21134. n’ad mais refu: apparently ‘refu’ is here a past participle; ‘has been again no more,’ i.e. has not survived.
21157. The criticism of the life of Canons follows here in the Vox Clamantis also, iv. 347 ff.,
‘Ut monachos, sic Canonicos quos deuiat error,’ &c.
The ‘Canons regular’ differed but little in their discipline from monks.
21166. devant: see 20909 ff.
21181. On the Mendicant orders see Vox Clamantis iv. 677 ff.
21190 f. ‘I have found out this about the order, that friars seek after the world,’ &c.: the perfect is used loosely for present. For ‘querre’ in this sense cp. 21528.
21197. 2 Cor. vi. 10.
21241. ‘The friars go together in pairs’: so in Chaucer, Sompnours Tale, whence we learn that after having been fifty years in the order they were relieved from this rule. In the next line ‘sanz partie’ means ‘without separating.’ The same word used in a different sense is admissible as a rhyme: so ‘mestier,’ 21275, and cp. note on 2353.
21250. Here, as elsewhere, it is implied that the friars made themselves by preference the confessors of women, cp. 9148, Chaucer, C.T. Prol. 215 ff.