PART III — RELIGIOUS WAYFARERS

[384] “Item priont les communes . . . de ordeiner et commander que null neif ou vileyn mette ses enfantz de cy en avant à Escoles pur eux avancer par clergie, et ce en maintenance et salvation de l’honour de toutz Franks du Roialme.” “Rolls of Parliament,” vol. iii. p. 294, 15 Rich. II, 1391.

[385] Beginning at an uncertain date: before the papal schism, i.e. 1378, according to Shirley, Introduction to “Fasciculi Zizaniorum,” 1858, Rolls series; “several months before the revolt of 1381 broke out,” according to Oman, “The Great Revolt,” 1906, p. 19.

[386] Their activity as wandering preachers is well shown by “The tenor of the complaint made to the Kinge and his councell against John Fox, Maior of Northampton, and others exhibited in French by Richard Stermersworthe, a wolman,” year 1392–3. According to the deponent the Mayor who welcomes every “errant Lollard,” has caused “the whole towne in manner to become Lollardes. . . . All ribauds infected with Lollardry, that come to the said towne are all courteously received and maintayned as yf they were prophetts before all others.” The day after Christmas, the Mayor “brought with him . . . an errant Lollard to preach within All Saints Church.” He did the same later, bringing the “parson of the church of Wynkpole, an errant Lollarde, to preach.” Powell and Trevelyan, “The Peasants’ risings and the Lollards,” London, 1899, pp. 45 ff.

[387] G. M. Trevelyan, “England in the age of Wycliffe,” 1899, p. 199.

[388] Statute 5 Rich. II, 2, cap 5.

[389] He has often been considered as an adherent of Wyclif, for no reason save that both, at the same time, wanted radical reforms, not a few however of a different kind. Ball had some religious ideas peculiar to himself; thus, according to him, natural children could not go to heaven.

[390] “Chronicon Angliæ,” 1328–1388, ed. E. Maunde Thompson, 1874, Rolls Series, p. 321.

[391] Lord Berners’ “Froissart,” cap. ccclxxxi.

[392] “Chronicon Angliæ,” 1328–1388, Thompson’s edition, 1874, p. 322.

[393] “English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle of Hampole,” edited by Rev. George Perry, 1866, Early English Text Society, Preface, pp. ix, xv–xix. See before, p. 141.

[394] The Dominicans in 1221; the Franciscans in 1224. See Dr. Jessopp, “The Coming of the Friars,” London, 1888, pp. 32–34, a work in which shine the ample knowledge and wide sympathies of the late rector of East Dereham, the “Arcady for better for worse” where he spent so many years. When Taine made his last visit to England I wanted, if I may be permitted to recall a personal souvenir, to give him a lunch where each of those invited would be a representative Englishman. Robert Browning represented poetry; Augustus Jessopp, who deeply impressed the chief guest, the country clergy.

[395] “Vision,” Text C, pas. xi. l. 14.

[396] Prologue to “Canterbury Tales.”

[397] Jack Straw, according to the confession which his contemporary the monk Thomas Walsingham relates of him, would have liked to keep no other ecclesiastics on earth but the mendicant friars: “Soli mendicantes vixissent super terram qui suffecissent pro sacris celebrandis aut conferendis universæ terræ.” “Historia Anglicana,” vol. ii. p. 10, Rolls Series.

[398] “Piers Plowman,” Skeat’s edition, Text C, pass. xxiii. l. 274.

[399]

“Ac it is ferre agoo · in seynt Fraunceys tyme.”

Text B, pass. xv. l. 226.

[400] “The Rule and Life of the Friars Minors,” in Dugdale’s “Monasticon Anglicanum,” London, 1817, vol. vi. p. 1504.

[401] “Liber de adventu Minorum in Angliam,” in “Monumenta Franciscana,” ed. Brewer, Rolls Series, 1858, p. 28. The author, Thomas of Eccleston, himself a Franciscan, saw the most flourishing period of the mendicant orders; his book, of extreme _naïveté_, abounds in visions and tales of wonders.

[402] Matthew Paris, “Historia Anglorum,” London, 1866, vol. iii. p. 145, Rolls Series.

[403] “Monumenta Franciscana,” Rolls, p. xxix.

[404] “Speculum Vitæ B. Francisi et sociorum ejus, opera fratris Guil. Spoelberch,” Antwerp, 1620, part i. cap. 4.

[405] Thirty-two years after the friars had appeared in England, they already possessed forty-nine convents (“Monumenta Franciscana,” ed. Brewer, 1858, p. 10). In Matthew Paris will be found a good description of the behaviour of the friars minor in England on their arrival, of the poor, humble, and useful life that they first led. “Historia Anglorum,” ed. Madden, 1866, vol. ii. p. 109.

