That clerks unto the war intend,
I wot not how they should amend
The woeful world in other things,
And so make peace between the kings
After the law of charity,
Which is the duty properly
Belonging unto the priesthood.

A more general complaint, however, was that directing itself against the
extravagance and luxury of life in which the dignified clergy indulged.
The cost of these unspiritual pleasures the great prelates had ample means
for defraying in the revenues of their sees; while lesser dignitaries had
to be active in levying their dues or the fines of their courts, lest
everything should flow into the receptacles of their superiors. So in
Chaucer's "Friar's Tale" an unfriendly Regular says of an archdeacon,--

For small tithes and for small offering
He made the people piteously to sing.
For ere the bishop caught them on his hook,
They were down in the archdeacons book.

As a matter of course, the worthy who filled the office of "Summoner" to
the court of the archdeacon in question, had a keen eye for the profitable
improprieties subject to its penalties, and was aided in his efforts by
the professional abettors of vice whom he kept "ready to his hand." Nor
is it strange that the undisguised worldliness of many members of the
clerical profession should have reproduced itself in other lay
subordinates, even in the parish clerks, at all times apt to copy their
betters, though we would fain hope such was not the case with the parish
clerk, in "the jolly Absalom" of the "Miller's Tale." The love of gold