1324. _taughte_, informed; the final _e_ is _not_ elided.
1327. _wood were_, should be, were to be as mad as a hare. See 'As mad as a
March hare' in Hazlitt's Proverbs.
1329. The mendicant orders were subject only to their own general or
superior, not to the bishops. In the piece called Jack Upland (§ 11), Jack
asks the friars--'Why be ye not vnder your bishops visitations, and
leegemen to our king?'--British Poets, ed. Chalmers, 1810; i. 567.
1331. _terme_, i. e. during the term.
1332. _Peter_, by saint Peter. 'The summoner's repartee is founded upon the
law by which houses of ill-fame were exempted from ecclesiastical
interference, and licensed.'--Bell. '_Stewes_, are those places which were
permitted in England to women of professed incontinency.... But king Henry
VIII., about the year 1546, prohibited them for ever.'--Cowel's
Interpreter. Cock Lane, Smithfield, contained such houses; see my notes to
P. Plowman, C. vii. 366, 367.
1343. _approwours_, agents, men who looked after his profits. From the O.
Fr. _approuer_, _apprower_, to cause to profit, to enrich; from the O. Fr.
sb. _prou_, profit, whence also E. _prowess_. Miswritten as _approver_ in
the seventeenth century, though distinct from _approve_ (from _approbare_).
See the New Eng. Dictionary. Tyrwhitt has the spelling _approvers_.
1347. _Cristes curs_, i. e. excommunication.
1349. _atte nale_, put for _atten ale_, lit. at the ale, where _ale_ is put
for 'ale-house.' _Atten_ is for A. S. _æt tham_, where _tham_ is the dat.
neut. of the def. article. The expression is common; as in 'fouhten _atten
ale_,' fought at the ale-house, P. Plowman, C. i. 43; 'with ydel tales
_atte nale_,' id. C. viii. 19. 'Thou hast not so much charity in thee as to
goe to the Ale with a Christian'; Two Gent. of Verona, ii. v. 61. So also
_atte noke_, for _atten oke_, at the oak; see note to P. Pl. C. vii. 207.
1350. See John, xii. 6; and cf. the Legend of Judas Iscariot, printed (from
MS. Harl. 2277) in Early Eng. Poems, ed. Furnivall, 1862; p. 107.
1352. _duetee_ (Cp. _dewete_) is trisyllabic; see l. 1391. It is a coined
word, having no Latin equivalent. The spelling _duete_ occurs, in
Anglo-French, in the Liber Albus, p. 211, l. 23.
1356. _Sir Robert_; the title of _Sir_ was usually given to one of the
secular clergy; cf. note to B. 4000, p. 248.
1364. _hir_, her; so in E. Hn., but other MSS. have _thee_. The reading
given is the better. The Somnour fined the man, but let the woman go; and
then said that he let her go out of friendship for the man. This is
intelligible; but the reading _thee_ gives no sense to the words _for thy
sake_.