«Dilexi,» quod ye bisshop of Chester....
(24) LES MÉNESTRELS ET LES ROMANS A LA RENAISSANCE (p. [138]).—Jugement de Philippe Stubbes sur les ménestrels: «Suche drunken sockets and bawdye parasits as range the cuntreyes, ryming and singing of vncleane, corrupt and filthie songs in tauernes, alehouses, innes and other publique assemblies....
«Euery toune, citey and countrey is full of these minstrelles to pype vp a dance to the deuill; but of dyuines, so few there be as they maye hardly be seene.
«But some of them will reply, and say, what, sir! we haue lycences from iustices of peace to pype and vse our minstralsie to our best commoditie. Cursed be those licences which lycense any man to get his lyuing with the destruction of many thousands!
«But haue you a lycence from the arch-iustice of peace, Christe Iesus? If you haue not.... then may you as rogues, extrauagantes, and straglers from the heauenly country, be arrested of the high iustice of peace, Christ Iesus, and be punished with eternall death, notwithstanding your pretensed licences of earthly men.» Phillip Stubbes's Anatomy of abuses, éd. F. J. Furnivall, Londres, 1877-78, 8o, pp. 171, 172.
L'opinion de Stubbes est partagée au seizième siècle par tous les écrivains qui se piquent de religion ou d'austérité de mœurs. Les vieux romans sont condamnés en même temps que les ménestrels; on voit dans ces poèmes des œuvres de papistes, et c'est tout dire. Tyndal, dans son Obedience of a christian man, reproche aux poètes catholiques de laisser leurs ouailles lire ces romans de préférence à la Bible:
«They permitte and soffre you te reade Robyn Hode and Bevise of Hampton, Hercules, Hector and Troylus with a thousande histories and fables of love, wantones and of rybaudry.»
Ascham écrit dans son Scholemaster (1570):
«In our forefathers tyme, whan papistrie as a standyng poole, couered and ouerflowed all England, fewe bookes were read in our tong, sauyng certaine bookes of cheualrie, as they sayd, for pastime and pleasure, which as some say, were made in monasteries, by idle monkes or wanton chanons: as one for example, Morte Arthure: the whole pleasure of whiche booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter and bold bawdrye: in which booke those be counted the noblest knightes, that do kill most men without any quarell, and commit fowlest aduoulteres by sutlest shiftes.»
(25) LES FRÈRES MENDIANTS JUGÉS PAR LES POÈTES, PAR WYCLIF, PAR LES CONCILES, PAR SIR THOMAS MORE, ETC. (p. [183]).—Portrait du frère par Chaucer: