CHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS LIFE

If churches and religious houses make up religion, then London of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries surely attained the highest point ever reached in religion. The Church was everywhere. In Appendices IV. and V. will be found a list of the Parish Churches and their patronage. The abbeys, priories, nunneries, and friaries contained a vast army of ecclesiastics from archbishop to Franciscan friar: hermits, anchorites, pardoners, limitours, somnours, church officers of all kinds, were everywhere in evidence. No street but reminded the citizens by the sight of a spire or a wall, that the Church was with him always, to rule his life and to shorten his period of purgatory, on the simple condition of his obedience. Religion endeavoured to rule the whole of society: religion claimed to control the whole conduct of politics and political economy: but the power of religion has never been equal to her ambition: religion could not put a stop to war, or to the violences and outrages of war. Had she been able to do so, the world would now be held and bound in chains and slavery. Yet it was well that there should be the Church to restrain men in some degree. She kept in her own hands, so far, all learning, all science, all the arts, all the professions. The forms, duties, and rules of the Church attended all men from infancy to the grave. At the bidding of the Church the whole nation, from the King downwards, renounced meat for a fourth part of the whole year. This fact alone marks the enormous power of the Church. For hundreds of years the Church preached respect for human life and self-restraint with more or less vigour, and with more or less success. Sometimes the Church has fallen upon evil times; her ecclesiastics have been ambitious, worldly, licentious, avaricious; but they have always been, as a whole, superior to the world around them. Thus it may be said that the Church might always have been better, but that the world was always worse.

Let us, then, briefly examine into what was meant by the Religious Life of London in the fourteenth century.

There were a hundred and twenty-six parish churches in London. This seems an enormous number for a population of not more than 120,000 or thereabouts. But we have to remember what the Church did for the people. The daily services; the chanting of the daily masses for living and for dead; the funerals, the weddings, the baptisms, the visitation of the sick, the direction of Fraternities, the countless observances and customs of religion, for all these things the Church was the centre, and the parish clergy were the directors.

The boundaries of a parish were not at first rigidly laid down; they overlapped the ward boundaries; they were matters of agreement: it was not until the Poor Law made the definition necessary, that the boundaries were finally and exactly laid down.

The multiplication of parishes was partly due, no doubt, to the desire of expiating sins by building, endowing, and decorating a Church for the good of the Founder’s soul. The census of the City, taken at any time between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries, would certainly show an almost stationary figure, lowered upon a visitation of plague, or raised after a long interval without plague, pestilence, fire, or famine. The average represented about a thousand souls to every church. The origin of the City churches cannot, as a rule, be ascertained. The oldest dedications of the churches seem to show that the London parishes were settled before the Norman Conquest: most of the London churches were probably built in or about the eighth century during that strange outburst of religious enthusiasm, the first of so many which have swept over the country.

London was a city of churches: one could not escape the sight of the green churchyard, the trees standing over the graves, and the little church among them. Nor could one get away from the sound of the church bells. All day long, from daybreak until night, the bells were ringing, not only from the churches, but also from the monastic houses. High above the stroke of anvil, and the multitudinous roar of the industrial city, rolled and clanged and resounded the continual clash of the bells. What the boy Whittington heard at Highgate was not the chime of Bow Church alone; it was the sound of the bells of all the churches and all the convents of London ringing together.

I have estimated roughly that, with the parish churches and their property, a full quarter of the City was occupied by the religious houses and the places they owned. As for the proportion of the population which was supported by the Church, we may form an idea by taking the case of St. Paul’s Cathedral alone:—

In the year 1450 the Society, a Cathedral body, included the following: the Bishop, the Dean, the four Archdeacons, the Treasurer, the Precentor, the Chancellor, thirty greater Canons, twelve lesser Canons, about fifty Chaplains or chantry Priests, and thirty Vicars. Of inferior rank to these were the Sacrist and three Vergers, the Succentor, the Master of the Singing-school, the Master of the Grammar-school, the Almoner and his four Vergers, the Servitors, the Surveyor, the twelve Scribes, the Book Transcriber, the Book-binder, the Chamberlain, the Rent-Collector, the Baker, the Brewer, the Lavenders (washermen), the Singing-men and Choir Boys, of whom priests were made, the Bedesmen, and the poor folk. To these must be added the servants of all these officers—the brewer, who brewed, in the year 1286, 67,814 gallons, must have employed a good many; the baker, who ovened every year 40,000 loaves, or every day more than a hundred large and small; the sextons, grave-diggers, gardeners, bell-ringers, makers and menders of the ecclesiastical robes, cleaners and sweepers, carpenters, masons, painters, carvers, and gilders—one can very well understand that the Church of St. Paul’s found a livelihood for a thousand at least.

The same equipment was necessary in every other religious foundation. Not a monastery but had its great and lesser officers and their servants. In every one there were the bell-ringers, the singing-men and boys, the vergers, the gardeners, the brewers, bakers, cooks, messengers, scribes, rent-collectors, and all of them were complete in themselves, as was St. Paul’s, though on a smaller scale. Then if we consider the Parish Churches. In some cases two priests were attached to each Church for the daily services: if there were, say, fifteen chantries, and in some there were many more, belonging to each, we have over 2000 priests for the parish churches alone; there were, next, the people belonging to each church: the choir, the sacrist, the organist, the beadle, the sexton, the anchorite or ankress, say an average, in all, of a hundred, including the families of those who were married. This makes some 12,000 souls living upon the endowments and revenues of the City Churches.

If there were eighty monks at St. Peter’s, Westminster, there were at least a hundred people, all of them married and with families, in their service. Now there were, large and small, about twenty-five Religious Houses in and outside London. If we take an average of seventy people of various trades attached to and living by each House, and an average of thirty brethren and sisters, we have nearly 7000 people belonging to them. To sum up, therefore, there were nearly 20,000 people in the City of London and its suburbs engaged in working for, and living by, the Churches and the Religious Houses. About one-fifth of the population of London lived by the Church. This is a moderate estimate. The proportion of ecclesiastics and their servants to the general population was probably much higher.

The Bishop, in the eyes of London, was the greatest person in the country next to the King: he lived among the people and was their natural protector: he had his Palace within the precinct, in the north-west of the Cathedral; he attended the Church on all the great Festivals—Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Whitsunday, the Festivals of St. Paul and St. Erkenwald, and also on Maundy Thursday and Ash Wednesday (see Appendix VI.). He observed the greatest state possible when he rode forth: there went with him, as he journeyed from one to the other of his country houses, forty persons at least, including his squires, his chaplains, the young monks entrusted to his care, and his servants: he was profuse in charity: he was stately in his carriage and splendid in his dress. As in the days of William the Conqueror, so in those of Edward the Third, the Bishop of London, with the Mayor, stood for the City, but the Mayor stood behind the Bishop.

The Cathedral, in the midst of the City, belonged to all alike: its splendid services, the singing of the choir, the rolling of the organ, the procession of priests with their white and gold copes, the ringing of the bell every day seven times from daybreak till curfew for as many services, the shrines of the saints, flaming with gold and precious stones and rich embroideries, especially those of St. Erkenwald, St. Ethelburga, and St. Mellitus, all these things appealed to the citizen and kept him loyal to the faith.

