secular as against the regular clergy in the sympathies of the higher
classes, and in the spheres of society most open to intellectual
influences. The monks and the London multitude were at one time united
against John of Gaunt, but it was from the ranks of the secular clergy
that Wyclif came forth to challenge the ascendancy of Franciscan
scholasticism in his university. Meanwhile the poet who in the "Poor
Parson of the Town" paints his ideal of a Christian minister--simple,
poor, and devoted to his holy work,--has nothing but contempt for the
friars at large, and for the whole machinery worked by them, half effete,
and half spasmodic, and altogether sham. In King Arthur's time, says that
accurate and unprejudiced observer the "Wife of Bath," the land was filled
with fairies--NOW it is filled with friars as thick as motes in the beam
of the sun. Among them there is the "Pardoner," i.e. seller of pardons
(indulgences)--with his "haughty" sermons, delivered "by rote" to
congregation after congregation in the self-same words, and everywhere
accompanied by the self-same tricks of anecdotes and jokes,--with his
Papal credentials, and with the pardons he has brought from Rome "all
hot,"--and with precious relics to rejoice the hearts of the faithful, and
to fill his own pockets with the proceeds: to wit, a pillowcase covered
with the veil of Our Lady, and a piece of the sail of the ship in which
St. Peter went out fishing on the Lake of Gennesareth. This worthy, who
lays bare his own motives with unparalleled cynical brutality, is
manifestly drawn from the life;--or the portrait could not have been
accepted which was presented alike by Chaucer, and by his contemporary
Langland, and (a century and a half later) in the plagiarism of the
orthodox Catholic John Heywood. There, again, is the "Limitour," a friar
licensed to beg, and to hear confession and grant absolution, within the
LIMITS of a certain district. He is described by Chaucer with so much
humour, that one can hardly suspect much exaggeration in the sketch. In
him we have the truly popular ecclesiastic who springs from the people,