Of lawyers he says they pleaded
"for pennies
And pounds, the law;
And not for the love of our Lord
Unclose their lips once.
Thou mightest better meet mist
On Malvern hills
Than get a mum of their mouth
Till money be showed."
No class of people suffered more in the Middle Ages than the Jews. They were abhorred by the poor, despised by the wealthy, and cruelly oppressed by the powerful. But through all their sufferings and trials they were true to each other; and the monk holds up their fraternal charity as an example to shame Christians into similar virtues. He says:—
"A Jew would not see a Jew
Go jangling[1] for default.
For all the mebles[2] on this mould[3]
And he amend it might.
Alas! that a Christian creature
Shall be unkind to another;
Since Jews, that we judge
Judas's fellows,
Either of them helpeth other
Of that that him needeth.
Why not will we Christians
Of Christ's good be as kind
As Jews, that be our lores-men[4]?
Shame to us all!"
With one more curious passage, giving a glimpse of the belief of that age concerning the future state, we will close our extracts from "Piers Plowman." Discussing the condition of the thief upon the cross who was promised a seat in heaven, the dreamer says:—
"Right as some man gave me meat,
And amid the floor set me,
And had meat more than enough,
But not so much worship
As those that sitten at the side-table,
Or with the sovereigns of the hall;
But set as a beggar boardless,
By myself on the ground.
So it fareth by that felon
That on Good Friday was saved,
He sits neither with Saint John,
Simon, nor Jude,
Nor with maidens nor with martyrs,
Confessors nor widows;
But by himself as a sullen,[5]
And served on earth.
For he that is once a thief
Is evermore in danger,
And, as law him liketh,
To live or to die.
And for to serven a saint
And such a thief together,
It were neither reason nor right
To reward them both alike."
"Piers Plowman" is supposed to have been written in 1362. It became instantly popular, and manuscript copies were rapidly distributed over England. Imitations preserving the peculiar form, and aiming at the same objects as the "Vision," though without the genius exhibited in that work, appeared in quick succession. The hatred of the oppressed people for their oppressors was intensified by the inflammatory harangues of John Ball, the deposed priest. The preaching of Wycliffe probed still deeper the festering corruption of the dominant Church. At last, in 1381, a popular rising, under Wat Tyler, attempted to right the wrongs of generations at the sword's point. The result of that attempt is well known,—its temporary success, sudden overthrow, and the terrible revenge taken by the ruling power in the enactment of laws that made the burden of the people still more intolerable.
But the seed of political and religious freedom had been sown. It had been watered with the blood of martyrs; and, although the tender shoots had been trodden down with an iron heel as soon as they appeared, they gathered additional strength and vigor from the repression, and soon sprang up with a vitality that defied all efforts to crush them.
