soon as he became a king.

Though, then, from the whole tone of his mind, Chaucer could not but
sympathise with the opponents of ecclesiastical domination--though, as a
man of free and critical spirit, and of an inborn ability for penetrating
beneath the surface, he could not but find subjects for endless blame and
satire in the members of those Mendicant Orders in whom his chief patron's
academical ally had recognised the most formidable obstacles to the spread
of pure religion--yet all this would not justify us in regarding him as
personally a Wycliffite. Indeed, we might as well at once borrow the
phraseology of a recent respectable critic, and set down Dan Chaucer as a
Puritan! The policy of his patron tallied with the view which a fresh
practical mind such as Chaucer's would naturally be disposed to take of
the influence of monks and friars, or at least of those monks and friars
whose vices and foibles were specially prominent in his eyes. There are
various reasons why men oppose established institutions in the season of
their decay; but a fourteenth century satirist of the monks, or even of
the clergy at large, was not necessarily a Lollard, any more than a
nineteenth century objector to doctors' drugs is necessarily a
homoeopathist.

But, it is argued by some, Chaucer has not only assailed the false; he has
likewise extolled the true. He has painted both sides of the contrast.
On the one side are the Monk, the Friar, and the rest of their fellows; on
the other is the "Poor Parson of a town"--a portrait, if not of Wyclif
himself, at all events of a Wycliffite priest; and in the "Tale" or sermon
put in the Parson's mouth are recognisable beneath the accumulations of
interested editors some of the characteristic marks of Wycliffism. Who is
not acquainted with the exquisite portrait in question?--