Cowper's, like their successors after them, were not specially anxious to
distinguish nicely between more or less abominable varieties of
saintliness. Hence, when Master Harry Bailly's tremendous oaths produce
the gentlest of protests from the "Parson," the jovial "Host"
incontinently "smells a Lollard in the wind," and predicts (with a further
flow of expletives) that there is a sermon to follow. Whereupon the
"Shipman" protests not less characteristically:--

"Nay, by my father's soul, that shall he not,"
Saide the Shipman, "here shall he not preach,
He shall no gospel here explain or teach.
We all believe in the great God," quoth he;
"He woulde sowe some difficulty,
Or springe cockle in our clean corn."
(The nickname Lollards was erroneously derived from "lolia" (tares).)

After each of the pilgrims except the "Parson" has told a tale (so that
obviously Chaucer designed one of the divisions of his work to close with
the "Parson's"), he is again called upon by the "Host". Hereupon
appealing to the undoubtedly evangelical and, it might without straining
be said, Wycliffite authority of Timothy, he promises as his contribution
a "merry tale in prose," which proves to consist of a moral discourse. In
its extant form the "Parson's Tale" contains, by the side of much that
might suitably have come from a Wycliffite teacher, much of a directly
opposite nature. For not only is the necessity of certain sacramental
usages to which Wyclif strongly objected insisted upon, but the spoliation
of Church property is unctuously inveighed against as a species of one of
the cardinal sins. No enquiry could satisfactorily establish how much of
this was taken over or introduced into the "Parson's Tale" by Chaucer
himself. But one would fain at least claim for him a passage in perfect