| I wot well she will do me slay some day Some neighëbour, and thennë go my way.... |
The fact is that judicial statistics of the Middle Ages show the murderer to have had many more chances of survival than a convicted thief. The Northumberland Roll of 1279 (to choose a typical instance) gives 72 homicides to only 43 accidental deaths. These 72 deaths were brought home to 83 culprits, of whom only 3 are recorded to have been hanged. Of the remainder, 69 escaped altogether, 6 took sanctuary, 2 were never identified, 1 pleaded his clergy, 1 was imprisoned, and 1 was fined. To a mind of any imagination, such bare facts will often open wider vistas than a great deal of so-called poetry. There can be no truer commentary on the “Tale of Gamelyn” or the “Geste of Robin Hood” than these formal assize rolls. The justice’s clerk drones on, with damnable iteration, paragraph after paragraph, “Alan Fuller ... and he fled, and therefore let him be outlawed; chattels he hath none”; “Patrick Scot ... fled ... outlawed”; “William Slater ... fled ... outlawed”; but all the while we see the broad sunshine outside the windows, and hear the rustle of the forest leaves, and voices whisper in our ear—
| He must needës walk in wood that may not walk in town. ········ In summer, when the shaws be sheen, And leaves be large and long, It is full merry in fair forest To hear the fowlës’ song. |
CHAPTER XXIII
PRIESTS AND PEOPLE
| “Charity is a childlike thing, as Holy Church witnesseth; As proud of a penny as of a pound of gold, And all so glad of a gown of grey russet As of a coat of damask or of clean scarlet. He is glad with all glad, as girls that laughen all, And sorry when he seeth men sorry; as thou seest children ... Laugh when men laughen, and lower where men low’ren.... And in a friar’s frock he was found once, But that is far and many years, in Francis’ time; In that suit since too seldom hath he been found.” “Piers Plowman,” B., xvii., 296, 352 |
When the greatest Pope of the 13th century saw in his dream a vision of St. Francis propping the tottering church, both he and the saint augured from this happy omen a reformation more sudden and complete than was actually possible. Church historians of all schools have often seemed to imply that if St. Francis had come back to earth on the first or second centenary of his death, he would have found the Church rather worse than better; and certainly Chaucer’s contemporaries thought so. It is probable that in this they were mistaken; that the higher life was in fact unfolding no less surely in religion than in the State, but that men’s impatience of evils which were only too obvious, and a restlessness bred by the rapid growth of new ideas, tempted them to despair too easily of their own age. The failure of the friars became a theme of common talk, as soon as enough time had gone by for the world to realize that Francis and Dominic had but done what man can do, and that there was as yet no visibly new heaven or new earth. Wycliffe himself scarcely inveighed more strongly against many of the worst abuses in the Church than Bonaventura a century before him—Bonaventura, the canonized saint and Minister General of the Franciscans, who as a boy had actually seen the Founder face to face. The current of thought during those hundred years is typified by Dante and the author of “Piers Plowman.” Dante, bitterly as he rebuked the corruptions of the age, still dreamed of reform on conservative lines. In “Piers Plowman” it is frankly recognized that things must be still worse before they can be better. The Church is there described as already succumbing to the assaults of Antichrist, aided by “proud priests more than a thousand”—
| ‘By Mary!’ quoth a cursed priest of the March of Ireland, ‘I count no more conscience, if only I catch silver, Than I do to drink a draught of good ale!’ And so said sixty of the same country, And shotten again with shot, many a sheaf of oaths, And broad hookèd arrows, ‘God’s heart!’ and ‘God’s nails!’ And had almost Unity and Holy Church adown. Conscience cried ‘Help, clergy,[279] or else I fall Through imperfect priests and prelates of Holy Church.’ Friars heard him cry, and camen him to help; But, for they knew not their craft, Conscience forsook them. |