To folwe my lust / for no man wold I spare.
mad] made.
At these monastic schools, I suppose, were educated mainly the boys whom the monks hoped would become monks, cleric or secular; mostly the poor, the Plowman’s brother who was to be the Parson, not often the ploughman himself. Once, though, made a scholar and monk there, and sent by the Monastery to the University, the workman’s, if not the ploughman’s, son, might rule nobles and
sit by kings, nay, beard them to their face. Thomas a Becket, himself the son of poor parents[63a], was sent to be brought up in the “religious house of the Canons of Merton.”
In 1392 the writer of Piers Plowman’s Crede sketches the then state of things thus:
Now every cobbler’s son and beggar’s brat turns writer, then Bishop,
Now mot ich soutere hys sone · seten to schole,
And ich a beggeres brol · on the book lerne,
And worth to a writere · and with a lorde dwelle,
Other falsly to a frere · the fend for to serven;