And for no getting of good never his God grieveth,

But followeth Him the full way, as He the folk taught."

Where shall he find such a man to teach him his Creed properly? He asks the Friars; meets one morning a Minorite (Franciscan), and asks of him where he shall get the knowledge he needs. A Carmelite, he says, had offered to teach him. "But," he says to the Minorite-"but, for thou knowest Carmes well, thy counsel I ask." The Minorite laughs at the questioner, and holds him mad for supposing that the Carmelites can teach anything of God, whom they know not. So the narrow feuds between order and order are suggested while the jugglings and backslidings of the Carmelites are dwelt upon by a Franciscan

"Alas, frere,' quoth I then, my purpose is ifailed.
Now is my comfort cast! Canst thou no bote1
Where I might meten with a man that might me wissen2
For to con my Creed, Christ for to follow.'

'Certaine, fellow,' quoth the frere, withouten any faile,
Of all men upon mold we Minors most sheweth
The true Apostles life.'"

The Franciscan glorifies his order in a way that does not exalt it, boasts of his great buildings and painted windows

"And mightest thou amenden us with money of thine own,
Thou shouldest kneel before Christ in compass of gold
In the wide window westward, well nigh in the middle,
And Saint Francis himself shall folden thee in his cope
And present thee to the Trinity, and pray for thy sins.
Thy name shall nobly be written and wrought for the nonce,
And in remembrance of thee y-read there for ever.
And, brother, be thou not afeard! Bethink in thine heart!
Though thou con not thy Creed, care thou no more.
I shall assoilen thee, sir, and setten it on my soul
An thou may maken this good, think thou no other."

When the seeker had applied Christ's words to this manner of well-doing, he went farther in search of a man to teach him, and came next to the Dominicans, whom he found housed in royal splendour. After he has painted in verse one of their great convents, he says

"And yet these builders will beg a bag full of wheat
Of a pure poor man that may unnethe pay
Half his rent in a year and half ben behind!
Then turned I again when I had all y-toted3
And found in a freitour1 a frere on a bench,
A great churl and a grim, growen as a tun,
With a face as fat as a full bladder

Blowen bret full of breath, and as a bag hanged

altering. The root is, probably, First-English "breotan," to bruise or break.

• Quick mire, living, palpitating, mire; quagmire.

7 Good enow of ground grain for to beren, of texture good enough to be dyed scarlet. Grain was a name for scarlet or purple dye, because the dried cochineal insects from which dye was made resemble seeds. Scarlet and purple were associated with the finest textures in robes of state, and one born to empire was said to be born in the purple. Preise, value, prize; value your preaching at a mere mite. 9 Sely, simple.

10 Cary, the name of a coarse kind of cloth,

His toen toteden out as he the land treaded,

His hosen overhungen his hockshins' on everich a side
All beslobbered in fen as he the plough followed;
Two mittens as mete,2 made all of clouts,

The fingers weren for-werd,3 and full of fen hanged.
This wight waseled in the fen almost to the ankle,
Four rotheren him before, that feeble were worthen,
Men might reckon each a rib,7 so rueful they weren.
His wife walked him with, with a long goad
In a cutted coat, cutted full high,

8

Wrapped in a winnow sheet, to weren her from weathers,
Barefoot on the bare ice that the blood followed.
And at the land's end lay a little crumb bowl,
And thereon lay a little child lapped in clouts,
And twain of two years old upon another side,

And all they sungen one song, that sorrow was to hearen,
They crieden all one cry, a careful note.

