Again, of bequests to the various Orders, between 1356 and 1412, there are 110, between 1412 and 1544 there are only 7. The contemplation of these figures, the amazing falling-off of such bequests in the beginning of the fifteenth century, when Lollardy was rife, the failure of the Friars to recover their old position of reverence, goes far to show why in London the suppression of the Religious Houses was effected with so little opposition. The people had ceased to believe in the holiness of the Friars; as for that of the monks, it was perhaps different, as we shall see in another place.
Since we have spoken of the decay of belief in the Friars, let us also speak of the respect actually paid to them when their popularity was at its height.
Shortly after the Black Death, a letter was sent by the Mayor and Aldermen to the Pope, asking that a certain John de Werthyn, a Dominican Friar, might be appointed Penitentiarius to the City. The office itself was important. In Confession there were continually occurring certain cases not provided for in the instructions of the ordinary priest. In such a case the priest could only grant conditional absolution. He referred it to his Bishop, who either decided it himself, or, if it was one of an unusual and difficult kind, passed it on to the Penitentiarius. If he, too, found the case too grave for his decision, he referred it to the College or Court of Penitentiaries at Rome, on whose official report the Pope generally acted. The Mayor and Aldermen, after a preamble to the effect that their City had been of late grievously afflicted by a dreadful mortality, so that the merchants were not able to wait in person upon his Holiness, proceeded to petition the Pope that he would “grant unto the venerable and religious man, Brother John de Werthyn, his chaplain, a man of honour, of approved life and manners, and also of learning, sprung from the high blood of the realm, who alone of all others strengthens us with the word of Christ, that he and he only, within the City may be able to absolve the people being penitent.” They go on to ask that the office, at his death, may be continued in the Order of the Dominican Friars.
The satires against the Religious Orders began within the very century of their foundation in England. One, for example, given in Thomas Wright’s Political Poems, belongs to the reign of Edward the First. It is the poem called “The Order of Fair Ease.” The Order of Fair Ease takes a point from every Order, of course it takes the weak point in every case. To begin with, the Order is entirely confined to gentlefolk—one wonders whether Rabelais had read this satire, and whether any part of it suggested the Abbey of Thelema.
As at the Abbey of Sempringham, the Order is to receive both men and women; but whereas at Sempringham there are walls and ditches to separate the Brethren from the Sisters, in this Order there is to be no wall or ditch or anything to separate them. Three times a day, at least, they are to eat, and if they do it in company the Order will be none the worse.
From Beverley they are to take the custom of eating and drinking well at dinner, at supper, and at collation; and after collation every one is to have a piece of candle as long as from the elbow to the finger ends; and to go on drinking so long as the candle lasts.
From the Hospitallers they will take their long and sweeping robes.
From the Canons they will take the custom of eating meat three times a week, and if on Fast Days they find themselves without fish, then they are to eat whatever is in the larder.
From the Black Monks (the Benedictines) they are to borrow the habit of getting drunk every day.
From the Secular Canons, who willingly serve the ladies, the new Order is to take that point and to be constant companions of the Sisters, both before and after matins, so that the Order may not on that account fall into discredit.
In the Order of Silence, each brother shuts himself up in his cell; the new Order shall have the same rule, provided that a sister be locked up with a brother.
In the Friars Minor the Brethren are ordered to take whatever hospitality is offered them; but they take care never to rest at the house of a poor man, so in the new Order the Brethren will on no account take up their quarters unless where the owner is a rich man.
As for the Black Friars—the Preaching Order,—they may wear sandals if they please and ride if they please. The new Order will always wear sandals and will always ride.
To this we may add Chaucer’s description of a Friar. Now Chaucer was of London town. This Friar was “a wanton and a merry”; he was a “limitour,” that is to say, he had his “beat” in which he exercised his craft. “He had made full many a marriage of young women at his own cost”—that is, whom he had first seduced. He was greatly respected as a Father confessor, on account of the easy terms on which he gave absolution, so long as the services gave to the Order:
He carried knives and pins in his tippet, because the Friars had now become pedlars and carried knives, pins, purses, girdles, silk, etc., to sell in the country places. He knew all the taverns and every hostler and barmaid (tapster); he was the best beggar ever known; he could sing and play right well:
Chaucer’s company contained other functionaries, but for our purpose this is enough.
