The series was actively continued during the fifteenth century, when we find, besides others, the romances of Iwain and Gawain, Sir Percival, and Sir Cleges; The Sowdon (Sultan) of Babylon; The Aunturs (Adventures) of Arthur, Sir Amadas, The Avowing of Arthur, and The Life of Ipomidoun; The Wars of Alexander, The Seven Sages (later version, edited by Wright); Torrent of Portugal, Sir Gowther, Sir Degrevant, Sir Eglamour, Le Bone Florence of Rome, and Partonope of Blois; the prose version of Merlin, the later version of Sir Guy of Warwick, and the verse Romance, of immense length, of The Holy Grail; Emare, The Erl of Tolous, and The Squire of Low Degree.  Towards the end of the century, when the printing-press was already at work, we find Caxton greatly busying himself to continue the list.  Not only did he give us the whole of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, “enprynted and fynysshed in thabbey Westmestre the last day of Iuyl, the yere of our lord MCCCCLXXXV”; but he actually translated several romances into very good English prose on his own account, viz. Godefroy of Boloyne (1481), Charles the Grete (1485), The Knight Paris and the fair Vyene (1485), Blanchardyn and Eglantine (about 1489), and The Four Sons of Aymon (about 1490).  We must further put to the credit of the fifteenth century the remarkable English version of the Gesta Romanorum, and many more versions by Caxton, such as The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, The Life of Jason, Eneydos (which is Virgil’s Aeneid in the form of a prose romance), The Golden Legend or Lives of Saints, and Reynard the Fox.  When all these works are considered, the fifteenth century emerges with considerable credit.

It remains to look at some of the above-named romances a little more closely, in order to see if any of them are in the dialect of Northern England.  Some of them are written by scribes belonging to other parts, but there seems to be little doubt that the following were in that dialect originally, viz. (1) Iwain and Gawain, printed in Ritson’s Ancient Metrical Romances, and belonging to the very beginning of the century, extant in the same MS. as that which contains Minot’s Poems:  (2) The Wars of Alexander (Early English Text Society, 1886), edited by myself; see the Preface, pp. xv, xix, for proofs that it was originally written in a pure Northumbrian dialect, which the better of the two MSS. very fairly preserves.  Others exhibit strong traces of a Northern dialect, such as The Aunturs of Arthur, Sir Amadas, and The Avowing of Arthur, but they may be in a West Midland dialect, not far removed from the North.  In the preface to The Sege of Melayne (Milan) and Roland and Otuel, edited for the Early English Text Society by S.J.  Herrtage, it is suggested that both these poems were by the author of Sir Percival, and that all three were originally in the dialect of the North of England.