For who-so lacks money, with them shall not speed!”
The moral of the ballad is obvious. If you wish to go to law, you should go to London; and if you wish to go to London, you should first of all fill your purse.
We want to get at the mind of the people. We have seen that the women at least did not read, and of book-learning the London craftsman had none. But they must have had ideas, subjects of conversation, current beliefs,—what were they? Towards the end of the fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century, there can be no doubt that there was everywhere a spirit of restlessness and questioning. The wandering preachers, Wyclyf’s Preachers, made the people compare the true religious life with the example of the religious life held out for them by the prelates and abbots with their splendid retinues and their pride, by the monks with their sloth, and by the friars with their greed and their licentiousness. Those who defend the Church at this time are unwilling to admit either the pride of the former or the license of the latter. Let us, therefore, be content to mark what was said and taught, whether it was true or not, and to remember that these things were openly said and taught, and were believed by the people. One remembers what was said by a woman of London when a fire broke out at Willesden and the image of the Virgin was partly burned? “How can she help me,” asked this shrewd questioner, “if she cannot help herself?” During this period of slow awakening the people learned anew the lesson that religion was not a thing of rule and purchase, and that the profession of religion demanded a corresponding life of purity. To put on the Franciscan habit, and to profess the Franciscan Rule, was not, it was discovered, in itself an act, or a proof, or an illustration of religion. The perception by the people of the great rule—the scholars had long since understood—prepared the way for the expression of free thought in the sixteenth century.
Equally interesting it is to mark the revolt in the minds of the people against their rulers—and the mingling of the revolt against the Church with the revolt against the nobles:—
“John the Miller hath yground small, small,
The King’s son of heaven shall pay for all,
Beware ere ye be wo!
Know your friend from your foe,
Haveth ynough and saith (say ye) ‘ho’ ! (stop!)
And do well and better and fleeth sinne,