[13789]. I knew nevere cardynal. The contributions levied upon the clergy for the support of the pope's messengers and agents was a frequent subject of complaint in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
[13807]. At Avynone among the Jewes. In the middle ages there was a large congregation of Jews at Avignon, as in most of the principal cities in the south of France. In the civil dissensions which disturbed Italy during this century, the pope was frequently obliged to take shelter at Avignon and other places within the French territory.
[13825]. Matth. v, 45.
[13855]. Rom. xii, 19; Hebr. x, 30.
[14142]. Kynde cessede. The lines which follow contain an allusion to the dissipation of manners which followed the pestilence.
[14191], [14196]. Westmynstre Halle ... the Arches. The law courts have been held at Westminster from the earliest Anglo-Norman times, it being the king's chief palace. The court of the arches was a very ancient consistory court of the archbishop of Canterbury, held at Bow church in London, which was called St. Mary de Arcubus or St. Mary le Bow, from the circumstance of its having been built on arches.
[14211]. leet daggen hise clothes. An account of the mode in which the rich fashionable robes of the dandies of the fourteenth century were dagged, or cut in slits at the edges and borders, will be found in any work on costume: it is frequently represented in the contemporary illuminations in manuscripts. Chaucer, in the "Persones Tale," when treating of pride and of the "superfluitee of clothing," speaks of "the costlewe furring in hir gounes, so moche pounsoning of chesel to maken holes, so moche dagging of sheres," &c. And again, "if so be that they wolden yeve swiche pounsoned and dagged clothing to the povre peple, it is not convenient to were for hir estate," &c. In the Alliterative Poem on the Deposition of Richard II (printed for the Camden Society), p. 21, the clergy is blamed for not preaching against the new fashions in dress:—
For wolde they blame the burnes
That broughte newe gysis,
And dryve out the dagges