[406] See “Defensionem curatorum contra eos qui privilegiatos se dicunt” (4to, undated), a speech made in 1357, by Richard Fitz-Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh, in which are denounced the successive encroachments of the mendicant friars to the detriment of the secular clergy.

[407] “Monumenta Franciscana,” _ut supra_, pp. 514, etc. This library had been founded by the celebrated Richard Whittington, who was Mayor of London in 1397–98, 1406–07, and 1419–20.

[408] “More canum cadaveribus assistentium, ubi quisque suam particulam avide consumendam expectat.” Rolls Series, vol. i. 38; _sub anno_ 1291–92.

[409] Wyclif’s “Select English Works,” ed. Thos. Arnold, 1869, vol. iii. pp. 348, 380.

[410] “Monumenta Franciscana,” p. 541. Hence the reproaches the satirists:

“Of these frer mynours me thenkes moch wonder, That waxen are thus hauteyn, that som tyme weren under.”

Thomas Wright’s “Political Poems and Songs,” 1859, vol. i. p. 268, Rolls Series.

[411] “Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede,” ed. Skeat, 1867, Early English Text Society, pp. 7–9; written about 1394; author unknown, the same possibly who composed “The Plowman’s Tale,” e.g. in Wright’s “Political Poems,” both works strongly influenced by Langland’s “Visions.”

[412] “Liber de adventu Minorum,” in “Monumenta Franciscana,” p. 52.

[413] Grammar, logic, rhetoric—Arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy.

[414] “Select English Works,” vol. iii. p. 382. A satire of the fourteenth century states in the same way:

“Isti fratres prædicant per villas et forum Quod si mortem gustet quis in habitu minorum Non intrabit postea locum tormentorum, Sed statim perducitur ad regna cœlorum.”

But if burial is requested for a pauper in one of their privileged churches, “the keeper is absent,” is the answer, and admittance is refused:

“Gardianus absens est, statim respondetur Et sic satis breviter pauper excludetur.”

Wright’s “Political Poems,” Rolls Series, vol. i. pp. 256–57.

[415] The complaints of the University of Oxford against the friars, stating how they wrongfully attracted with fruit and drink mere children, and taught them how to beg and to ingratiate themselves with the great, were among the severest: “Nam pomis et potu, ut populus fabulatur, puerulos ad religionem attrahunt et instigant, quos professos non instruunt sicut exigit ætas illa, sed mendicationis discursibus permittunt intendere; atque tempus, quo possint addiscere, captandis favoribus amicorum, dominarum et dominorum, sinunt consumere, in offensam parentium, puerorum periculum et ordinis detrimentum.” Year 1358, “Munimenta Academica,” Rolls Series, i. p. 207.

[416] “Hic est frater, ergo mendax.” “Historia Anglicana,” 1867–69, vol. ii. p. 13, Rolls Series.

[417] Brit. Mus. MS. Roy. 10 E. IV, fol. 100, ff. See also in MS. 17 C. xv. in the British Museum a satirical picture of a “ffryer.”

[418] Wright’s “Political Poems,” vol. i. p. 263.

[419] 20 Ed. II., “Croniques de London,” ed. Aungier, Camden Society, p. 54.

[420] Proclamation of Richard II, year 1385; Rymer’s “Foedera,” ed. 1704, vol. vii. p. 458.

[421] “Rolls of Parliament,” 20 E. III, vol. ii. p. 162, A.D. 1346.

[422] Labbe, “Sacrosancta Concilia,” Florence, vol. xxvi. col. 729.

[423] “Select English Works,” vol. iii. p. 396.

[424] “The English Works of Wyclif, hitherto unprinted,” edited by F. D. Matthew, Early English Text Society, 1880, p. 13. Most of the pieces in this collection are only attributed to Wyclif, this one among them. See also Gower’s “Vox Clamantis,” Roxburghe Club, 1850, p. 228.

[425] “English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted,” p. 12.

[426] So also in Chaucer’s “Prologue”:

“His typet was ay farsud ful of knyfes And pynnes, for to yive faire wyfes.”

[427] Wright’s “Political Poems and Songs,” 1859, vol. i. pp. 264 and 268.

[428] “Select English Works,” vol. i. p. 381. See also Wright’s “Political Poems and Songs,” 1859, vol. i. p. 257.

