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"The Griffon flew forth on his way.

The Pelican did sit and weep, And to himselfé he gan say,

God would that any of Christ's sheep Had heard and ytaké keep

Each a word that here said was, And would it write and well it keep, God would it were, all for his grace."

"Plowman. I answered and said 'I wolde

If for my travail any man would pay.'
Pelican. He said, 'Yes, these that God hath sold,
For they han store of money.'

Plowman. I said, 'Tell me and thou may

Why tellest thou mennés trespace?'
Pelican. He said, 'To amend them in good fay
If God will give me any grace.

"For Christ himself is likened to me,
That for his people died on rood;
As fare I right so fareth he,

He feedeth his birds with his blood.
But these doen evil against God,

And ben his fone under friendés face.
I told them how their living stood:
God amend them for this grace.'"

After telling how the Phoenix was brought to destroy the Griffin, and how with the fall of the Griffin vanished all his following of "ravens, rooks, crows, and pie," the poet ends thus:

"Therefore I pray every man

Of my wyting 2 have me excused.
This writing writeth the Pelican
That thus these people hath despysed.
For I am fresh fully advysed

I will not maintain his manace,
For the devil is often disguised
To bring a man to evil grace.

"Wyteth the Pelican and not me,
For hereof I will not avow,
In high ne in low ne in no degree,
But as a fable take it ye mow.

To Holy Church I will me bow.

Each man to amend him Christ send space;
And for my writing me allow

He that is Almighty for His Grace."

In these poems-written in 1394 and 1395-there is direct reference to the burning as well as the cursing of men charged with heresy. There was already persecution to the death; and the fifteenth century opened with a feeling widely spread among the English people, that many devout men, who in no particular swerved from the faith taught by the Church, were persecuted for a zeal that sought only to make teachers, more than they were, like Chaucer's poor Parson :

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That Cristes gospel gladly woldé preche;
His parischens devoutly wolde he teche.
Benigne he was, and wondur diligent,
And in adversité ful pacient;

And such he was i-provéd ofté sithes.
Ful loth were him to cursé for his tythes,
But rather wolde he yeven out of dowte,
Unto his poré parisschens aboute,

Of his offrynge, and eek of his substaunce.
He cowde in litel thing han suffisance.
Wyd was his parisch, and houses fer asondur,
But he ne lafté not for reyne ne thondur,
In siknesse ne in meschief to visite
The ferrest in his parissche, moch and lite,
Uppon his feet, and in his hond a staf.
This noble ensample unto his scheep he yaf,
That ferst he wroughte, and after that he taughte.
Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte,
And this figúre he addide yit therto,
That if gold rusté, what schulde yren doo?
For if a prest be foul, on whom we truste,
No wondur is a lewid man to ruste;
And schame it is, if that a prest take kepe,
A [filéd] schepperd and a clené schepe;
Wel oughte a prest ensample for to yive,

By his clennesse, how that his scheep schulde lyve.
He setté not his benefice to huyre,

And lefte his scheep encombred in the myre,
And ran to Londone, unto seynté Poules,
To seeken him a chaunterie for soules,
Or with a brethurhedé be withholde;
But dwelte at hoom, and kepté wel his folde,
So that the wolf ne made it not myscarye.
He was a schepperde and no mercenarie;
And though he holy were, and vertuous,
He was to senful man nought dispitous,
Ne of his speché daungerous ne digne,
But in his teching discret and benigne.
To drawé folk to heven by clennesse,
By good ensample, was his busynesse :
But it were eny persone obstinat,
What-so he were of high or lowe estat,

Him wolde he sny bbé scharply for the nones.
A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is.
He waytud after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne makéd him a spicéd conscience,
But Cristés lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, and ferst he folwed it himselve.

