340 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
‘¢ Now is religion a rider, a romer by streate ; 
A leader of love-days, and a loud begger ; 
A pricker on a palfrey from maner to maner, 
A heape of hounds at his arse, as he a lord were. 
And but if his knave kneel, that shall his cope bring, 
He loureth at him, and asketh him who taught him curtesie, 
Little had lords to done, to give lands from her heirs, 
To religious that have no ruth if it rain on her altars. 
In many places ther they persons be, by himself at ease : 
Of the poor have they no pity, and that is her charitie ; 
And they letten hem as lords, her lands lie so broad. 
And there shal come a king,* and confess you religious ; 
And beate you, as the bible telleth, for breaking your rule, 
And amend monials, and monks, and chanons, 
And put hem to her penaunce ad pristinum statum tre.” 
IRON KEY OF ANCIENT CONSTRUCTION. STEEL HINGE WITH GRIFFIN ON IT. 
* F. 1. a. ‘This prediction, although a probable conclusion concerning a king who after 
a time would suppress the religious houses is remarkable. I imagined it might have been 
foisted into the copies in the reign of King Henry VIII., but it is to be found in MSS. of 
this poem, older than the year r4oo.’’—fol. 1]. a. b. 
“* Again, where he, Piers Plowman, alludes to the Knights Templars, lately suppressed, 
he says 
<s Men of holie kirk 
Shall turn as Templars did ; the tyme approacheth nere.’ 
“This I suppose, was a favourite doctrine in Wickliffe’s discourses.’ > Swen Hist. 
of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 282. 
