657 f. Apparently referring to Rev. xii. 14.
659. Cp. the Latin Verses after Confessio Amantis, v. 6358.
681 f. Cp. Ovid, Pont. iv. 4. 3 f.
689 ff. Cp. Mirour de l’Omme, 21266, margin.
699. fore: used here and elsewhere by our author for ‘esse’; see below, l. 717, and v. 763.
715. Acephalum. This name was applied in early times to ecclesiastics who were exempt from the authority of the bishop: see Ducange. The word is differently used in iii. 956, and by comparison with that passage we might be led to suppose that there was some reference here to the ‘inopes’ and ‘opem’ of the next line.
723 ff. Compare with this the contemporary accounts of the controversy between FitzRalph, archbishop of Armagh, and the Mendicant Friars, who are said to have bribed the Pope to confirm their privileges (Walsingham, i. 285), and the somewhat prejudiced account of their faults in Walsingham, ii. 13. The influence of the Dominican Rushook, as the king’s confessor was the subject of much jealousy in the reign of Richard II.
735 ff. Cp. Mirour de l’Omme, 21469 ff.
736. sepulta: used elsewhere by Gower for ‘funeral rites,’ e.g. i. 1170. The meaning is that the friar claims to perform the funeral services for the dead bodies of those whose confessor he has been before death. Perhaps however we should take ‘sepulta’ here as equivalent to ‘sepelienda.’
769. Hos. iv. 8: cp. Mirour, 21397, where the saying is attributed to Zephaniah.