We need not suppose that the widespread hatred of friars indicated any disbelief in their doctrines. That would come later, but as yet there seemed no desire for change in doctrine. The people made songs, and told stories, about the luxury, the greed, the concupiscence, the license of the friars, but the convents remained, and the people continued to cling to the supposed sanctity of the place. A man who one day cursed the whole crew of monks, friars, and pardoners, the next day begged for a letter of fraternity, by which he might participate in the spiritual advantages of Carmelite or Augustine; he arranged for burial in the Convent Church; he would be buried in a friar’s robe; he would found a chantry, a trental, an obit, an anniversary.
It is difficult to understand the roving life of the friar. One supposes that he was always attached to his Friary. Had he a license to roam and beg? Was he a limitour, i.e. a friar licensed to hear confessions and grant absolution over a certain district? Was he a wandering preacher? Were the “simple priests” sent out by Wyclyf mendicant friars? Did the wandering preachers, whether sent by Wyclyf or not, all preach the same vague socialism? Some of these questions may be answered with some degree of certainty. The Friars of the street and road were nearly all sprung from the lower classes; even the villeins sent their sons to become Friars and Priests. A very little consideration of the vast army required for Ecclesiastical purposes, poorly paid, with slender learning, with no prospects of promotion, will show that the scholars of both Universities must have amounted to an immense number, consisting chiefly of poor scholars, with a license to beg. The Commons, in the reign of Richard the Second, complained of the way in which the sons of villeins thus bettered their condition by “advancement par clergie.” The clerks who issued from the universities obtained episcopal orders, and in some cases took upon them the vows and robes of the Mendicants. They then began to wander about the country, preaching and teaching, living on charity, received into certain houses; and so continued for the rest of their lives. For the most part, they were careful not to ask for a license from their Bishop; they had no papers; they were not attached to any House; they roamed about from village to village, from town to town; in London they preached in the streets, in the markets, at street corners; they preached not only concerning things religious, but concerning things social; and belonging themselves to the people, knew what the people wanted, and preached accordingly.
One of them, John Ball, whose preaching has been thought worthy of the historian, probably because he was considered to be so mischievous a person, taught a kind of rough socialism. “At the beginning we were all created equal: it is the tyranny of perverse men which has caused slavery to arise in spite of God’s Law: if God had willed that there should be slaves, He would have said at the beginning of the world who should be slave and who should be lord.” A poor argument, because, notoriously, we are not created equal, but unequal in every respect. Also, there is nothing to show that the Creator did not say at the beginning who should be slave and who should be lord. Froissart also speaks of John Ball:—
“This preest vsed often tymes on the sondayes after masse whanne the people were goynge out of the mynster, to go into the cloyster and preche, and made the people to assemble about hym, and wolde say thus: A ye good people, the maters gothnot well to passe in Englande, nor shall not do tylle euery thyng be common, and that there be no villayns not gentylmen.... What haue we deserued or why shulde we be kept thus in seruage? we be all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve: wherby can they say or shewe that they be gretter lordes than we be, sauynge by that they cause vs to wyn and labour, for that they dispende ... they dwell in fayre houses, and we haue the payne and trauele, rayne and wynde in the feldes: and by that that cometh of our labours they kepe and mayteyne their estates.... Lette vs go to the kyng, he is yonge, and shewe hym what seruage we be in.... Thus Johan (Ball) sayd on sondayes whan the people issued out of the churches with another in the feldes and in the wayes as they want togyder, affermyng howe Johan Ball sayd trouthe.”
That many of the friars held and preached similar doctrines is proved by the story of Jack Straw, who would have kept no other ecclesiastics upon earth except the Mendicants. Their popularity, of course, was advanced and preserved by the social doctrines they preached. But in London they seem to have lost their popularity very early. In the reign of Edward the Second the Preaching Friars had to fly before the rage of the people, “on account of their proud behaviour. And Richard the Second, in 1385, issued a proclamation against certain persons who, instigated by the Evil Spirit, “do openly and secretly stir up our people to destroy the houses of the said friars, tearing their habits from them, striking them, and ill-treating them against our peace.”