There were, after the Cathedral dignitaries, the parish priests and the chantry priests, with the great army of those who lived by the altar; the anchorites and the hermits, the monks and friars, the nuns and sisters, all the people who formed the service of the monastic houses, the hospitals for the sick, the houses for the insane, the lepers’ houses, the schools, and the colleges. The last named were not places of education, but colleges of priests, of which All Souls, Oxford, and the College of Dulwich are two survivals. In London there were the Colleges of St. Thomas of Acon, in Cheapside, where is now Mercers’ Hall; that of St. Spirit and St. Mary founded by Whittington for a Master and four Fellows with clerks, conducts, choristers, and an almshouse; St. Michael’s, Crooked Lane, for a Master and nine Fellows; Jesus’ Commons for priests; and St. Augustine’s Papey for old and infirm priests. Quiet and pleasant places all, where life gently glided along; where there were no duties but the daily mass, no Rule, no Austerities—the ideal life for the scholar among the books of the library; and for those who loved to sit apart and meditate among the trees and flower-beds of the garden in summer, or in the glazed cloisters sheltered from the cold wind and frost of winter. Outside, in the work-a-day world, what did the people think and believe? The history of religion, or of religious thought, in London, cannot be separated from that of the whole country. It is a history of enthusiasms in successive waves. When the whole of England—in the eighth century—understood, with a new and overwhelming sense, the reality of Christianity; when Kings and Queens, Earls and Thanes and noble ladies crowded into the monasteries, there to prepare for the next world, compared with which this present world is not worth considering, then the people of London for their part rebuilt the Abbey of Westminster, and founded the House of St. Martin-le-Grand; they divided London into parishes and erected parish churches; they created guilds for the spiritual nourishment of those who could not enter the Religious House.

During the two hundred years of struggle with the Danes and Normans, these Houses were destroyed, or, if they survived, were carried on with fewer brethren and a more slender endowment.

When order returned, and a strong King made it possible for men to live without the weapons of war at hand, the mind of the people, always a profoundly religious people, turned again to the realities of the unseen world. Once more there awakened the sense of change and decay and the worthlessness of things fleeting. The Court Jesters—converted—founded hospitals; the City Fathers handed over the lands of the City to the newly founded House of the Holy Trinity. Monasteries, nunneries, and colleges sprang up everywhere. The new foundations satisfied the people for another hundred years or so. Then they woke up once more in the old way. The religious life, they discovered, is not always found in the Religious House; the hood does not make the monk. The Friars came over to the country; they showed the people a new kind of religious life; one not separated from the world, but moving and living in the world; one that saves the soul by losing it and mounts to Heaven by the prayers and gratitude of men and women whom it has lifted from the mire and slough of sin and disease and misery. No more noble form of Christianity can be presented. Francis discovered the very mind of the Founder.

For a hundred years and more the Friars kept alive the new religion. This fell off; but their early teaching survived, and was the foundation of Lollardy. When the Religious Houses were suppressed, the people of London looked on without a protest; their work was done; the City was again waking up to a new enthusiasm. The Reformation, the many sects of the new Faith, the fanaticism of the seventeenth century, the enthusiasm of the eighteenth, the Evangelical domination, the return of High Church doctrine, the development of Ritual, all these things are but manifestations of the same spirit which caused the Revival under Henry the Fourth and the Puritanism of the Civil Wars. Many changes pass over the face of London, but deep down lies, unchanged, the ancient spirit of religion.

In the Parish Church, generally a small building erected by some citizen who got a bit of the City carved out for his parish, there was little splendour. Every day mass was said in the morning, and vespers in the evening, by the Parish Priest: every morning the Chantry priests before the side altars sang mass for the souls of their founders. On All Souls’ Day the Parish Priest sang mass for the souls of all Christian men and women. There was many a poor faithful woman who could not find the money to pay for a Chantry or an obit, or an Annual, for the soul of her husband or her son—though well she knew, poor creature, how much he wanted that assistance. But she took comfort in the thought that so long as the world should last that yearly mass would be said for the benefit of all poor souls in pain.

The endowment of a Chantry generally provided for one priest, but often for two, in some cases for three, and in one, that of Adam de Bury in 1364, for seven priests. In the fourteenth century there were more than 70 chantries in St. Paul’s alone. There were also 111 obits or foundations for occasional masses—making altogether an income of £183: 18: 3-1/2.

In the reign of Richard the Second, Bishop Braybroke found that some of the chantries had fallen into decay, the endowments having been lost or wasted. He united some of the poorer ones. He also ordained that no beneficed priest should hold a chantry, and laid down regulations for the chantry priests. They were to attend the choir offices day and night; they were to take part in processions, funerals, and they were to live in Houses provided for them or in the chambers of Chantries. These priests seem to have given a great deal of trouble by the scandals which they caused. It must be remembered that they were not persons, as a rule, of scholarly habits; that their sole duty consisted in the daily mass for the soul of their Founder; and that they had the whole day to get through in idleness. They were also extremely poor, the average stipend being £5 a year, equivalent to something like £75. Archbishop Sudbury, in 1378, spoke of them in the strongest terms of reproach, summing up his enumeration of their vices by saying that their lives tended “in virorum ecclesiasticorum detestabile scandalum, et exemptum perniciosissimum laicorum.”

It is not possible, I think, to make out how far the London craftsman assisted at the Functions of the Church. At least once a year he must go to Confession. The Pope made that rule in 1215. The craftsman probably went to Confession at one of the greater festivals. Every Sunday morning he must be present at mass. That duty was then, as now, imposed on every faithful child of the Church. This law, doubtless, he did obey. There were dues to be paid: he had to pay them; there were friars who came begging: he contributed of his poverty; and he must fast in Lent and on Fridays and on certain other days—about a hundred days in all. In this point he must needs obey, because the butchers’ shops were closed, and he could buy no meat. He had to get married; to get the children baptized; to pay dues for the Vigil of the Dead. Another important function performed by the clergy was the reconciliation of enemies and the settlement of disputes by “love days.” There are many references to the love days. _Piers Plowman_ constantly talks about them, and with bitterness, as if the Church made the office of Peacemaker a means of enriching herself. Riley quotes an ordinance forbidding people to make disturbances by getting up love days.

The memory of one of these love days has been preserved ever since the year 1484, when a dispute between two Companies of the City of London was finally adjusted. It was on the 10th of April 1484 that the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen decided a long-standing dispute between the Company of Merchant Taylors and the Company of Skinners as follows:—“The said Mayor and Aldermen, the day and year above said taking upon them the rule, direction, and charge of arbitrament of, and in the premises, ‘for norishing of peas and love between the Masters Wardeyns and Fellashipps aforesaid’ adjudged and awarded that the Masters and Wardens should dine each year together at their respective Halls; the Taylors with the Skinners on the Vigil of Corpus Christi; and the Skinners with the Taylors on the Feast of Nativity of St. John Baptist; and as to precedency each Company was to take that on each alternate year save that a Mayor of either should give that Company precedence in his year of office.”

So the Decree has been observed 414 years, while “peas and love” have reigned between the two Fellowships.

In the twelfth century we find the London clergy married, and married into families of the highest position. Their marriage, therefore, was not looked upon by the people, although forbidden by the Church, as in any way blameworthy. In the Synod of 1108, and in that of 1125, both held in London, the most stringent rules were laid down against the marriage of priests. The title of wife was denied their wives, who were called concubines; yet the priests continued to marry. Even in the sixteenth century, when Skelton took Sanctuary against the wrath of Wolsey, he brought his wife and children with him.

