Westminster lawe, ich wot,
Worcheth the contrarie;
For thauh the fader be a frankelayne,
And for a felon be hanged,
The heritage that the air sholde have
Ys at the kynges wille.
5479. Matt. vii, 16.
5497. John xiv, 6.
5507. _many a peire, sithen the pestilence._ The continuator of William de
Nangis, who gives a detailed account of the effects of the great pestilence
on the Continent, mentions the hasty marriages which followed it, but he
gives quite a different account of their fruitfulness. "Cessante autem
dicta epidimia, pestilentia, et mortalitate, nupserunt viri qui remanserunt
et mulieres ad invicem, conceperunt uxores residuæ per mundum ultra modum,
nulla sterilis efficiebatur, sed prægnantes hinc inde videbantur, et plures
geminos pariebant, et aliquæ tres infantes insimul vivos emittebant." The
writer goes on to observe, "Sed proh dolor! ex hujus renovatione sæculi non
est mundus propter hoc in melius commutatus. Nam homines fuerunt postea
magis avari et tenaces, cum multo plura bona quam antea possiderent; magis
etiam cupidi et per lites, brigas, et rixas, atque per placita, seipsos
conturbantes.... Charitas etiam ab illo tempore refrigescere cæpit valde,
et iniquitas abundavit cum ignorantiis et peccatis; nam pauci inveniebantur
qui scirent aut vellent in domibus, villis, et castris informare pueros in
grammaticalibus rudimentis."--_Contin. G. de Nangis, in Dacherii Spicileg._
iii, 110 (_ed._ 1723).
5515. _do hem to Dunmowe._ This is, I believe, the earliest allusion at
present known to the custom of the flitch of bacon at Dunmow, which was
evidently, at that time, a matter of general celebrity. In Chaucer, about
half a century later, the Wife of Bath says of her two old husbands, and of
the way in which she tyrannized over them,--
The bacoun was nought fet for hem, I trowe,
That som men fecche in Essex at Donmowe.--_Cant. T._ 5799.
In a curious religious poem preserved in a manuscript in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford, written about the year 1460, from which some extracts
are printed in the "Reliquiæ Antiquæ," ii, 27-29, we have the following
satirical allusion to this custom:--
I can fynde no man now that wille enquere
The parfyte wais unto Dunmow;
For they repent hem within a yere,
And many within a weke, and sonner, men trow;
That cawsith the weis to be rowgh and over-grow,
That no man may fynd path or gap,
The world is turnyd to another shap.
Befe and moton wylle serve wele enow;
And for to seche so ferre a lytill bakon flyk,
Which hath long hanggid resty and tow
And the wey, I telle you, is comborous and thyk,
And thou might stomble, and take the cryk;
Therfor bide at home, what so ever hap
Tylle the world be turnyd into another shap.
One or two other allusions to this custom have been found in manuscripts of
the fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth century these allusions become
more numerous.
5563. 1 Corinth. vii, 1.
5613. _Margery perles._ A margarite pearl, _perle marguerite_. The Latin
name for a pearl (_margarita_) seems to be the origin of this expression.
5634. _a love day | to lette with truthe._ Love days (_Dies amoris_) were
days fixed for settling differences by umpire, without having recourse to
law or to violence. The ecclesiastics seem generally to have had the
principal share in the management of these transactions, which throughout
the Visions of Piers Ploughman appear to be censured as the means of
hindering justice and of enriching the clergy. A little further on,
Religion is blamed for being "a ledere of love-dayes." (l. 6219.) In
Chaucer, it is said of the friar:--
And over'al, ther eny profyt schulde arise,
Curteys he was, and lowe of servyse.
. . . . . .
And rage he couthe and pleye as a whelpe,
In love-dayes, ther couthe he mochil helpe.
For ther was he not like a cloysterer
With a thredbare cope, as a pore scoler,
But he was like a maister or a pope.--_Cant. T._ 249, 259.
5646. The quotation is made up from Job xxi, 7; and Jerem. xii, 2.
5651. Psal. lxxii, 12.
5659. Psal. x, 4. Quoniam quæ perfecisti, destruxerunt: justus autem quid
fecit?
5739. Psal. cxxxi, 6.
5769. Isai. lviii, 7.
5778. Tob. iv, 9. Si multum tibi fuerit, abundanter tribue; si exiguum tibi
fuerit, etiam exiguum libenter impertiri stude.
In what follows, Whitaker's text is in parts much more brief than the one
now printed; there are also many transpositions, and other variations,
which are not of sufficient importance to be pointed out more particularly.
5801. _in a pryvee parlour._ 5803. _in a chambre with a chymenee._ This is
a curious illustration of contemporary manners. The hall was the apartment
in which originally the lord of the household and the male portion of the
family passed nearly all their time when at home, and where they lived in a
manner in public. The chambers were only used for sleeping, and as places
of retirement for the ladies, and had, at first, no fire-places
(_chymenees_), which were added, in course of time, for their comfort. The
parlour was an apartment introduced also at a comparatively late period,
and was, as its name indicates, a place for private conferences or
conversation. As society advanced in refinement, people sought to live less
and less in public, and the heads of the household gradually deserted the
hall, except on special occasions, and lived more in the parlour and in the
"chambre with a chymenee." With the absence of the lord from the hall, its
festive character and indiscriminate hospitality began to diminish; and the
popular agitators declaimed against this as an unmistakeable sign of the
debasement of the times.
5829. Ezech. xviii, 19.
5835. Galat. vi, 5.
5844. Pauli Epist. ad Rom. xii, 3.
5911. _seven artz._ In the scholastic system of the middle ages, the whole
course of learning was divided into seven arts, which were, grammar,
dialectics, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy. They were
included in the following memorial distich:--
Gram. loquitur, Dia. vera docet, Rhet. verba colorat,
Mus. canit, Ar. numerat, Geo. ponderat, As. colit astra.
5963. _a baleys._ See before, the note on l. 2819.
5990. _Caton._ Distich. lib. i, 26.
6009. Galat. vi, 10.
6022. Epist. ad Rom. xii, 19.