[429] “Eulogium historiarum,” ed. Haydon, Rolls Series, London, 1858, vol. iii. p. 392. What the condemned friars were accused of was thus explained to them: “Similiter vos in hypocrisi, adulatione et falsa vita audivistis falsas confessiones in quibus injunxistis populo pro pœnitentia ut quærerent regem Ricardum in Wallia. Vos etiam in hypocrisi, adulatione et falsa vita collegistis magnam summam pecuniæ mendicando et misistis ad Audeonum (Owen) Glendour proditorem, ut veniat et destruat totam linguam Anglicanam,” a language which Henry prided himself in speaking and which he had used in parliament to claim the crown. “Rolls of Parliament,” iii. 422.

[430] Year 1533, Holinshed, “Chronicles,” London, 1587, vol. iii. p. 945. Friar Forest had refused the oath of supremacy.

[431] “Libellus vere aureus . . . de optimo reipublicæ statu deque noua Insula Vtopia . . . cura P. Ægidii . . . nunc primum . . . editus,” Louvain, 1516, lib. i.

[432] Hardy, “Registrum palatinum Dunelmense,” vol. iii. p. cxxxiv.

[433] “Theodori archiepiscopi Cantuariensis pœnitentiale,” in Migne’s “Patrologia,” vol. xcix. col. 938 and 940.

[434] “Halitgarii episcopi Cameracensis liber pœnitentialis,” in Migne’s “Patrologia,” vol. cv. col. 706.

[435] See Appendix XIII, p. 438.

[436] The two words were used as interchangeable. Du Cange quotes a text of 1389, reading: “Come il fust venu en la ville de Necie près Faloise un questeur ou porteur de pardons.” _Sub verbo_ “Perdonantia.”

[437] In England as elsewhere forgers were busy. One is captured at great expense in the year 51 Ed. III: “To John Compton, one of the king’s archers of his crown. In money paid to him for the expenses of himself and other archers in his retinue, coming from Gloucester to London, to conduct and deliver up Thomas Pardoner and Reginald Clerc, forgers of the seal of the Lord the Pope . . . also for hire of horses for the same Thomas and Reginald and for divers other costs occurred in their safe conduct, £6.” Devon, “Issues of the Exchequer,” 1837, p. 203.

[438] “Archæologia,” vol. xx. p. 53, John Webb’s translation. See Appendix XIV, p. 439.

[439] Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales,” and Prologue to the “Pardoner’s Tale.”

[440] “The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio” . . . done into English . . . by John Payne, London, 1886, vol. ii. p. 278, tenth Tale, sixth Day.

[441] See Appendix, XV p. 440.

[442] Same Appendix.

[443] “Excommunicatis gratiam absolutionis impendit. Vota peregrinationis ad apostolorum limina, ad Terram Sanctam, ad Sanctum Jacobum non prius remisit quam tantam pecuniam recepisset, quantam, juxta veram æstimationem, in eisdem peregrinationibus expendere debuissent, et ut cuncta concludam brevibus, nihil omnino petendum erat, quod non censuit, intercedente pecunia, concedendum.” “Historia Anglicana”; Rolls Series, vol. i. p. 452.

[444] See Appendix XV, p. 444.

[445] Lyndsay, “Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits” performed at Linlithgow, 1540; Early English Text Society, 1869; John Heywood, “The Pardoner and the Frere, the Curate and Neybour Pratte,” 1533; “The foure Ps,” 1545.

[446] Payne’s “Boccaccio,” vol. ii. pp. 280, 287.

[447] “The Leofric Missal” (1050–1072), edited by F. E. Warren, 1883, Clarendon Press, pp. lxi, 3, 4.

[448] “Historia Anglorum” (Historia minor), ed. Sir F. Madden, London, 1866; vol. iii. p. 60, Rolls Series.

[449] Devon’s “Issues of the Exchequer,” 1837, p. 176.

[450] “Le livre des fais et bonnes mœurs du sage roy Charles,” by Christine de Pisan, chap. xxxiii. vol. i. p. 633; “Nouvelle Collection de Mémoires,” ed. Michaud and Poujoulat, Paris, 1836.

[451] “Pantagruel,” book ii. chap. xvii., “Comment Panurge gagnoit les pardons.”

[452] “Farce d’un pardonneur, d’un triacleur et d’une tavernière,” Viollet le Duc, “Ancien théâtre français,” Paris, 1854–57, vol. ii. p. 50.

[453] “The Pleasaunt Historie of Lazarillo de Tormes, . . . drawen out of Spanish by David Rouland, of Angelsey.” London, 1586, Sig. G. iii.

