A poem of the latter part of the fifteenth century gives the wishes appropriate to the men and women of the different ranks of French society. Those of the women are most characteristic. Thus, the queen wishes to love God and the king, and to live in peace; the duchess, to have all the enjoyments and pleasures of wealth; the countess, to have a husband who is loyal and brave; the knight's lady, to hunt the stag in the green woods; the lady of gentle blood also loves hunting, and wishes for a husband valiant in war; the chamber maiden takes pleasure in walking in the fair fields by the riversides; while the burgher's wife loves, above all things, a soft bed at night, with a good pillow and clean white sheets. This statement of the characteristic desires of the various classes of French women holds good as well for the English women of that period.
The court of Burgundy, which, during the fifteenth century, was notable for its pomp and magnificence and its ostentatious display of wealth, was regarded as furnishing the models of high courtesy and gentle breeding; and it was the centre of literature and art. Circumstances had brought the court of England into intimate connection with it, so that England was more affected by Burgundy than by any other part of Europe. The social character in England and France, which, to some extent, had followed parallel lines since the Norman conquest, now began to diverge widely. The breakdown of feudalism in England, where it had never been so fully developed as in France, was not contemporaneous with French conditions in this respect. Consequently, in the latter country, the chasm between the lower and the upper strata of society grew ever wider, the lower classes becoming more and more miserable, and the upper more immoral. In England, as we have seen, serfdom disappeared, or existed in name only, and the relation between the country gentry and the peasants became increasingly intimate and kindly. The growth of commerce had spread wealth among the middle classes and had added much to their social comfort. Although social manners were still very coarse, the influence of religious reformers, such as the Lollards, was being felt in an improvement in the moral tone of the middle and lower classes of society. Moreover, the discussion of great social questions had become general among the people. Even in the middle of the fourteenth century, the celebrated poem of _Piers Plowman_ took up such discussions, and one of the tenets of the Lollards was the natural equality of man. In England, conditions were ripe for the advent of a new era, and in the fulness of time there came forth the spirit of new learning, of new industry, of exploration, of investigation, and of religious freedom, to lead the English people into the inheritance for which they had been prepared by those centuries over a part of which hung such a pall as to secure for them the title of the Dark Ages.