The greatest enemies of the mendicant were the parish priest and the monk. The former found himself abandoned; no one confessed to him; no one listened to him. They were all running after the mendicant friar, who spoke to them in their own patois, was one of themselves, who knew their ways and their wants, and confessed them easily. And Jack Straw’s rebellion showed what had been the teaching of these wanderers. Since there were so many of them that alms were not always to be obtained, some, as we have seen, became pedlars:—
Walsingham, a monk of St. Alban’s, says of them, “The friars, unmindful of their profession, have even forgotten to what end their Orders were instituted; for the holy men their law-givers desired them to be poor and free of all kinds of temporal possessions, that they should not have anything which they might fear to lose on account of saying the truth. But now they are envious of possessions, approve the crimes of the great, induce the commonalty into error, and praise the sins of both: and with the intent of acquiring possessions ... call good evil and evil good.”
And a popular song of the fourteenth century says of them:—
And see Political Songs, Edw. III.—Rich. III. vol. ii. p. 17, edited by Thomas Wright:—
And these are the questions asked of the Friar:—
In the restoration of the City life of the fourteenth century, remember that in every street we find the mendicant friar; at dinner-time he walks into any house he chooses: “Peace be unto this house,” he says, after which, by the Franciscan rule, it is lawful for him to eat of all meats that are set before him; at the corner of the street there is a wandering preacher denouncing the luxury and sloth of the rich; his audience is composed of craftsmen in leather jerkins listening with eager ears and intelligent faces. He is fat and well nourished; he has a full, rich voice and a certain rude oratory that lays hold of the people and constrains them to listen. There passes along the street, in a ragged gown, a lean and hungry chantry priest; he looks at the crowd round the preacher; he hears him talk the rough, strong East Saxon dialect which has always been the language of the London craftsman. He sighs, it is his own native patois, but he cannot talk as this man talks; he is a poor scholar, once a licensed beggar, and now a ragged, half-starved priest, having nothing but his little chantry endowment. Yet, being a scholar, he could prove that this man is all wrong. So he sighs and passes on his way. There comes next a Pardoner with his box hung round his neck; that precious box in which he has a finger-nail of St. Luke, the feather with which St. Matthew’s Gospel was written, a piece of a stone thrown at St. Stephen, the last footstep of the Prophet Elijah embedded in the rock, a piece of St. Peter’s fishing-net—you can see for yourself that it is a fishing-net, and other very precious relics. The box also contains pardons and indulgences which this good man sells to the faithful. At sight of the preacher, however, the Pardoner says nothing. In vain would he open his box of relics and offer his parchment indulgences in the presence of this preacher and his listeners. Lollards all! Lollards all!
There rides along the narrow street a monk with hawk on fist bravely dressed. Behind him walk his men leading the dogs. They are going to cross London Bridge and gain the wild heath country lying beyond the Southwark and Lambeth marshes. He regards preacher and crowd alike with scorn ineffable. It is the hour of Angelus—and from every parish church, from every monastery church, from every Chapel, from every College, and from the Cathedral, the bells call the world to silent prayer. For a few moments all are hushed; the roar of London is stilled; it was not the roar of wheels so much as the sound of ten thousand hammers. The preacher is silent for a moment; his audience take off their caps; the monk who goes hawking crosses himself; the Pardoner stands bare-headed: it is but a moment, then the noise begins again.
The support of the church by the taxes or offerings of the parishioners is a singular story of conservatism and of gradual development. It was customary for the congregation on Sundays and Apostles’ days to make offerings or oblations at the celebration of the mass. This usage became regulated not by law but by custom, more binding than law, into a payment of one halfpenny by every citizen who paid a rent of 20s., and one farthing by every citizen who paid a rent of 10s. The number of days so observed amounted to 60, so that in the former case the citizen paid 2s. 6d. a year, and in the latter case 1s. 3d. a year. Observe that this custom amounted to an eighth part of the rent; applied to modern custom, for an office in the City rented at £100 a year, the citizen would now have to pay £12:10s.
Bishop Roger Le Noir converted this custom into law in 1228. In 1389 Archbishop Arundel interfered and increased the number of Apostles’ days to be so observed by 22 more, making the 2s. 6d. into 3s. 9d. An appeal to the Pope was answered by his support of the Archbishop; but the citizens continued to grumble. In 1535, probably with the desire of making the Londoners pleased with his ecclesiastical changes, Henry reduced the 3s. 5d. to 2s. 9d. And so the tax remained, until the Fire of 1666 necessitated a revision of the law.