E sun achevement.
Translation.—Now is accomplished as I conceive—the plaint of Jeremiah, which you have often heard,—who tells how this sole—city full of people—bewailing bitterly,—is now without marriage—and put in contribution,—the Lady of the people.—That is holy church very evidently,—who is now disgraced and all put to sale;—and truly is she in ill case, we see how.—She laments and weeps,—there is none who helps her—out of her desolation.
Formerly clergy was—free and uppermost,—loved and cherished,—nothing could be more so.—Now it is enslaved,—and too much debased,—and trodden down.—By those is it disgraced,—from whom it ought to have help;—I dare not say more.
The king and the pope think of nothing else,—but how they may take from the clergy their gold and their silver.—This is the whole affair,—that the pope of Rome—yields too much to the king,—to help his crown,—the tenth of the clergy’s goods he gives him,—and with that he does his will.
I do not think that the King acts wisely,—that he lives of robbery which he commits upon the clergy.—He will never be a gainer,—by robbing holy church;—he knows it truly.—He who seeks an example,—let him regard the King of France—and his achievement.
The next Song, directed against the avarice of the Bishops, appears to be of about the same date. In the manuscript it is written, like the foregoing, as prose.
A SONG AGAINST THE BISHOPS.
[From the same folio of the same MS.]
Licet æger cum ægrotis,