In the thirteenth century a renewed effort was made to enforce celibacy as rigidly as could be done. The clergy of the towns, of London at least, were compelled to keep celibate, but not those of the country where the arm of the Bishop was weak. Holinshed, for instance, speaks of the methods adopted in the year 1225 (ii. 358):—

“This yeare also, there came foorth a decree from the archbishop of Canterburie, and his suffragans, that the concubines of preests and clearkes within orders (for so were their wives then called in contempt of their wedlocke) should be denied of Christian buriall, except they repented whilest they were alive in perfect health, or else showed manifest tokens of repentance at the time of their deaths. The same decree also prohibited them from the receiving of the pax at masse time, and also of holie bread after masse, so long as the preests kept them in their houses, or used their companie publikelie out of their houses. Moreover, that they should not be purified when they should be delivered of child, as other good women were, unless they found sufficient suertie to the archdeacon, or his officiall, to make satisfaction at the next chapter or court to be holden after they should be purified. And the preests should be suspended, which did not present all such their concubines as were residant within their parishes. Also, all such women as were convict to have dealt carnallie with a preest were appointed by the same decree to doo open penance. Where the question may be asked, whether this decree was extended to preests’ wives or no? Whereunto answer may be made, that as a quadrangle in geometrie compriseth in it a triangle, and a quaternion in arithmetic conteineth a ternion; so in logike a universall proposition comprehendeth a particular. But it is said here, that all such women as had carnal knowledge with a preest, were to be punished, therefore some, and consequentlie all preests’ wives. But yet this seemeth not to be the meaning of that decree, for preests were allowed no wives, naie Sericius the pope judged that all such of the cleargie as had wives could not please God, bicause they were in carne, which words he and the residue of that litter restreined to marriage, admitting that in no case churchmen should injoy the rights of matrimonie. Wherein they offer God great injurie, in seeking to limit that large institution of wedlocke, wherein all estates are interressed.”

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we find the natural harvest and fruit of this enforced celibacy.

It is not my desire to bring railing accusations against the morals of the clergy. It is, however, quite certain that if a large body of men without much learning or love of learning, to whom is assigned work which occupies them for a very small portion of the day, are forbidden to marry, and if they live for the most part among the lower classes in the City, drinking freely, and as much as they can afford, the result will be, must be, the prevalence of immorality among them. There are plenty of examples and proofs of this condition of things. There is the case in 1385 of Elizabeth Moring, who received girls nominally as apprentices, but really to live a lewd life, and “to consort with friars, chaplains, and other such men.” In 1406 we read of one William Langford, chaplain, taken in adultery with Margaret, wife of Richard Dod. In 1255 a certain Chaplain and Parish Priest took Sanctuary in St. Paul’s and confessed to having stolen sixteen silver dishes. In 1320 a Chaplain is taken up for being a Night Walker and carrying arms against the peace. In 1416 William Cratford, a priest, is reported as a common and notorious thief and hawker on the roads. In 1408 Riley reports that the Letter Book about this time (Henry IV.-Henry VI.) contains “some dozens of similar charges,” viz. of fornication and adultery. The way they tried to check the vice and punish the offender was by forbidding any one to pay or engage the incriminated clerk. This was done in 1413, when two priests of St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, were taken in adultery at the same time with two women in the Church. How far can William of Langland be trusted in setting forth the truth without exaggeration? One knows not. In _Piers Plowman_, however, the figure of Sloth is a priest. He confesses (Skeat’s Edition, B. Passus v. p. 168):—

“I have be prest and parsoun passynge thretti wynter, Gete can I neither solfe [Sol-Fa] ne synge ne seyntes lyues rede, But I can fynde in a felde or in a fourlonge [furrow] an hare, Better than in _beatus vir_ or in _beati omnes_ Construe oon clause wel and kenne it to my parochienes. I can holde lovedays and here a reve’s rekenynge, Ac in canoun ne in decretales I can nought rede a line.”

Many other things point to the scandalous lives of the religious. Thus, the Bishop of Lincoln—not London,—in the reign of Henry III., visiting the religious houses in his diocese, searched the bedrooms and the beds of the monks and friars, and caused examination of the closest possible kind to be made in the nunneries. This would hardly be done without grave suspicions and reports.

Another crying scandal in the Church was the appointment of foreigners to high offices and benefices.

In the year 1245 an inventory was compiled of all benefices held by foreigners and appointed by the Pope. It was found that the sum of 60,000 marks was annually paid to these foreigners. This means almost a million of our money. The bitterness that this caused was so strong that in many parts the people refused to pay their tithe or their dues. There are other indications of hostility to the pretensions of the Pope. A certain Carthusian of London was brought before the Legate for teaching that Gregory was not the true Pope. The monks of Durham refused to obey the Papal ordinance, which commanded every one who was appointed as Abbot to proceed to Rome, there to receive the Pope’s blessing. And the Archbishop of York, refusing to bestow the revenues of his diocese on Italians and foreigners, was cursed by the Pope with bell, book, and candle. This resistance, however, was before its time; it was, in fact, two hundred years too soon.

In the year 1222 we hear of certain cases of cruel death inflicted for religious reasons. They did not occur in London, but at Oxford. A man was brought before the Council at that City charged with personating Christ Himself—Holinshed says two, but Matthew of Westminster says one, and it is impossible that two persons should both at the same time pretend to be Christ. The impostor showed the stigmata upon his hands and feet and in his side: he is said to have preached against the abuses of the ecclesiastics. Indeed, there was never any time when these abuses were more flagrant than in the reign of Henry the Third. The man was clearly an enthusiast, one who had gradually become mad with religious fervour, until he actually persuaded himself that he was the Christ whose religion he tried to preach. The other was the enthusiast’s follower and disciple. With them were two women,—when was there ever enthusiast without a pious woman at his side? One of these poor creatures had been assured by the leader that she was the Virgin Mary, and the other that she was Mary Magdalene. Both of them, of course, firmly believed the assurance. The whole four were tried, the leader was actually crucified, in mockery of his pretensions, and the women were “condemned,” most likely, to be burned.

Against these examples of crime and ignorance may be set the fact that there was never any such violent and unanimous attack upon the secular clergy as we find against the friars. And we may fairly conclude that Chaucer’s portrait of the Parson was drawn from the life, and that there were among the London clergy many who might have sat for models:—

“A good man was ther of religioun, And was a povre PERSOUN of a toun; But riche he was of holy thoght and werk. He was also a lerned man, a clerk, That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche; His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche. Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, And in adversitee ful pacient; And swich he was y-preved ofte sythes. Ful looth were him to cursen for his tythes, But rather wolde he yeven, out of doute, Un-to his povre parisshens aboute Of his offring, and eek of his substaunce. He coude in litel thing han suffisaunce ... This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf, That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte; Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte; And this figure he added eek ther-to, That if gold ruste, what shal iren do? For if a preest be foul, on whom we truste, No wonder is a lewed man to ruste; And shame it is, if a preest take keep, A shiten shepherde and a clene sheep. Wel oghte a preest ensample for to yive, By his clennesse, how that his sheep shold live.”

“A bettre preest, I trowe that nowher noon is. He wayted after no pompe and reverence, He maked him a spyced conscience, But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taughte, and first he folwed it him-selve.”

Chaucer makes the wife of the miller of Trumpington daughter of a priest and brought up in a nunnery. On this fact Skeat has a note[17] of comment.

