generation. Take the fourteenth century; the "Good Parliament"
declares that

Unworthy and unlearned caitiffs are appointed to benefices
of a thousand marks, while the poor and learned hardly
obtain one of twenty. God gave the sheep to be pastured, not
to be shaven and shorn.

And a little later comes the poet of the people, Piers Plowman--

But now is Religion a rider, a roamer through the streets,
A leader at the love-day, a buyer of the land,
Pricking on a palfrey from manor to manor,
A heap of hounds at his back, as tho he were a lord;
And if his servant kneel not when he brings his cup,
He loureth on him asking who taught him courtesy.
Badly have lords done to give their heirs' lands

Away to the Orders that have no pity;
Money rains upon their altars.
There where such parsons be living at ease
They have no pity on the poor; that is their "charity".
Ye hold you as lords; your lands are too broad,
But there shall come a king and he shall shrive you all
And beat you as the bible saith for breaking of your Rule.

Another step through history, and in the early part of the sixteenth
century here is Simon Fish, addressing King Henry the Eighth, in the
"Supplicacyon for the Beggars", complaining of the "strong, puissant
and counterfeit holy and ydell" which "are now increased under your