[299] For another ecclesiastical procession which shows very clearly the costume of the various orders of clergy, see Achille Jubinal’s “Anciennes Tapisseries,” plate ii.
[300] Incisis, cut and slashed so as to show the lining.
[301] Monumenta Franciscana, lxxxix. Master of the Rolls’ publications.
[302] York Fabric Rolls, p. 243.
[303] This word, which will frequently occur, means a kind of ornamental dagger, which was worn hanging at the girdle in front by civilians, and knights when out of armour. The instructions to parish priests, already quoted, says—
In honeste clothes thow muste gon
Baselard ny bawdryke were thou non.
[304] The honorary title of Sir was given to priests down to a late period. A law of Canute declared a priest to rank with the second order of thanes—i.e., with the landed gentry. “By the laws, armorial, civil, and of arms, a priest in his place in civil conversation is always before any esquire, as being a knight’s fellow by his holy orders, and the third of the three Sirs which only were in request of old (no baron, viscount, earl, nor marquis being then in use), to wit, Sir King, Sir Knight, and Sir Priest.... But afterwards Sir in English was restrained to these four,—Sir Knight, Sir Priest, and Sir Graduate, and, in common speech, Sir Esquire; so always, since distinction of titles were, Sir Priest was ever the second.”—A Decacordon of Quodlibetical Questions concerning Religion and State, quoted in Knight’s Shakespeare, Vol. I. of Comedies, note to Sc. I, Act i. of “Merry Wives of Windsor.” In Shakespeare’s characters we have Sir Hugh Evans and Sir Oliver Martext, and, at a later period still, “Sir John” was the popular name for a priest. Piers Ploughman (Vision XI. 304) calls them “God’s knights,”
And also in the Psalter says David to overskippers,
Psallite Deo nostro, psallite; quoniam rex terre
Deus Israel; psallite sapienter.
The Bishop shall be blamed before God, as I leve [believe]
That crowneth such goddes knightes that conneth nought sapienter
Synge ne psalmes rede ne segge a masse of the day.
Ac never neyther is blameless the bisshop ne the chapleyne,
For her either is endited; and that of ignorancia
Non excusat episcopos, nec idiotes prestes.
[305] York Fabric Rolls, p. 268.
[306] Described and engraved in the Sussex Archæological Collections, vii. f. 13.