“The statement, that the parson of the town was her father, has caused surprise. In Bell’s _Chaucer_ the theory is started that the priest had been a widower before he took orders, which no one can be expected to believe; it is too subtle. It is clear that she was an illegitimate daughter; that is why her father paid money to get her married to a miller, and why she thought ladies ought to spare her (and not to avoid her), because it was an honour to have a priest for a father, and because she had learnt so much good-breeding in a nunnery.”

The Religious Life of a Mediæval City largely consisted of the monastic life, and this again was divided between the monks and the friars.

The references to Monks and Monkery in London are, on the whole, good-humoured, from which we may infer that there was little in the way of serious scandal as regards their lives. The easy-going citizens did not expect the most ascetic life in the world from the monks and nuns, who were their own cousins, brothers, or sisters; they recognised it, however, when they found it: for instance, they held the Carthusians in the highest possible reverence, as a body of Religious who adhered strictly to an austere Rule: never ate meat, and never went outside the walls of the House. As regards the other monks, those of Holy Trinity, those of St. Bartholomew’s, those of Westminster, those of St. Mary Overies, it seems certain that they were latterly all of good family; that the austerity of the Rule had been very much relaxed; that the life of the Monastery was, as a rule, decent and dull; that it was very far from being conducive to the development of genius or learning; that it offered place and encouragement to piety of the gentler as well as the more austere kind; that it formed a home for younger sons; that it did not provoke animosity or indignation among the citizens. The well-known case of St. Alban’s, quoted by Froude,[18] had it happened in London, would surely have become known by the people. Chaucer, who reflects the general feeling, has no bitterness at all towards the monk. He depicts him as fond of hunting; he is an “out-rider,” one who can go abroad on the business of the House; he rides a good horse—

“And whan he rood, men might his brydel here Ginglen in a whistling wind as clere And eek as loude as doth the Chapel belle.”

He kept hounds; all his “lust” was in “priking and in hunting of the hare”; he was dressed as a layman; he was fat and in good point; “he was not pale as a for-pyned ghost,”—a picture of a man whose thoughts, indeed, were not wholly set on things spiritual. Chaucer certainly compared the man with the austere monk designed by the Rule he professed, but without bitterness. He grants the old proverb,

“That a monk when he is cloistreless Is lykened til a fish that is waterless”

(a proverb also quoted by William of Langland), but in order to show that the contemporary monk was not of that opinion he adds:—

“Thilke texte held he not worth an oistre.”

The rich clothing and unclerical garb of the monks outside the cloister, and their fondness for hunting, are the principal charges brought against them in the fourteenth century.

Let us consider the actual life of a monk, a Benedictine monk. To begin with, it is a great mistake to suppose that an Abbey was always and for choice planted in some remote and secluded spot. As the people of the eleventh and twelfth centuries no more acted without good and sufficient cause than we their descendants, there must have been a very good reason to justify the foundation of so many Religious Houses within and without the walls of the City of London. Dear to many were the quiet meadows beside the rushing stream, beneath the hanging woods, far from the noise of men, of Tintern, of Fountains, of Dryburgh, or of Blanchland: dearer to others the thought of the life close to those walls, which held so much of violence, passion, ambition, and crime, which their very presence would calm and shame and admonish; of the men broken and ruined, of the women disgraced, to whom these quiet cloisters offered a resting-place; why, to the very worst, the most hardened of murderous ruffians, to such as Chaucer’s shipman, pirate and murderer, the daily prospect of these walls, the ringing of the bells, the voices chanting Litany and Laud, the sight of the friars going about among them, the knowledge that these men and women lived in abstinence from all that the world called pleasure; that they possessed no property; that they desired none of the things which the world desires; this reflection, the obtrusion of these facts, acted as a continual admonition and call to repentance. Of course there was the danger, the continual danger, always present in human affairs, of the relaxation of the Rule; the loss of the first enthusiasm; the decay of the first intention. A Benedictine who rides abroad dressed like a knight with hawk and hound, for whom a hundred manors send up their rent, their wheat and their game; who keeps a splendid table; who admits to his order only young men well born; to whom the place is like the College of All Souls, a House of Fellows with no duties, ceases to be regarded with reverence on account of reputed piety. When not even the memory is left of the early piety; when the air is thick with stories of incontinence and greed; when the land is everywhere parcelled out among the religious; then they become intolerable, and must be swept away. We shall have to return to this subject. Meantime let us consider the monastic life at a time when the monasteries were at their wealthiest, and when the ancient Rule, although very far relaxed, had not yet become an object of common contempt, when the monks and friars had not yet quite fallen from their ancient reputation. The time chosen for this view of the monastic life is that before the Wars of the Roses, which greatly impoverished the Religious Houses and at the same time deprived them of novices. Just as the first incursions of the Danes emptied the Anglican and Saxon Monasteries, so the long Wars of the Roses called out the younger as well as the elder sons to the wars. Now, by this time, the rich monasteries were entirely recruited from the younger sons of the gentry. Great nobles placed their children in monasteries. Thus, Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland, had twenty children, and three of his daughters became nuns. Edward the Fourth made one of his daughters a nun. One of the children of Owen Tudor and Katherine of Valois was placed in Westminster Abbey as an infant, and there remained for life as a monk. Edward the First had one daughter a nun. Thirteen daughters of nobles were in Ambresbury at the same time. The fact that the Abbey was for gentlefolk is clearly brought out by the list of names of the Westminster monks given in the Podelicote case. This occurred in the year 1303. It was the robbery of the royal Treasury or the Chapel of the Pyx at Westminster. Here were kept many of the things required for the assay of new coins, and at the time of the robbery the chapel contained an altogether unusual amount of specie, about £100,000, equal to perhaps a million of money in our time. The robber was Richard de Podelicote, who got into the Abbey from the palace, which, as the king was away, was probably less strictly guarded than usual. He climbed through one of the Chapter House windows, and so into the Refectory. He carried away many of the silver cups and managed to escape safely. However, he returned another time and attacked the Treasury. For this he had to cut through solid stone walls, and conceal his work; night after night he returned, and in his confession he makes no mention of any confederates. His perseverance was successful, and he took the money and all the gold and silver things which could be conveniently melted down away with him, but left behind the large jewels that he could not easily have got rid of. However, the stuff was afterwards traced, not only to Podelicote himself but to many others. Such is the story, and most amazing it is. There is no doubt that the chief actors were hanged, though there is no actual record of such a hanging. All the monks, forty of them, were sent to the Tower, presumably for their carelessness in guarding the Treasury. They were released after two years. In a letter from the king we have a record of their names, and these names show almost in all cases gentle birth. In effect, it wants no proof to understand that the desirable endowments of a Religious House, whose Brethren were like the Fellows of a College richly founded, would not be bestowed upon the children of rustics and servants. Here and there, no doubt, a rustic’s son might get advancement by the promise of exceptional ability; but this was in the ranks of the secular clergy rather than in the Religious Houses. The future monk was brought in, appointed by interest, as to a very good thing, when a boy. It was extremely difficult to procure such an appointment.

