THE ANTIQUITIES 
[LETT. 
somewhat of the air of a prophecy ; but also as it seems to have 
been a striking picture of monastic insolence and dissipation ; 
and a specimen of one of the keenest pieces of satire now perhaps 
subsisting in any language, ancient or modern. 
" 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 shot come a Mng,^ 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 in her penaunce ad pristinum statum ire" 
LETTER XVIII. 
William of Waynflete became Bishop of Winchester in 
the year 1447, and seems to have pursued the generous 
plan of Wykeham, in endeavouring to reform the priory of 
Selborne. 
When Waynflete came to the see he found Prior Stype, 
alias Stepe, still living, who had been elected as long ago as the 
year 1411. 
^ 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 
1400.'^ Fol. 1. a. b. 
" Again, where he, Piers Plowman, alludes to the Knight Templars, lately 
suppressed, he says, 
" Men of holie kirk 
Shall turn as Templars did ; the tyme approacheth nere." 
" This, I suppose, was a favourite doctrine in Wickliife's discourses." — 
Warton's Hist of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 282. 
