We are next at Worcester, at the Lady Chapel, on the eve of the Assumption. There is a famous image of the Virgin there, and to check the superstition of the people the gorgeous dress has been taken off by Cromwell’s order. A citizen of Worcester approaches the figure: “Ah, Lady,” he cries, “art thou stripped now? I have seen the day that as clean men had been stripped at a pair of gallows as were they that stripped them.” Then he kisses the image, and turns to the people and says, “Ye that be disposed to offer, the figure is no worse than it was before,” “having a remorse unto her.”[285]
The common treads close upon the serious. On a summer evening a group of villagers are sitting at the door of an alehouse on Windermere; a certain master Alexander, a wandering ballad-singer, is “making merry with them.” A neighbour Isaac Dickson saunters up and joins the party.
“The minstrel of Winandermere.”
“Then the said Isaac commanded the said minstrel to sing a song he had sung at one Fairbank’s house in Crossthwaite, in the county of Westmoreland, in the time of the rebellion, which song was called ‘Crummock,’[286] which was not convenient, which the said minstrel utterly denied. The said Isaac commanded the said minstrel again in a violent manner to sing the song called ‘Cromwell,’ and the said minstrel said he would sing none such; and then the said Isaac pulled the minstrel by the arm, and smote him about the head with the pummel of a dagger, and the same song the minstrel would not sing to die for. The third time the said Isaac commanded the minstrel to sing the same song, and the minstrel said it would turn them both to anger, and would not. And then did Isaac call for a cup of ale, and bade the minstrel sing again, which he always denied; then Isaac took the minstrel by the beard and dashed the cup of ale in his face; also, he drew his dagger and hurt master Willan, being the host of the said house, sore and grievously in the thigh, in rescuing of the said minstrel.”[287]
Again, we find accounts of the reception which the English Bible met with in country parishes.
The unthrifty curate of Wincanton.
A circle of Protestants at Wincanton, in Somersetshire, wrote to Cromwell complaining of the curate, who would not teach them or preach to them, but “gave his time and attention to dicing, carding, bowling, and the cross waster.” In their desire for spiritual food they applied to the rector of the next parish, who had come occasionally and given them a sermon, and had taught them to read the New Testament; when suddenly, on Good Friday, “the unthrifty curate entered the pulpit, where he had set no foot for years,” and “admonished his parishioners to give no credence to the newfangled fellows which read the new books.” “They be like knaves and Pharisees,” he said; “they be like a dog that gnaweth a marry-bone, and never cometh to the pith, therefore avoid their company; and if any man will preach the New Testament, if I may hear him, I am ready to fight with him incontinent;” and “indeed,” the petitioners said, “he applyeth in such wise his school of fence so sore continually, that he feareth all his parishioners.”[288]
The parish clerk at Hastings lectures on the translation of the Bible.
So the parish clerk at Hastings made a speech to the congregation on the faults of the translation. “It taught heresy,” he said: “it taught that a priest might have a wife by God’s law. He trusted to see the day that the book called the Bible, and all its maintainers and upholders, should be brent.”[289]
Here, again, is a complaint from the parishioners of Langham in Essex, against their village potentate, a person named Vigourous, who with the priest oppressed and ill-used them.