Founder’s kin, Benefactor’s kin sometimes helped; generally it was by private interest that lads were admitted as novices. The monks were not, as a rule, anxious to enlarge their numbers: rather to keep them down, so that the revenues of the House should provide amply for all. Sometimes admission was obtained by gifts or the conveyance of land. I have said that during the Civil Wars the number of monks decreased enormously; at Westminster it declined from eighty to thirty; at Canterbury from a hundred and fifty to fifty-four; at Gloucester from a hundred to thirty-six. This decrease was due, no doubt, partly to the disastrous influence of the War on rents; partly to the demand for fighting men; partly, I believe, to an increasing distaste for the monastic life. The child fortunate enough to be appointed was formerly presented in the Church as a novice; his parents first cut off his curls, offering his long hair to the Abbey. They then placed the chalice and the Host in his hand and led him to the priest at the altar. Here they wrapped his hands in the pall of the altar, and heard read a written engagement that they would not tempt the boy from the House. After this the Abbot consecrated a hood for the boy and laid it on him. He was then taken out, shaved after the fashion of the Order, robed, and brought back, after which he was received with prayers. It took long years to break in a novice, to teach him obedience, to crush his will, to take the fighting spirit out of him, and the love instinct out of him; in fact, if stories are true, the success of the system was often incomplete in every point. The novice had to sit in silence for hours, with down-cast eyes; he was never left alone to play at freedom; he had to do everything in a manner prescribed by rule, even the lifting of a cup at meals, even the carriage of the hands when seated; things had to be said in a certain form; services were frequent, and the singing of Psalms went on all day long and half the night. The Church ceremonies were involved and elaborate. By the time the novice was admitted he already knew every Function in the book, and all the Psalms and Prayers by heart. By this time, also, the House was all the world to him. What went on outside he knew not, the House was everything—father, mother, brothers and kin; he had no ambition except to rise to monastic honours. He had completed his education. If he were a Benedictine, that education was liberal: he was taught grammar, logic, Latin, philosophy, writing and illuminating, music, singing, and the history of the Order. After his profession, the Benedictine theory was that he continued his studies. If he did they were, in most of the English Houses, sterile of results. At eighteen the novice made his profession. There was then no retreat possible for him, he was a monk for life. At first he was a Junior, and as such he read the Gospel and the Epistle for the day; he carried a taper in processions; he read the martyrology in the Chapter.

The services began at two in the morning with Matins; this finished, the Choir went to bed; the rest sang Lauds for the dead; they went to bed again and slept till daybreak or five, when they got up and had Prime; at 9 A.M. there was Tierce; at 11 A.M. there was Sext; at 2 P.M. there was Nones; at 6 P.M. there were Vespers. The monks went to bed at eight, having given up eight hours at least out of the twenty-four to services in the church. Eight hours were spent in sleep. One hour was spent in the daily gathering in the Chapter House, leaving seven for meals, exercise, recreation, and study. The rules were in some cases relaxed for scholars, but, even making allowance for such relaxation, it is clear that the monk, who was a student, was at a great disadvantage compared with the student who lived outside.

The church was, of course, the most important part of the buildings of a monastery. South of the nave was the cloister, with its four walks, in which the monks spent their time when not in church; on the east of the cloister was the Chapter House; on the south, the Refectory; on the west, the Abbot’s House. Beyond the cloister were the dormitories, the Scriptorium, the Misericordia, the Infirmary, the Guest House. Beyond these were the Kitchen, Buttery, Pantry cellars, Brewery, Bakehouse, Laundry, offices for making and mending, orchards, gardens, vineyards, fishponds etc., and stables. An important House had a great establishment to keep up. This was presided over in its various departments by the Brethren themselves, whose offices will be enumerated presently. This work occupied a good many of the Seniors. In fact there were so many offices that it is difficult to discover how they could find time for purposes of study. If they wanted to study, or if they wanted to meditate, there was the cloister, but no other place. Desks were set out there; but as the novices’ school was also carried on there with, as sometimes happened, mechanical work by some of the Brothers, it would seem impossible, according to modern ideas, to carry on serious study amid such interruptions. It is a commonplace to speak of the monotony of a Religious House. Considering that most of the inmates knew no other kind of life, they hardly felt the monotony; and, besides, we must remember that the House was filled with its own ambitions, its envyings, its disappointments, which relieved it of monotony. Who would not desire to be Abbot and to rank with an Earl? The Abbot enjoyed that rank: when he rode abroad he was followed by a retinue of a hundred persons; he could create knights; in some cases he could coin money; he was guardian to many noble children who became his pages; he administered a splendid estate. Or one might laudably desire the office of Prior: he went first after the Abbot; he had his own stall; he put on his hood before the others. Or there was the sub-Prior: he sat among the monks and saw that every one behaved properly; he also, at five o’clock in the evening, shut up the House.

Then there were administrative offices. These were the Altarer, the Precentor, the Director of Ceremonies, the Kitchener, the Seneschal, the Bursar, the Sacrist, the sub-Sacrist, the Almoner, and the Master of the Novices. There were also the offices of less honour, but which still conferred responsibility and even power; such as those of the Infirmarer, Porter, Refectorer, Hospitaller, Chamberlain, Keeper of the Granary, Master of the Common House, Orcharder, Operarius Registrar, Auditor, Secretary, Butler, Keeper of Baskets, Keeper of the Larder, apart from the mere service of the House, which required Baker, Brewer, Carpenter, Carver, Sculptor, Bookbinder, Copyist, etc. As for the morality of the monks, I am inclined to believe that the Religious Houses maintained much more of their early piety than we have been accustomed to believe. That they grew luxurious in their living, and in some cases immoral in their lives, seems to have been due to the cause assigned by Wyclyf and the Lollards—their great wealth. While they were poor they lived simple lives; they practised the Rule; they worked at copying Gospels and Mass Books; some of them kept Chronicles of their own age—an invaluable service; they received the sick and the poor. In the very worst times that the country ever experienced, the monasteries stood up here and there over all the land to witness for justice, and righteousness, and mercy. Bad as these times were, they would have been far more ferocious and more cruel but for the existence and the example of the monasteries.

At the same time, there were always scandals. Who could expect in a monastery that all the younger monks should retain their purity? And when there was nothing else to think about, who could expect men not to think about their food? In the time of Henry the Second, Giraldus Cambrensis relates that the monks of Canterbury had sixteen covers, or more, with an abundance of wine, “particularly claret, mulberry wine, mead, and other strong drinks.” And it is related by the same authority that the monks of St. Swithin’s complained to Henry the Second that the Bishop had reduced their dishes to ten. Upon which the King swore that the Bishop should reduce the number to what suited himself, namely, three. The monastic life expected of those who followed it, not a mere obedience to the Rule, but a total absorption in the spirit of the Rule, so that the Brethren should not look constantly for possible relaxation and for indulgences, but should desire more and more all the austerity possible under the Rule. And because there was everywhere a falling-off from the austerity of the Rule, new branches were continually founded, and new Orders continually sprang up, in order to return to the ancient Rule with new austerities. When the Brethren fell to relaxing any portion of the Rule, the downfall of the House began. Then the spirit went out of the services, the meaning went out of the offices, the sense went out of the Rules; the Brethren became either like Rabelais, weary to death with the daily iteration of services, or they became careless and sensual, evading and breaking vows as well as the Rule; or they became dry sticklers for order and jealous for minor customs, though the essentials had long been lost. This was already the case in the fourteenth century. Decay was active in most of the Monastic Houses; things were whispered; but still the bequests poured in upon them from citizens rich and poor; people were loth to part with the belief in the godly monks. And that there were still saintly hearts in the cloister, still pious women in the nunnery, even in the worst times of any, there can be no doubt. But, further, there can be no doubt, also, that there was never any considerable or notable body of scholars in the English Monasteries from the time of their foundation to their Dissolution, and that no Monastic Rule ever devised was calculated to create a love of learning or a school of students, theologians, or philosophers.

