[10303]. These sentences appear to be quotations from the fathers of the Latin Church.
[10322]. lussheburwes. A foreign coin, much adulterated, common in England in the middle of the fourteenth century. Chaucer (C. T. 15445) uses the word in a very expressive passage:—
This maketh that oure wyfes wol assaye
Religious folk, for thay may bettre paye
Of Venus payementes than may we:
God woot! no lusscheburghes paye ye.
Among the foreign money, mostly of a base quality, which came into this country in the fourteenth century, the coinage of the counts of Luxemburg, or, as it was then called, Lusenburg (hence called lussheburwes and lusscheburghes), seems to have been the most abundant, and to have given most trouble. These coins were the subject of legislation in 1346, 1347, 1348, and 1351; so that the grievance must have been at its greatest height at the period to which the poem of Piers Ploughman especially belongs. Many of these coins are preserved, and found in the cabinets of collectors; they are in general very much like the contemporary English coinage, and might easily be taken for it, but the metal is very base.
[10368]. Grammer, the ground of al. In the scholastic learning of the middle ages, grammar was considered as the first of the seven sciences, and the foundation-stone of all the rest. See my Essay on Anglo-Saxon Literature, introductory to vol. i. of the Biographia Britannica Literaria, p. 72. The importance of grammar is thus stated in the Image du Monde of Gautier de Metz (thirteenth century):—
Li primeraine des vij. ars,
Dont or n'est pas seus li quars,