Gossip and satire concerning the priesthood seem, from a very remote period, to have been received with relish and tolerance; but tales exposing the rapacity, ignorance and licentiousness of the cloth were circulated from political motives with even greater eagerness and immunity just prior to that grand climax which abrogated the papal supremacy in England for ever.
It is necessary, and not difficult, to distinguish between narrated incidents, which veritably belong to a specific vicinity, and such fictitious variants as are merely localised for the nonce. Of the latter the jest-books, which contributed so largely to the activity of the press from the accession of the Stuarts to their restoration, are rich in examples, as I have already pointed out. Pasquil’s Jests is one of the worst offenders in this way. “How a merchant lost his purse between Waltham and London” is nothing more than a new-birth of the account in Merry Tales and Quick Answers, where Ware is the place specified; and “How mad Coomes of Stapforth, when his wife was drowned, sought her against the stream,” reproduces No. 55 of the same older miscellany, which is itself copied and varied from a Latin fabliau. Manchester, Hertfordshire, Kingston, Lincolnshire, and other neighbourhoods are fixed as the theatres of adventures in these books, without the slightest eye to topographical fitness. The anterior publications had perhaps set the fashion to some extent, and notably so the Gothamite Tales; but the resuscitation of used matter with some superficial investiture of novelty became a sort of necessity, when the popular demand for these wares increased out of proportion to the supply.
In certain of the collections, on the contrary, and most especially and largely in the two Tudor ones so often quoted, we meet with little dramatic scenes, laid here or there, with a fair accompaniment of probability in support of the attribution. I shall take the course of referring those who may care to follow this part of the argument to the Hundred Merry Tales,—
No. 29. Of the Welshman, who said that he could get but a little mail.
No. 33. Of the priest, who said Our Lady was not so curious a woman.
No. 40. Of Master Skelton, who brought the Bishop of Norwich two pheasants.
No. 71. Of the priest that would say two gospels for a groat.
No. 87. Of Master Whittington’s dream.
And to Merry Tales and Quick Answers,—
No. 54. Of Master Vavasor and Turpin his man.