The monasteries possessed a vast amount of property in lands and houses. The lands were cultivated, and the houses held, in the usual manner. I gather, from what is said on the subject, that monks made good landlords, just, if exacting. In their schools they gave free education, but not to all-comers. They also taught certain trades, but not all; not those of a mere menial kind. Thus they taught carving, painting, weaving, embroidery, damask work, enamelling, lapidary work, music, and making musical instruments, illuminations, copying of MSS., medicine, surgery, the making up of drugs and the composition of cordials. Every Religious House had within itself a library, a reading-room, a school, a burial-ground, a cloister, gardens, and walks. Every novice brought some property. Everything, as I have said, points to the fact that the mediæval monastery in England belonged to the gentry and not to the lower class.

The monastic life in London was at its best in the twelfth century; later on, besides the scandals, which perhaps were false or exaggerated, we hear of relaxations, monks obtaining license for residing outside the House, for “cutting chapel,” for indulgences in wine and other things.

Let us turn to the Friars. There were five Orders of Friars in London: the Franciscans, who came to London in 1224; the Dominicans, who settled first in Oxford, 1221; the Austin Friars, whose London House was founded in 1253; the Carmelites, or White Friars, in 1341; and the Crutched or Crossed Friars in 1244. The most numerous and most important of these, the most deeply loved and reverenced, were the Franciscans, or Grey Friars.

The first appearance of the Franciscans in London was in the year 1224, when a small company of them appeared and asked for a place wherein to build themselves a humble lodging. They were granted a place in the least desirable part of the City, close beside the Shambles, next to “Stinking Lane.” Here they stayed. For many years after their arrival they worked among the poorer classes of the people, silently and without attracting much attention. Presently it began to be noised abroad among the citizens that there was an extraordinary band of Brethren who had no money and would take none; who had no food except what was given to them; who went into the poorest and the worst streets, who prayed with the dying murderer and comforted the dying harlot, and attended the sick robber in a spirit of divine forgiveness and love. Then the hearts of all went out towards the Franciscans. Never was any Religious Order so reverenced, never were any religious men so loved and worshipped by the good people of London. All the world brought them gifts; they were ruined by the gifts; since they would not receive estates, they must have gold and jewels; with the gold they built a church, magnificent even in that age of magnificent churches; since they must remain poor, they spent all their money on the church and its decorations and furniture.

And then the inevitable decay set in; with so great a Church and so noble a House the old begging for daily bread became a form; boxes were put up in shops and houses, and the collectors came round at regular intervals and cleared them; not a citizen of any substance but left money in his will to the Franciscans; they received endowments of chantries and obits; they took money for burying great persons in the Church. The Friars grew careless and self-indulgent; the old zeal for the poor died away; they were no more seen in the hovels of the poorest. The Franciscan Rule, in fact, proved too severe to be maintained in all its rigour. Yet the Dissolution of the Religious Houses shows that in some particulars it was kept up. For instance, the only property possessed by the Grey Friars when they left their House was the rent of a few houses built within their precinct. They had no estates. The great House, with its splendid church, was maintained by the gifts of nobles and rich merchants; by the endowment, as mentioned above, of chantries; and by the masses daily bought and said, or sung, “for the intention” of the purchaser. It is the modern custom in some Catholic countries to buy a mass before undertaking any enterprise; even before beginning some necessary work, such as haymaking. This mass is sung “for the intention” of the purchaser. There is, therefore, reason to believe that the faithful purchased formerly, as they do still, masses for “good luck.”

The rise, the extent, and the gradual decay in the respect held for Friars is illustrated very remarkably by the _Calendar of Wills_. From this valuable book, which may be accepted as a perfectly trustworthy guide so far as it goes, I have extracted the following tables of bequests to the five Orders of Friars. These bequests were sometimes made collectively, so much each to all the Orders of Friars; sometimes singly, so much to the Austin Friars, or the Preaching Friars. It will be seen how the fashion of bequeathing money to the Friars grew and increased and how it died away, as the popular respect for the Friars decreased, and the new ideas spread.

Up to the year 1311 there are recorded in the _Calendar of Wills_ in all five such bequests.

Between 1311 and 1324 there are three bequests „ 1324 „ 1332 „ „ five “ „ 1332 „ 1339 „ „ eight “ „ 1339 „ 1355 „ „ fifty “ „ 1355 „ 1400 „ „ one hundred and thirty-five “ „ 1400 „ 1412 „ „ seventeen “ „ 1412 „ 1436 „ „ six “ „ 1436 „ 1530 „ „ fourteen “

As for special and separate bequests, the Grey Friars, formerly the most popular of all, obtained only one bequest between 1396 and 1436; after that, _none at all_. The Black Friars got no legacies at all from 1413 to 1503; in the latter year one fell to them. The White Friars got none between 1395 and 1503, when they got one. The Austin Friars got none after 1395; the Crutched Friars none from 1460 to 1518. That is to say, in the bequests, few and small, given during this period to the various Orders, they get their share, but there is no special gift made to any.

While considering the subject of wills and bequests, I ran through the volume edited by Dr. Furnivall called _The Fifty Earliest English Wills_. These were from 1389 to 1439. A brief analysis shows that in most cases bequests are made to the parish church, either to the High Altar, or to the “Works,” either of vestments, or of money to the priests and clerks, or of money for masses, a rental of masses or “the year’s mind” for twenty, seven, or five years. In seventeen cases, or perhaps more, provision is made for the poor; in three cases for prisons and prisoners; in three cases for nuns; in one case for an “ankeress”; in one for mending the ways; in one for repairing a bridge; and in nine cases for friars, either the recognised Orders, all together, or one or other of them. But four of these cases belong to the country; there are, therefore, only five belonging to London. The period covers that when Lollardy was at its highest, and this result confirms the conclusion arrived at by an analysis of the _Calendar of Wills_; that, namely, as to the decay of respect for the Religious.

Then there are those wills published by the Camden Society (_Wills from Doctors’ Commons_) which belong to the time before the Reformation, viz. those of Cicely, Duchess of York, 1495; Dame Maude Parr, 1529; Archbishop Warham, and Charles Brandon.

The Duchess of York leaves bequests to certain colleges named, to the House of Sion, of which her daughter was prioress, and to certain parishes, but nothing to the Friars.

Dame Maude Parr gives forty shillings each to the four Orders of Friars in London, and twenty shillings each to the Friars of Northampton.

Archbishop Warham gives nothing to the Friars.

Again, of bequests to the various Orders, between 1356 and 1412, there are 110, between 1412 and 1544 there are only 7. The contemplation of these figures, the amazing falling-off of such bequests in the beginning of the fifteenth century, when Lollardy was rife, the failure of the Friars to recover their old position of reverence, goes far to show why in London the suppression of the Religious Houses was effected with so little opposition. The people had ceased to believe in the holiness of the Friars; as for that of the monks, it was perhaps different, as we shall see in another place.

Since we have spoken of the decay of belief in the Friars, let us also speak of the respect actually paid to them when their popularity was at its height.