[454] A favourite subject among miniaturists, and to be found in several manuscripts (2 B. vii; 10 E. IV) in the British Museum. See the headpiece of the present chapter.

[455] Labbe, “Sacrosancta concilia,” Florence edition, vol. xxv. col. 1177, and vol. xxvi. col. 462. In 1419, Henry Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, ordered public prayers, litanies, and processions, to protect the King of England and his army against the wicked operations of magicians. Wilkins, “Concilia Magnæ Britanniæ,” vol. iii. p. 392.

[456] “Si vero masculus quisquam voluerit, ut est moris, ejusdem defuncti vel defuncte nocturnis vigiliis interesse, hoc fieri permittatur, dumtamen nec monstra larvarum inducere, nec corporis vel fame sue ludibria, nec ludos alios inhonestos, presumat aliqualiter attemptare.” Toulmin Smith, “English Gilds,” p. 194.

[457] “Araneis et aliis vermibus nigris ad modum scorpionum, cum quadam herba quæ dicitur millefolium et aliis herbis et vermibus detestabilibus.” Thos. Wright, “Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, 1324,” Camden Society, 1843, p. 32.

[458] “The Canons Yeomans Tale.”

[459] The whole of book vii of his “Confessio Amantis” is devoted to the exposition of a system of the world and to the description of the inner nature of beings and substances. The “Roman de la Rose” is not less explicit on these matters (confession of Nature to Genius).

[460] “De Proprietatibus Rerum,” lib. xvi, a work of immense repute, translated into English by Trevisa in 1398, into French, Spanish, Dutch.

[461] “Les Amants magnifiques.”

[462] “Conciliorum generalium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ,” vol. iv. p. 261, “Pauli V. Pont. max. auctoritate editus,” Rome, 1623. See Appendix XV, p. 444.

[463] Winter of 1435; he was coming on a mission to James I of Scotland. “Romance of a King’s Life,” pp. 52, 97.

[464] First cousin to Edward II, executed in 1322. Froissart had no doubt as to the authenticity of his miracles. “Thomas erle of Lancastre, who was a noble and a wyse holy knyght, and hath done syth many fayre myracles in Pomfret, where he was beheeded” (vol. i. chap. vi. in Lord Berners’ translation). The body of Charles de Blois, killed at the battle of Auray in 1364, but this one an undoubtedly pious warrior, also worked miracles, and Froissart imagined that Urban V had canonized him: “His body [was] after sanctifyed by the grace of God and called Saynt Charles, and canonized by Pope Urban the V; for he dyde, and yet dothe many fayre miracles dayly.” Vol. i. cap. 226 of Lord Berners’ translation.

[465] “Non absque homicidiis aliisque lætalibus verberibus . . . et de majoribus periculis verisimiliter imminentibus multipliciter formidatur . . .” A.D. 1323, “Historical Papers from the Northern Registers,” ed. Raine, 1873, p. 324, Rolls Series.

[466] The archbishop did write to this effect to the Pope (John XXII) on February 24, 1327, asking him to make inquiry with a view to canonization. “Historical Papers from the Northern Registers,” p. 340.

[467] Petition to Parliament, 1 Ed. III, 1326–7. “Rolls of Parliament,” vol. ii. p. 7.

[468] “Memorials of London,” Riley, 1868, p. 203. The miracles worked by the same are also noted in the contemporary “Croniques de London” (Camden Society, ed. G. J. Aungier, p. 46), and by many others.

[469] J. Nichol’s “Wills of the Kings and Queens of England,” 1780, p. 54. A chapel had been built on the hill where the earl had been beheaded. The offerings brought there by the pilgrims were, in 1334, the subject of a curious debate between the prior and the convent of Pontefract on the one hand, and the Lord of Wake on the other; this lord had “taken possession of the said chapel and the offerings brought there, and had taken the keys with him.” The prior and the convent in a petition to Parliament requested to have the “administration of these offerings,” as “spiritual things within their parish and belonging to their church,” “Rolls of Parliament,” vol. ii. p. 84.

[470] “Ne . . . pro sancto vel justo reputetur, cum in excommunicatione sit defunctus, sicut sancta tenet Ecclesia.” “Dictum de Kenilworth,” § viii., in “Select Charters,” ed. Stubbs, 1870, p. 410.

[471]

Salve Symon Montis Fortis tocius flos militie, Duras penas passus mortis, protector gentis Angliæ.

“Ora pro nobis, beate Symon, ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.” Hymn composed shortly after the death of Simon; Warton, “History of English Poetry,” ed. Hazlitt, 1871, vol. ii. p. 48.