The sely man sighed sore, and said, 'Children, be'th still!'
This man looked upon me and let the plough standen,
And saidé, Sely man, why sighest thou so hard?
If thee lack livelihood lend thee I will

11 Lolled him, called him "Lollard." There are various reasons given for the name. I believe it to be an application to heretics of the word held to represent what was meant by the Greek zizania in the 13th chapter of Matthew, the tares sown by the enemy among the wheat. The Latin Vulgate version kept the Greek word zizania, and a collection of heretical writings was entitled "Fasciculi Zizaniorum." But the zizania were held to be darnel, lolium, then often spelt "lollium," which grows among good corn, having much resemblance to it, and is very poisonous. In the old Latin rendering of the Persian version of the Gospels, the passage runs: "Quin tu, O Domine, semen bonum in agro tuo seminâsti, Lolium igitur inter illud unde provenit? Ille respondit, Quispiam per inimicitiam injecit. Servi dixerunt, Permitte itaque nobis ut Lolium exinde secernamus." Christ's answer by no means justified Church practice in dealing with the tares. William Langland, in the Vision of Piers Plowman, describing himself on Cornhill, played on the analogy of this word to Loller or idler, and so easily returned it on the friars. Chaucer seems to have had in mind the relation of the word to Lolium, when the Host having with an idle oath called on the Parson for a tale, is gently rebuked: "I smell a loller in the wind, quoth he. This loller here wol prechen uz

The Ploughman points to the likeness between friars and the Pharisees, and shows how far they were gone from the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount—

“Behold upon Wat Brute, 12 how busily they pursueden
For he said them the sooth: and yet, sir, further
They may no more marren him, but men telleth
That he is an heretic and evil believeth,

And preacheth it in pulpit to blinden the people.
They wolden awyrien 13 that wight for his welldeeds,
And so they chewen Charity as chewen schaf1 hounds,
And they pursueth the poor and passeth pursuits;
Both they wiln and they wolden yworthen so great
To passen any man's might, to murtheren the souls,
First to burne the body in a bale of fire

And sithen the sely soul slayen, and senden her to hell.'"

The Ploughman spoke his mind also of the monks, and ended by the utterance of truth in simple words. As God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, the poor ploughman whose first impulse was of Charity towards a sufferer, became the teacher of the Christian's Creed. 15

"The Plowman's Tale," by the same author, puts into another form the common protest of the time against the worldliness that had corrupted those who should be guardians of faith, encouragers of hope, embodiments of the charity without which, though the Christian teacher speak with tongues of men and angels, he is nothing worth. It begins with direct reference to the rising controversy between those who were called Lollards and their persecu

Such accusation levelled against the man whom he clothes with apostolic virtue, and whom he afterwards does make to preach, shows the goodwill of Chaucer to these persecuted Churchmen.

12 Wat Brute. Walter Brute was a learned private gentleman in the diocese of Hereford, who, though a layman, was urged by religious feeling to teach openly and privately, assisted by two intimate friends, William Swinderby and Stephen Ball. They sought reform of church discipline, and held the opinions of Wiclif. In 1392 Richard II. issued a commission, addressed to the Mayor of Hereford and noblemen and gentlemen of the county, authorising them to investigate charges against Walter Brute of heresy and keeping of conventicles. Walter Brute defended himself, and withdrew into private life; but William Swinderby and others, quitting the diocese of Hereford, continued their work in Wales. The persecution was continued, and in 1401 Swinderby was burnt in Smithfield.

But

13 Awyrien, curse. First-English "awyrian" and "awyrgian." 14 Schaf. This is said to mean "chaff," and Mr. Skeat interprets the line " They gobble down their charity as hounds do bran." may not the sense be, "They champ at their charity as dogs do over food they will not swallow?" "Skaf," from " skafa," to scrape, was the Scandinavian name for peeled bark used as fodder for goats and cattle, and "schaf" was probably our name, derived from the Scandinavian, for some such cattle fodder as a dog might take into his mouth and try his teeth on, but could hardly be got to swallow.

15 "Pierce the Ploughman's Crede" has been edited from collation of two MSS. with the old printed text of 1553, and fully supplied with notes and glossary by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, who adds to it in the same two-shilling book a poem of about A.D. 1500,"God spede the Plough." It is published for the Early English Text Society by Trübner and Co.

"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 answeréd 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

66

Of my wyting2 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 :

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 snybbé 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.

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

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 small 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.' 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."