ithin the LIMITS of a certain district. He is described
by Chaucer with so much humour, that one can hardly suspect much
exaggeration in the sketch. In him we have the truly popular
ecclesiastic who springs from the people, lives among the people, and
feels with the people. He is the true friend of the poor, and being
such, has, as one might say, his finger in every pie: for "a fly and a
friar will fall in every dish and every business." His
readily-proffered arbitration settles the differences of the humbler
classes at the "love-days," a favourite popular practice noted already
in the "Vision" of Langland; nor is he a niggard of the mercies which
he is privileged to dispense:--

Full sweetly did he hear confession,
And pleasant was his absolution.
He was an easy man to give penance,
Whereso wist to have a good pittance;
For unto a poor Order for to give,
Is signe that a man is well y-shrive;
For if he gave, he durste make a vaunt
He wiste that a man was repentant.
For many a man so hard is of his heart
He can not weep although he sorely smart.
Therefore instead of weeping and of prayers
Men must give silver to the poore Freres.

Already in the French "Roman de la Rose" the rivalry between the Friars
and the Parish Priests is the theme of much satire, evidently
unfavourable to the former and favourable to the latter; but in
England, where Langland likewise dwells upon the jealousy between them,
it was specially accentuated by the assaults of Wyclif upon the
Mendicant Orders. Wyclif's Simple Priests, who at first ministered
with the approval of the Bishops, differed from the Mendicants, first
by not being beggars, and secondly by being poor. They might perhaps
have themselves ultimately played the part of a new Order in England,
had not Wyclif himself by rejecting the cardinal dogma of the Church
severed these followers of his from its organism and brought about
their suppression. The question as to Chaucer's own attitude towards
the Wycliffite movement will be more conveniently touched upon below;
but the tone is unmistakable of the references or allusions to
Lollardry which he occasionally introduces into the mouth of his
"Host," whose voice is that vox populi which the upper and middle
classes so often arrogate to themselves. Whatever those classes might
desire, it was not to have "cockle sown" by unauthorised intruders "in
the corn" of their ordinary instruction. Thus there is a