the streets—women refused to receive the holy bread from hands which they thought polluted,[1] and the appearance of an apparitor of the courts to serve a process or a citation in a private house was a signal for instant explosion. Yiolent words were the least which these officials had to fear, and they were fortunate if they escaped so lightly. A stranger had died in a house in St Dunstan's belonging to a certain John Fleming, and an apparitor had been sent 'to seal his chamber and his goods,' that the Church might not lose her dues. John Fleming drove him out, saying loudly unto him, 'Thou shalt seale no door here; go thy way, thou stynkyng knave, ye are but knaves and brybours everych one of you.'[2] Thomas Banister, of St Mary Wolechurch, when a process was served upon him, 'did threaten to slay the apparitor.' 'Thou horson knave,' he said to him, 'without thou tell me who set thee awork to summon me to the court, by Goddis woundes, and by this gold, I shall brake thy head.'[3] A 'waiter, at the sign of the Cock,' fell in trouble for saying that 'the sight of a priest did make him sick,' also, 'that he would go sixty miles to indict a priest,' saying also in the presence of many—'horsyn priests, they shall be indicted as many as come to my handling.'[4] Often the officers found threats convert themselves into acts. The apparitor of the Bishop of London went with a citation into the shop
