Gascoigne's Steel Glass, l. 1080.
Ray's Proverbs give us—'An honest miller has a golden thumb'; ed. 1768, p. 136; taken satirically, this means that there are no honest millers. Brand, in his Pop. Antiquities, ed. Ellis, iii. 387, quotes from an old play—'Oh the mooter dish, the miller's Thumbe!'
The simplest explanation is to take the words just as they stand, i. e. 'he used to steal corn, and take his toll thrice; yet he had a golden thumb such as all honest millers are said to have.'
565. W. Thorpe, when examined by Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1407, complains of the pilgrims, saying—'they will ordain to have with them both men and women that can well sing wanton songs; and some other pilgrims will have with them bagpipes; so that every town that they come through, what with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterbury bells, and with the barking out of dogs after them, they make more noise than if the king came there away, with all his clarions and many other minstrels.'—Arber's Eng. Garner, vi. 84; Wordsworth, Eccl. Biography, 4th ed. i. 312; Cutts, Scenes and Characters, p. 179.
566. 'And with its music he conducted us out of London.'
The Maunciple.
567. Maunciple or manciple, an officer who had the care of purchasing provisions for a college, an inn of court, &c. (Still in use.) See A. 3993. A temple is here 'an inn of court'; besides the Inner and Middle Temple (in London), there was also an Outer Temple; see Timbs, Curiosities of London, p. 461; and the account of the Temple in Stow's Survey of London.
568. which, whom.
achatours, purchasers; cf. F. acheter, to buy.