A Supplication for the Beggars

by Simon Fish

[SIMON FISH,
of Gray’s Inn, Gentleman.]

A Supplication for the Beggars.
[Spring of 1529.]

Edited by EDWARD ARBER, F.S.A., etc.,
LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE ETC.,
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.

SOUTHGATE, LONDON, N.
15 August 1878.
No. 4.
(All rights reserved.)

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CONTENTS.

		PAGE
Bibliography		[vi]
Introduction		[vii-xviii]
A Supplicacyon for the Beggers		[1]
1.	The yearly exactions from the people taken by this greedy sort ofsturdy idle holy thieves	[3]
	They have a Tenth part of all produce, wages and profits	[4]
	What money pull they in by probates of testaments, privy tithes, men’sofferings to their pilgrimages and at their first masses; by masses anddiriges, by mortuaries, hearing of confessions (yet keeping thereof nosecrecy), hallowing of churches, by cursing of men and absolving them formoney; by extortion &c.; and by the quarterage from every household toeach of the Five Orders of begging Friars, which equals £43,333 6s. 8d. [= over £500,000 in present value] a year	[4]
	400 years ago, of all this they had not a penny	[4]
	These locusts own also one Third of the land	[5]
	Or in all more than half of the substance of the realm	[5]
	Yet they are not in number, one to every hundred men, or one in every fourhundred men women and children	[5]
	Neither could the Danes or Saxons haue conquered this land, if they hadleft such a sort [company] of idle gluttons behind them; nor noble KingArthur have resisted the Emperor Lucius, if such yearly exactions had beentaken of his people; nor the Greeks so long continued the siege of Troy,if they had had to find for such an idle sort of cormorants at home; northe Romans conquered the world, if their people had been thus yearlyoppressed; nor the Turk haue now so gained on Christendom, if he had inhis empire such locusts to devour his substance	[5]
2.	What do they with these exactions?	[6]
	Nothing but to translate all rule, power &c. from your Grace tothemselves, and to incite to disobedience and rebellion	[6]
3.	Yea, and what do they more?	[7]
	Truly nothing but to have to do with every man’s wife, every man’sdaughter &c.	[7]
4.	Yea, who is able to number the great and broad bottomless ocean seafull of evils, that this mischievous and sinful generation is able tobring upon us? unpunished!	[7]
5.	What remedy? Make laws against them? I am in doubt whether ye areable. Are they not stronger in your own parliament house than yourself	[8]
	So captive are your laws unto them, that no man that they list toexcommunicate may be admitted to sue any action in any of your Courts	[9]
	Neither have they any coulour [pretence] to gather these yearlyexactions but they say they pray to GOD to deliver our souls frompurgatory. If that were true we should give a hundred times as much. Butmany men of great literature say there is no purgatory: and that if therewere and that the Pope may deliver one soul for money, he may deliver himas well without money; if one, a thousand; if a thousand, all; and sodestroy purgatory.	[10]
6.	But what remedy? To make many hospitals for the relief of the poorpeople? Nay, truly! The more the worse. For ever the fat of the wholefoundation hangeth on the priests’ beards	[12]
7.	Set these sturdy loobies abroad in the world to get themselves wives,to get their living with their labour in the sweat of their faces,according to the commandment of GOD	[13]

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