The reader can appreciate that the condition of France and Paris was not favorable to the growth of art at this period, which was one of wars between England and France in the territories of the latter. In 1346, Edward III of England won the battle of Crécy; the struggle was continued for the next hundred years at intervals, when the appearance of Joan of Arc (1412-1431) assisted the French. Monasteries were left unmolested, hence the monks near the Belgian border were able to work in comparative peace and quiet. LESSON XI. THE ENGLISH SCHOOL. =The English Polyphonic School= is at once the least important and the most peculiar of all the schools of the Polyphonic Period. It is usually ignored by the writers on early music, not because there was no musical culture, but because there was not continuous and original development. English writers on this phase of musical development are too apt, through a pardonable pride of nationality, to exaggerate the value of British music, and in consulting such authorities, one should be careful to examine thoroughly all proofs of a dominant national school and discard such statements as are not perfectly authenticated. It is hardly the Englishman’s fault that he has had no definite culture which he may call genuinely English, for native composers have had more encouragement in England than usually falls to the lot of a creative musician. Indeed, England has always been a patron of the best in music, native or foreign, and no one nation has, as a whole, been more generous in appreciation; her treatment of Beethoven on his death-bed is a notable example of disinterested generosity. But in real, original, creative art England has had no great past; and especially is this true of the Polyphonic Period.