[472] Rymer’s “Fœdera,” edit. 1704, vol. iv. p. 20.

[473] Ibid., vol. iii. p. 1033.

[474] See Appendix XVI, p. 445.

[475] On the _advertising_ of certain pilgrimages by means, sometimes, of the most famous of mediæval romances, see the capital work of Joseph Bédier, “Les Légendes épiques, Recherches sur la formation des Chansons de Geste,” Paris, 1908, 4 vols. On the especial veneration of saints who had been road and bridge builders, see III, p. 72, where, speaking of the immense popularity of the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostela in the eleventh century, Bédier says: “Ce fut l’époque héroïque du pèlerinage. C’est alors que la route romaine commence à se peupler d’asiles pour les voyageurs; c’est alors qu’exercent leur activité les saints que l’Eglise vénère parce qu’ils furent de bons ingénieurs, réparant les chaussées, desséchant les marécages, jetant des ponts sur les rivières et les torrents, saint Dominique de la Calzada, et ce Français, saint Aleaume de Burgos, ancien moine de la Chaise-Dieu.”

[476] “Sane nuper ad aures nostras pervenit quod ad quandam imaginem beatæ Virginis in ecclesia parochiali de Foston noviter collocatam magnus simplicium est concursus, acsi in eadem plus quam in aliis similibus imaginibus aliquid numinis appareret.” Year 1313, Wilkins’ “Concilia,” vol. ii. p. 423.

[477] See e.g. MS. 2 B. vii. in the British Museum, fol. 211, and 10 E. IV., fol. 209. The story of this miracle has been told by numberless authors in the Middle Ages; the text of one version of the tale, with references to the others, will be found in G. F. Warner, “Miracles de Nostre Dame,” Roxburghe Club, 1885, pp. xxxiv and 63.

[478] “_Loci e libro veritatum_, passages selected from Gascoigne’s Theological Dictionary” (1403–1458), edit. Thorold Rogers, Oxford, 1881, p. 206. This Fullar is known to have come to England, where he saw Gascoigne. Eugene IV was Pope during the second quarter of the fifteenth century.

[479] “No fewer than thirty-eight of these pilgrims’ Meccas in the County of Norfolk alone.” Sidney Heath, “Pilgrim Life in the Middle Ages,” London, 1911, p. 30.

[480] To Edw. Raven, Jan. 20, 1551. “Whole Works,” Giles, 1865, p. 252.

[481] “Henry III, Edward I, Edward III, David Bruce, Q. Catherine after Flodden, Henry VII and Henry VIII visited the famous shrine.” Walcott, “English Minsters,” 1879, II, 229.

[482] The “Image of Darvell Gathern,” greatly venerated by the Welsh, was burnt with him. Ellis, “Original Letters,” 1st series, II, 82 ff.

[483] Ellis, _ibid._, pp. 79, 80, Sept. 1537 (?).

[484] Patent of 19 Richard II in the appendix to Mr. Karkeek’s essay, “Chaucer’s Schipman and his Barge, ‘The Maudelayne,’” Chaucer Society “Essays,” 1884.

[485] Becquet or Becchet, of Norman blood, both on his father’s side, who was from Thierceville, as on his mother’s, who was from Caen.

[486]

Desuz le frunt li bullit la cervelle.

A real Turpin, but who long survived the event, was Archbishop of Reims at the time of the Roncevaux disaster.

[487] Moved in July, 1220 to Trinity Chapel, behind the high altar.

[488] A beautifully illustrated fragment of a life of the saint, in French verse of the thirteenth century, has been published with facsimiles by Paul Meyer: “Fragments d’une vie de saint Thomas de Cantorbéry,” Paris, 1885. A remarkable thirteenth-century picture of the murder, with obvious attention to historical exactitude, is in one of the MSS. of the Yates Thompson Collection, reproduced in the Catalogue of the sale (March 23, 1920), lot xxxiv.

[489] Something yet remains of the bas relief representing his life above the portal of the southern transept of the cathedral at Bayeux.

[490] “Historical Memorials of Canterbury,” chap. iv.

[491]

Felix locus, felix ecclesia, In qua Thomæ vivit memoria, Felix terra quæ dedit præsulem, Felix illa quæ fovit exulem.

[492] “La vie de Saint Thomas le Martyr, par Garnier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, poète du XII^e siècle,” ed. C. Hippeau, Paris, 1859.

[493] Epilogue, p. 205.

[494] On which see, e.g. “The Old Road,” by H. Belloc, London, 1904; Sidney Heath, “Pilgrim Life in the Middle Ages,” London, 1911, chap.