ANTiaUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
373 
cipline drew on the monks and canons a heavy load of popular 
odium. Some good men there were who endeavoured to oppose 
the general delinquency ; but their efforts were too feeble to stem 
the torrent of monastic luxury. As far back as the year 1381 
Wickliffe's principles and doctrines had made some progress, 
were well received by men who wished for a reformation, and 
were defended and maintained by them as long as they dared ; 
till the bishops and clergy began to be so greatly alarmed, that 
they procured an act to be passed by which the secular arm was 
empowered to support the corrupt doctrines of the church ; but 
the first Lollard was not burnt until the year 1401. 
The wits also of those times did not spare the gross morals of 
the clergy, but boldly ridiculed their ignorance and profligacy. 
The most remarkable of these were Chaucer, and his contem- 
porary, Robert Langelande, better known by the name of Piers 
Plowman. The laughable tales of the former are familiar to al- 
most every reader ; while the visions of the latter are but in few 
hands. With a quotation from the Passus Decimus of this writer 
I shall conclude my letter ; not only on account of the remark- 
able prediction therein contained, which carries with it 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 sub- 
sisting 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 manor, 
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 ire.'* 
• 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 toisted into 
the copies in the reign of king Henry VIII., bat 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 Knights Templars, lately suppressed, he says, 
" Men of holie kirk 
Shall turn as templars diii ; the tj'me approacheth nere.^' 
**This, I suppose, was a favourite doctrine in WitkliiFe's discourses," Warton s History of 
^English Poetry, Vol. I. )?. 282. 
