441. _Wilful pouerte_ signifies voluntary poverty. This is well illustrated
by the following lines concerning Christ in Piers Plowman, B. xx. 48, 49:--
'Syth he that wroughte al the worlde · was _wilfullich_ nedy,
Ne neuer non so nedy · ne pouerer deyde.'
Several examples occur in Richardson's Dictionary in which _wilfully_ has
the sense of _willingly_ or _voluntarily_. Thus--'If they _wylfully_ would
renounce the sayd place and put them in his grace, he wolde vtterlye pardon
theyr trespace'; Fabyan's Chronicle, c. 114. It even means _gladly_; thus
in Wyclif's Bible, Acts xxi. 17, we find, 'britherin resseyuyden vs
_wilfulli_.' Speaking of palmers, Speght says--'The _pilgrim_ travelled at
his own charge, the _palmer_ professed wilful poverty.'
The word _wilful_ still means _willing_ in Warwickshire; see Eng. Dialect
Soc. Gloss. C. 6.
445. The context seems to imply that some of the apostles made baskets. So
in Piers Plowman, B. xv. 285, we read of St. Paul--
'Poule, after his prechyng · _panyers_ he made.'
Yet in Acts xviii. 3 we only read that he wrought as a tent-maker. However,
it was St. Paul who set the example of labouring with his hands; and, in
imitation of him, we find an early example of basket-making by St.
Arsenius, 'who, before he turned hermit, had been the tutor of the emperors
Arcadius and Honorius,' and who is represented in a fresco in the Campo
Santo at Pisa, by Pietro Laurati, as 'weaving baskets of palm-leaves';
whilst beside him another hermit is cutting wooden spoons, and another is
fishing. See Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, 3rd ed. ii. 757.
Note that _baskettes_ is trisyllabic, as in Palladius on Husbandry, bk.
xii. l. 307.
448. The best description of the house-to-house system of begging, as
adopted by the mendicant friars, is near the beginning of the [275]
Sompnour's Tale, D. 1738. They went in pairs to the farm-houses, begging a
bushel of wheat, or malt, or rye, or a piece of cheese or brawn, or bacon
or beef, or even a piece of an old blanket. Nothing seems to have come
amiss to them.
450. See Prologue, A. 255; and cf. the description of the poor widow at the
beginning of the Nonne Prestes Tale, B. 4011.