Shortly after the Black Death, a letter was sent by the Mayor and Aldermen to the Pope, asking that a certain John de Werthyn, a Dominican Friar, might be appointed Penitentiarius to the City. The office itself was important. In Confession there were continually occurring certain cases not provided for in the instructions of the ordinary priest. In such a case the priest could only grant conditional absolution. He referred it to his Bishop, who either decided it himself, or, if it was one of an unusual and difficult kind, passed it on to the Penitentiarius. If he, too, found the case too grave for his decision, he referred it to the College or Court of Penitentiaries at Rome, on whose official report the Pope generally acted. The Mayor and Aldermen, after a preamble to the effect that their City had been of late grievously afflicted by a dreadful mortality, so that the merchants were not able to wait in person upon his Holiness, proceeded to petition the Pope that he would “grant unto the venerable and religious man, Brother John de Werthyn, his chaplain, a man of honour, of approved life and manners, and also of learning, sprung from the high blood of the realm, who alone of all others strengthens us with the word of Christ, that he and he only, within the City may be able to absolve the people being penitent.” They go on to ask that the office, at his death, may be continued in the Order of the Dominican Friars.

The satires against the Religious Orders began within the very century of their foundation in England. One, for example, given in Thomas Wright’s _Political Poems_, belongs to the reign of Edward the First. It is the poem called “The Order of Fair Ease.” The Order of Fair Ease takes a point from every Order, of course it takes the weak point in every case. To begin with, the Order is entirely confined to gentlefolk—one wonders whether Rabelais had read this satire, and whether any part of it suggested the Abbey of Thelema.

“Quar en l’Ordre est meint prodhoume, E meinte bele e bone dame. En cel ordre sunt sanz blame, Esquiers, vadletz, e serjauntz; Mès à ribaldz e à pesauntz Est l’ordre del tot defendu Qe jà nul ne soit rescu.”

As at the Abbey of Sempringham, the Order is to receive both men and women; but whereas at Sempringham there are walls and ditches to separate the Brethren from the Sisters, in this Order there is to be no wall or ditch or anything to separate them. Three times a day, at least, they are to eat, and if they do it in company the Order will be none the worse.

From Beverley they are to take the custom of eating and drinking well at dinner, at supper, and at collation; and after collation every one is to have a piece of candle as long as from the elbow to the finger ends; and to go on drinking so long as the candle lasts.

From the Hospitallers they will take their long and sweeping robes.

From the Canons they will take the custom of eating meat three times a week, and if on Fast Days they find themselves without fish, then they are to eat whatever is in the larder.

From the Black Monks (the Benedictines) they are to borrow the habit of getting drunk every day.

From the Secular Canons, who willingly serve the ladies, the new Order is to take that point and to be constant companions of the Sisters, both before and after matins, so that the Order may not on that account fall into discredit.

In the Order of Silence, each brother shuts himself up in his cell; the new Order shall have the same rule, provided that a sister be locked up with a brother.

In the Friars Minor the Brethren are ordered to take whatever hospitality is offered them; but they take care never to rest at the house of a poor man, so in the new Order the Brethren will on no account take up their quarters unless where the owner is a rich man.

As for the Black Friars—the Preaching Order,—they may wear sandals if they please and ride if they please. The new Order will always wear sandals and will always ride.

“Atant fine nostre Ordre, Q’à touz bonz ordres se acorde, Et c’est l’Ordre del Bel-Eyse, Qe à pluzours tro bien pleyse!”

To this we may add Chaucer’s description of a Friar. Now Chaucer was of London town. This Friar was “a wanton and a merry”; he was a “limitour,” that is to say, he had his “beat” in which he exercised his craft. “He had made full many a marriage of young women at his own cost”—that is, whom he had first seduced. He was greatly respected as a Father confessor, on account of the easy terms on which he gave absolution, so long as the services gave to the Order:

“For many a man so hard is of his herte, He may not wepe al thogh him sore smerte. Therefore instide of weping and preyeres, Men moot yeve silver to the povre freres.”

He carried knives and pins in his tippet, because the Friars had now become pedlars and carried knives, pins, purses, girdles, silk, etc., to sell in the country places. He knew all the taverns and every hostler and barmaid (tapster); he was the best beggar ever known; he could sing and play right well:

“And in his harping whan that he had songe His eyen twinkled in his heed aright, As doon the sterres in the frosty night.”

Chaucer’s company contained other functionaries, but for our purpose this is enough.

We need not suppose that the widespread hatred of friars indicated any disbelief in their doctrines. That would come later, but as yet there seemed no desire for change in doctrine. The people made songs, and told stories, about the luxury, the greed, the concupiscence, the license of the friars, but the convents remained, and the people continued to cling to the supposed sanctity of the place. A man who one day cursed the whole crew of monks, friars, and pardoners, the next day begged for a letter of fraternity, by which he might participate in the spiritual advantages of Carmelite or Augustine; he arranged for burial in the Convent Church; he would be buried in a friar’s robe; he would found a chantry, a trental, an obit, an anniversary.

It is difficult to understand the roving life of the friar. One supposes that he was always attached to his Friary. Had he a license to roam and beg? Was he a limitour, _i.e._ a friar licensed to hear confessions and grant absolution over a certain district? Was he a wandering preacher? Were the “simple priests” sent out by Wyclyf mendicant friars? Did the wandering preachers, whether sent by Wyclyf or not, all preach the same vague socialism? Some of these questions may be answered with some degree of certainty. The Friars of the street and road were nearly all sprung from the lower classes; even the villeins sent their sons to become Friars and Priests. A very little consideration of the vast army required for Ecclesiastical purposes, poorly paid, with slender learning, with no prospects of promotion, will show that the scholars of both Universities must have amounted to an immense number, consisting chiefly of poor scholars, with a license to beg. The Commons, in the reign of Richard the Second, complained of the way in which the sons of villeins thus bettered their condition by “advancement par clergie.” The clerks who issued from the universities obtained episcopal orders, and in some cases took upon them the vows and robes of the Mendicants. They then began to wander about the country, preaching and teaching, living on charity, received into certain houses; and so continued for the rest of their lives. For the most part, they were careful not to ask for a license from their Bishop; they had no papers; they were not attached to any House; they roamed about from village to village, from town to town; in London they preached in the streets, in the markets, at street corners; they preached not only concerning things religious, but concerning things social; and belonging themselves to the people, knew what the people wanted, and preached accordingly.

One of them, John Ball, whose preaching has been thought worthy of the historian, probably because he was considered to be so mischievous a person, taught a kind of rough socialism. “At the beginning we were all created equal: it is the tyranny of perverse men which has caused slavery to arise in spite of God’s Law: if God had willed that there should be slaves, He would have said at the beginning of the world who should be slave and who should be lord.” A poor argument, because, notoriously, we are not created equal, but unequal in every respect. Also, there is nothing to show that the Creator did not say at the beginning who should be slave and who should be lord. Froissart also speaks of John Ball:—

“This preest vsed often tymes on the sondayes after masse whanne the people were goynge out of the mynster, to go into the cloyster and preche, and made the people to assemble about hym, and wolde say thus: A ye good people, the maters gothnot well to passe in Englande, nor shall not do tylle euery thyng be common, and that there be no villayns not gentylmen.... What haue we deserued or why shulde we be kept thus in seruage? we be all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve: wherby can they say or shewe that they be gretter lordes than we be, sauynge by that they cause vs to wyn and labour, for that they dispende ... they dwell in fayre houses, and we haue the payne and trauele, rayne and wynde in the feldes: and by that that cometh of our labours they kepe and mayteyne their estates.... Lette vs go to the kyng, he is yonge, and shewe hym what seruage we be in.... Thus Johan (Ball) sayd on sondayes whan the people issued out of the churches with another in the feldes and in the wayes as they want togyder, affermyng howe Johan Ball sayd trouthe.”

