To keepe him trouth in word ne dede.”[126]
A few years afterwards Chaucer, in his Prioresses Tale, immortalised the monkish fiction of child-murder, which had already done yeoman’s service in justifying the persecution of the Jews. Chaucer’s child, to judge from the scene of its murder being laid in Asia, seems to be the eldest member of the large family of massacred Innocents, representatives of which are to be met with in nearly every European country.
“Heere bigynneth the Prioresses tale:
“There was in Asie, in a gret citee,
Amonges Cristen folk a Jewerye,
Sustened by a lord of that contree,
For foule usure and lucre of vilanye,
Hateful to Crist and to his companye;
And thurgh the strete men myght ryde or wende,
For it was free, and open at eyther ende.”