[22] Canterbury Tales (ed. Skeat), Prologue, ll. 127 ff. It is interesting to notice that the Roman de la Rose, of which Chaucer translated a fragment, contains some remarks upon this subject which are almost paraphrased in his description of Madame Eglentyne.
[23] La Clef d’Amors ..., ed. Doutrepont (1890), V, 3227 ff.
[24] Le Chastiement des Dames (Barbazon and Méon, Fabliaux et Contes, II, p. 200).
[25] See Mrs Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, II, pp. 77-80.
[26] Langland, Vision of Piers the Plowman, ed. Skeat, passus A, VIII, l. 31.
[27] English Gilds, ed. L. T. Smith (E.E.T.S.), p. 194.
[28] Ibid. p. 340.
[29] Sharpe, op. cit. I, p. 589.
[30] Sharpe, op. cit. II, p. 299. The Fishmongers, who, up to 1536, were divided into the two companies of salt-fishmongers and stock-fishmongers, were a powerful and important body, as the annals of the City of London in the fourteenth century show, “these fishmongers” in the words of Stow “having been jolly citizens and six mayors of their company in the space of twenty-four years.” Stow’s Survey of London (ed. Kingsford), I, p. 214.
[31] Sharpe, op. cit. II, p. 606.