As the feelings which caused them to be remembered died away gradually before the weight of a new political system, a new class of songs also arose. From the Conquest to the end of the twelfth century, the political songs of the Anglo-Normans were in a great measure confined, as far as we can judge from the few specimens that are left, to laudatory poems in Latin, or to funereal elegies on princes and great people. Yet we can hardly doubt that, with the turbulent barons of these troublous times, the harp of the minstrel must have resounded frequently to subjects of greater present excitement.

With the beginning of the thirteenth century opened a new scene of political contention. It is amid the civil commotions of the reign of John, that our manuscripts first present traces of the songs in which popular opinion sought and found a vent, at the same time that the commons of England began to assume a more active part on the stage of history. The following reign was a period of constant excitement. The weak government of Henry the Third permitted every party to give free utterance to their opinions and intentions, and the songs of this period are remarkably bold and pointed. These effusions are interesting in other points of view besides their connexion with historical events; they illustrate in a remarkable manner the history of our language; they show us how Latin, Anglo-Norman, and English were successively the favourite instruments by which the thoughts of our ancestors were expressed; and collaterally they show us how the clerk (or scholar) with his Latin, the courtier with his Anglo-Norman, and the people with their good old English, came forward in turns upon the scene. In our Songs we see that, during the earlier part of the reign of the third Henry, the satirical pieces which inveighed against the corruptions of the state and demanded so loudly their amendment, are all in Latin, which is as much as to say that they came from the scholastic part of the people, or those who had been bred in the universities, then no small or unimportant part of the community. They seem to have led the way as bold reformers; and the refectory of the monastery not less than the baronial hall rang frequently with the outbursts of popular feeling. The remarkable and highly interesting declaration of the objects and sentiments of the Barons, which was published after the battle of Lewes, is written in Latin. Amid the Barons’ wars was composed the first political song in English that has yet been found. It is remarkable that all the songs of this period which we know, whether in Latin, Anglo-Norman, or English, are on the popular side of the dispute—all with one accord agree in their praise and support of the great Simon de Montfort.