That many of the friars held and preached similar doctrines is proved by the story of Jack Straw, who would have kept no other ecclesiastics upon earth except the Mendicants. Their popularity, of course, was advanced and preserved by the social doctrines they preached. But in London they seem to have lost their popularity very early. In the reign of Edward the Second the Preaching Friars had to fly before the rage of the people, “on account of their proud behaviour. And Richard the Second, in 1385, issued a proclamation against certain persons who, instigated by the Evil Spirit, “do openly and secretly stir up our people to destroy the houses of the said friars, tearing their habits from them, striking them, and ill-treating them against our peace.”

The greatest enemies of the mendicant were the parish priest and the monk. The former found himself abandoned; no one confessed to him; no one listened to him. They were all running after the mendicant friar, who spoke to them in their own patois, was one of themselves, who knew their ways and their wants, and confessed them easily. And Jack Straw’s rebellion showed what had been the teaching of these wanderers. Since there were so many of them that alms were not always to be obtained, some, as we have seen, became pedlars:—

“They wandren here and there, And dele with divers marcerye, Right as thai pedlers were, That dele with purses, pinnes and knyves, With gyrdles, gloves, for wenches and wyves.”

Walsingham, a monk of St. Alban’s, says of them, “The friars, unmindful of their profession, have even forgotten to what end their Orders were instituted; for the holy men their law-givers desired them to be poor and free of all kinds of temporal possessions, that they should not have anything which they might fear to lose on account of saying the truth. But now they are envious of possessions, approve the crimes of the great, induce the commonalty into error, and praise the sins of both: and with the intent of acquiring possessions ... call good evil and evil good.”

And a popular song of the fourteenth century says of them:—

“Full wisely can they preach and say; But as thei preche no thing do thei, I was a frere ful many a day, Therefore the sothe I wate. But when I saw that thair lyvyng Accordyd not to thair preching, Of I cast my frer clothing, And nyghtly went my gate. Other leve ne took I none Fro ham where I went. But took ham to the devil ye none The prior and the convent.”

And see _Political Songs_, Edw. III.—Rich. III. vol. ii. p. 17, edited by Thomas Wright:—

“But the felliest folke that ever Antichrist found, been last brought into the church, and in a woonder wise; for they been of diverse sects of Antichrist, sown of diverse countries and kindreds. And all men knowne well that they bee not obedient to bishops, ne leege men to kings; neither they tillen ne sowen, weeden ne reapen, wood, corn, ne grasse, neither nothing that man should helpe, but onely themselves, their lives to susteine, And these men have all manner power of God, as they seyn, in heaven and in yearth, to sell heaven and hell to whom that them liketh; and these wretches weet never where to been themselves. And therefore, freer, if thine order and rules been grounded on Goddis law, tell thou mee, Jacke Upland, that I aske of thee, and if thou be or thinkest to be on Christes side, keepe thy paciens.”

And these are the questions asked of the Friar:—

How many Orders are there? Which is the most perfect Order? Is there any Order more perfect than that of Christ? Since there is but one religion, how is a man an apostate who leaves his Order? Does the habit mean religion? Why do you stick out for your colours? Why do you eat flesh in one house and not in another? Why are you silent in one house and not in another? Why at initiation and profession do you pretend to be dead? Why do you build such splendid houses? Why are you not made Bishops? Can your prayers make any man better than his own prayers can do? Why do you preach that a man buried in your habit shall never go to hell? Why do you steal children for your sect? Why do you hear confessions of rich men? Why do you hate the preaching of the gospel? When you take a penny for a mass, what is it you sell? God’s body? Prayer? or your trouble? Since God knows everything, why write name of donor on your tablets? Why beg for yourself instead of poor men? Why do you not keep the Rule of St. Francis?

In the restoration of the City life of the fourteenth century, remember that in every street we find the mendicant friar; at dinner-time he walks into any house he chooses: “Peace be unto this house,” he says, after which, by the Franciscan rule, it is lawful for him to eat of all meats that are set before him; at the corner of the street there is a wandering preacher denouncing the luxury and sloth of the rich; his audience is composed of craftsmen in leather jerkins listening with eager ears and intelligent faces. He is fat and well nourished; he has a full, rich voice and a certain rude oratory that lays hold of the people and constrains them to listen. There passes along the street, in a ragged gown, a lean and hungry chantry priest; he looks at the crowd round the preacher; he hears him talk the rough, strong East Saxon dialect which has always been the language of the London craftsman. He sighs, it is his own native patois, but he cannot talk as this man talks; he is a poor scholar, once a licensed beggar, and now a ragged, half-starved priest, having nothing but his little chantry endowment. Yet, being a scholar, he could prove that this man is all wrong. So he sighs and passes on his way. There comes next a Pardoner with his box hung round his neck; that precious box in which he has a finger-nail of St. Luke, the feather with which St. Matthew’s Gospel was written, a piece of a stone thrown at St. Stephen, the last footstep of the Prophet Elijah embedded in the rock, a piece of St. Peter’s fishing-net—you can see for yourself that it is a fishing-net, and other very precious relics. The box also contains pardons and indulgences which this good man sells to the faithful. At sight of the preacher, however, the Pardoner says nothing. In vain would he open his box of relics and offer his parchment indulgences in the presence of this preacher and his listeners. Lollards all! Lollards all!

There rides along the narrow street a monk with hawk on fist bravely dressed. Behind him walk his men leading the dogs. They are going to cross London Bridge and gain the wild heath country lying beyond the Southwark and Lambeth marshes. He regards preacher and crowd alike with scorn ineffable. It is the hour of Angelus—and from every parish church, from every monastery church, from every Chapel, from every College, and from the Cathedral, the bells call the world to silent prayer. For a few moments all are hushed; the roar of London is stilled; it was not the roar of wheels so much as the sound of ten thousand hammers. The preacher is silent for a moment; his audience take off their caps; the monk who goes hawking crosses himself; the Pardoner stands bare-headed: it is but a moment, then the noise begins again.

The support of the church by the taxes or offerings of the parishioners is a singular story of conservatism and of gradual development. It was customary for the congregation on Sundays and Apostles’ days to make offerings or oblations at the celebration of the mass. This usage became regulated not by law but by custom, more binding than law, into a payment of one halfpenny by every citizen who paid a rent of 20s., and one farthing by every citizen who paid a rent of 10s. The number of days so observed amounted to 60, so that in the former case the citizen paid 2s. 6d. a year, and in the latter case 1s. 3d. a year. Observe that this custom amounted to an eighth part of the rent; applied to modern custom, for an office in the City rented at £100 a year, the citizen would now have to pay £12:10s.

Bishop Roger Le Noir converted this custom into law in 1228. In 1389 Archbishop Arundel interfered and increased the number of Apostles’ days to be so observed by 22 more, making the 2s. 6d. into 3s. 9d. An appeal to the Pope was answered by his support of the Archbishop; but the citizens continued to grumble. In 1535, probably with the desire of making the Londoners pleased with his ecclesiastical changes, Henry reduced the 3s. 5d. to 2s. 9d. And so the tax remained, until the Fire of 1666 necessitated a revision of the law.