The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866

But when, hungered, athirst, and shivering with cold, the poor man comes to the rich man's gate, there is none to help, but he is

"hunted as a hound,
And bidden go thence."

Thus

"the rich is reverenced
By reason of his richness,
And the poor is put behind."

Truly, says the Monk of Malvern,

"God is much in the gorge
Of these great masters;
But among mean men
His mercy and his works."

But it is on the vices and corruptions of the clergy that the monk pours the vials of his wrath. He cloaks nothing, and spares neither rank nor condition. The avarice of the clergy, their want of religion, and the prostitution of their sacred office for the sake of gain, are sternly denounced in frequently-recurring passages. The facility with which debaucheries and crimes of all kinds could be compounded for with the priests by presents of gold and silver, the neglect of their flocks whilst seeking gain in the service of the rich and powerful, their ignorance, pride, extravagance, and licentiousness, are painted in strong colors. The immense throng of friars and monks, who "waxen out of number," meet with small mercy from their fellow-monk. Falsehood and fraud are described as dwelling ever with them. Their unholy life and unseemly quarrels are held up for reprobation. Nor do the nuns escape the imputation of unchastity. The quackery of pardoners, with their pardons and indulgences from pope and bishop, is treated with contempt and scorn. Bishops are criticised for their undivided attention to worldly matters; and even the Pope himself does not escape censure.

"What pope or prelate now
Performeth what Christ hight[28 - Commanded.]?"

The cardinals come in for a share of the censure, and here occurs a passage, curiously suggestive of the celebrated line,—

"Never yet did cardinal bring good to England."
"The commons clamat cotidie
Each man to the other,
The country is the curseder
That cardinals come in;
And where they lie and lenge[29 - Remain.] most,
Lechery there reigneth."

Years afterwards, Wycliffe dealt mighty blows at the corrupt and debased clergy, and Chaucer pierced them with his sharp satire, but neither surpassed their predecessor in the vigor and spirit of his onslaughts. One passage, which we quote, had evidently been acted on by Chaucer's "poor parson," and can be studied even at this late day.

"Friars and many other masters,
That to lewed[30 - Unlearned.] men preachen,
Ye moven matters unmeasurable
To tellen of the Trinity,
That oft times the lewed people
Of their belief doubt.
Better it were to many doctors
To leave such teaching,
And tell men of the ten commandments,
And touching the seven sins,
And of the branches that bourgeoneth of them,
And bringeth men to hell,
And how that folk in follies
Misspenden their five wits,
As well friars as other folks,
Foolishly spending,
In housing, in hatering,[31 - Dressing.]
And in to high clergy showing
More for pomp than for pure charity.
The people wot the sooth
That I lie not, lo!
For lords ye pleasen,
And reverence the rich
The rather for their silver."

It would be hardly proper to leave this portion of the subject without alluding to the remarkable passage which has been held by many as a prophecy of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., nearly two centuries later. After denouncing the corruptions of the clergy, he says:—

"But there shall come a king
And confess you religiouses,
And beat you as the Bible telleth
For breaking of your rule;
And amend monials,
Monks and canons,
And put them to their penance.

*   *   *   *

And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon,
And all his issue forever,
Have a knock of a king,
And incurable the wound."

A distinctive and charming feature of the English landscape is the hedgerow that divides the fields and marks the course of the roadways. Nowhere but in England does the landscape present such a charming picture of "meadows trim with daisies pied," "russet lawns and fallows gray," spread out like a map, divided with irregular lines of green. Nowhere else is the traveller's path guarded on either hand with a rampart of delicate primroses, sweet-breathed violets, golden buttercups fit for fairy revels, honeysuckles in whose bells the bee rings a delighted peal, and luscious-fruited blackberry-bushes. Nowhere else is such a rampart crowned with the sweet-scented hawthorn, robed in snowy blossoms, or beaded over with scarlet berries, and with the hazel, with its gracefully pendent catkins, or nuts dear to the school-boy. It scarcely seems possible to imagine an English landscape without its flower-scented hedge-rows, and yet, when the armed knights of Edward the Third's reign rode abroad from their castles, few lofty hedges barred their progress across the country; no hazel-crowned rampart stopped the way of the Malvern monk as he took his way to the "bourne's side"; and when the ploughman "whistled o'er the furrowed land," the line of division at which he turned his back on his neighbor's acres was generally but a narrow trench instead of a ditch and hedge. Thus the covetous man confesses,

"If I yede[32 - Went.] to the plow,
I pinched so narrow
That a foot land or a furrow
Fetchen I would
Of my next neighbor,
And nymen[33 - Rob him.] of his earth.
And if I reap, overreach."

As might have been expected, the monkish dreamer, unusually liberal as he was in his views, had but a slighting opinion of women. Rarely does he refer to them except to rate them for their extravagance in dress and love of finery. The humbler class of women, he shrewdly insinuates, were fond of drink, and the husbands of such were advised to cudgel them home to their domestic duties. He credited the long-standing slander about woman's inability to keep a secret:—

"For that that women wotteth
May not well be concealed."

His opinion of the proper sphere of women in that time, and some knowledge of their ordinary feminine occupations, can be acquired from the answer made to the question of a lady as to what her sex should do:—

"Some should sew the sack, quoth Piers,
For shedding of the wheat;
And ye, lovely ladies,
With your long fingers,
That ye have silk and sendal