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obeyed authority, and trusted in the grace of God to amend those by whose evil lives it was discredited. From the beginning of the world there have been the two great types of human character which produce the forward movements of society by action and reaction on each other. Both desire good. Both know that we inherit every social good that we are born to from the labour, in successive generations, of the wisest of our forefathers. Both know that good institutions may, through human imperfection, and through change in the conditions of society, decay, and require renovation or even removal; and that we have in our turn to build for ourselves and aftercomers what the conditions of our later time may need. But some men are born to dwell especially upon the danger of rash change; others to dwell especially upon the importance of removing what has become useless, repairing or reconstructing what has fallen

tion infinitely higher. But there were religious men who dreaded Lollards, believed that they endangered souls, and shared the opinion of the time that-heresy being an evil which brought many to eternal fire-if the temporal death of a few could check it, it should so be checked. They were doing the work of the enemy of man in sowing tares among the wheat, whatever their intentions; and such men, all the more dangerous when their good lives recommended them to thousands of souls, must be driven out of God's harvest-field. So good men might reason, and did reason, in those times. There were also disorderly men, who scorned religion itself, swelling the cry of Lollards who sought only Christian life within the Church; there were angry men who extended the denunciation of hypocrisy and pride in many Churchmen into scoff at all that represented the religious life of England. And as must happen

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to decay, and finding new means to new ends. Some men are in religion, politics, daily business, in action and opinion on all things-even to the arranging of the chairs and tables in their houses-by nature conservative; as others are by nature disposed for reform. Both are alike liberal; both have the same range of human belief and opinion, with difference only in the part of it on which most emphasis is laid; both seek to do their duty; and there are as many good and earnest men upon one side as on the other. From the struggle of the Lollards for reform of evils in the Church, there has come down to us chiefly a remembrance, upon one side, of the noble pleading for pure Christian life by Churchmen who were the true soul of the movement, and by poets who laid hold on its essential truths; and, on the other side, of the corruption that had spread with wealth and idleness through the religious orders, of the hard fight of the worldly man for material advancement, displayed by the Churchman to whom his religion was not real enough to save him from the smail ambitions of the world and give him an ambi

in all human controversies, often among the best men on both sides, mists of human passion and emotion changed to sight the proportions of the matter in dispute. But still the story is the story of an English struggle to find out the right, and do it for the love of God. The question is all of Duty; and from a quiet, orthodox monk, who was no great genius, though he wrote verse, but was a good natural Englishman, we may learn how thousands of honest folk, who took no violent part in the strife, looked at each side of it.

John Audelay or Awdlay, living in a Shropshire monastery at the beginning of the fifteenth century, wrote religious verse.1 He versified religious duty in short poems upon Bible texts, and, while piously orthodox, he discriminated between men who, seeking the advancement of the Church, objected to self

1 Printed in 1844 for the Percy Society as "The Poems of John Audelay. A Specimen of the Shropshire Dialect in the Fifteenth Century. Edited by James Orchard Halliwell,"

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The prophecy of the prophetus all now it doth appear,
That sometime was said by the clergy,

That lewd men, the Law of God tha: should love and lere,
For curates, for their covetise, would count not thereby,
But to talk of their tithys I tell you truly;

And if the secular say a sooth, anon they ben y-shent, And lien upon the lewdmen, and sayn It is Lollere; Thus the people and the priestis ben of one assent, They dare none other do:

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PLAIN TRUTH.

"Si veritatem dico quare non creditis mihi; qui ex Deo est, verba Dei audit; ideo non auditis quia ex Deo non estis."5

6

For I have touched the truth, I trow I shall be shent,
And said sadly the truth without flattering;
Hold me for no party that beth here present,
I have no liking ne lust to make no leasing,
For Favel, with his fair words and his flattering,
He will preach the people apert them for to pay,7
I will not wrath my God, at my weeting,

As God have mercy of me, Sir John Audlay,
At my most need.

I reck never who it hear,
Whether priest or frere,

For at a fool ye may lere,

If ye will take heed.

To a poem of his on the nine virtues he thus adds his name:

"I made this with good intent,
In hope the rather ye would repent,
Prayes for me that beth present,

My name it is the blind Awdelay."

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7 Apert them for to pay, openly in the way that pleases them. 8 At my meeting, to my knowledge.

9" Thonke God of all" is on leaf 68 of a collection of Old English Poems made in a handwriting of the 15th century (Cotton. MSS.. Caligula, A. ii.), which includes Lydgate's "Churl and the Bird," with other of his pieces, and the old poems of Eglamor of Artois, Ypos, Isumbras, Chevalier Assigne, The Stations of Rome, &c. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps has included it in his volume edited for the Percy Society of the Select Minor Poems of John Lydgate.

10 For: of in original, throughout.

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