"What pope or prelate now
Performeth what Christ hight[28]?"
The cardinals come in for a share of the censure, and here occurs a passage, curiously suggestive of the celebrated line,—
"Never yet did cardinal bring good to England."
"The commons clamat cotidie
Each man to the other,
The country is the curseder
That cardinals come in;
And where they lie and lenge[29] most,
Lechery there reigneth."
Years afterwards, Wycliffe dealt mighty blows at the corrupt and debased clergy, and Chaucer pierced them with his sharp satire, but neither surpassed their predecessor in the vigor and spirit of his onslaughts. One passage, which we quote, had evidently been acted on by Chaucer's "poor parson," and can be studied even at this late day.
"Friars and many other masters,
That to lewed[30] men preachen,
Ye moven matters unmeasurable
To tellen of the Trinity,
That oft times the lewed people
Of their belief doubt.
Better it were to many doctors
To leave such teaching,
And tell men of the ten commandments,
And touching the seven sins,
And of the branches that bourgeoneth of them,
And bringeth men to hell,
And how that folk in follies
Misspenden their five wits,
As well friars as other folks,
Foolishly spending,
In housing, in hatering,[31]
And in to high clergy showing
More for pomp than for pure charity.
The people wot the sooth
That I lie not, lo!
For lords ye pleasen,
And reverence the rich
The rather for their silver."
It would be hardly proper to leave this portion of the subject without alluding to the remarkable passage which has been held by many as a prophecy of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., nearly two centuries later. After denouncing the corruptions of the clergy, he says:—
"But there shall come a king
And confess you religiouses,
And beat you as the Bible telleth
For breaking of your rule;
And amend monials,
Monks and canons,
And put them to their penance.
* * * *
And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon,
And all his issue forever,
Have a knock of a king,
And incurable the wound."