Ричард II

The article examines the history of the dynastic marriage of King Richard II of England and the daughter of the Bohemian King and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV Anna of Bohemia, analyzes her role in the life of the English kingdom, as well as the historical consequences of the dynastic marriage for the development of England and the Bohemia.

The article is devoted to the struggle of the «old» and «new» patricians in London at the end of the 14^thcentury. At that time the guild masters, led by the traders of textile goods, opposed the oligarchic merchant regime ofvictualing guilds. In 1381‑1383 the democratic opposition gained the upper hand, and their leader –a draper John Northampton ‑ became mayor of the capital. He organized socio-economic and political reforms in the interests of wide layers of the population.

Geoffrey Chaucer is a representative of an early English humanistic literature, who in his «The Canterbury tales» managed to show the whole panorama of social life in England of the XIV century. His short stories reflect the epochal change, the formation of new values and a new elite. Chaucer notes the degradation of the secular and spiritual aristocracy, welcomes the enrichment and strengthening of the third estate, connects it with the future of their country, admires workers-peasants that preserved the moral purity of the «corrupt age» of the poet.