Now prelate, and now chaplaine,
Now priest, now clerke, now forstere.
In his description of the Yoman, too, Chaucer adds—
An horne he bere, the baudrick was of grene,
A fostere was he sothely as I guesse.
Thus, again, Langland, in setting forth Glutton’s encounter with the frequenters of the tavern, speaks familiarly of—
Watte the Warner.
But these are not all. It is with them we must associate our ancestral ‘Woodwards’ or ‘Woodards,’ and still more common ‘Woodreefs,’ ‘Woodrows,’ ‘Woodroffs,’ and ‘Woodruffs,’ all more or less perverted forms of the original wood-reeve.[[226]] A song representing the husbandmen as complaining of the burdens in Edward II.’s reign says—
The hayward heteth us harm to habben of his
The bailif beckneth us bale, and weneth wel do;