d against the Scotch and
French, but containing little but animosity. There is also one
complaining of heavy taxation in the reign of Edward I., but generally
the church was attacked, as the clergy formed a prominent mark in every
parish in the country, and were safer game than the king or barons.
Thus, in the Harleian MSS., there is an ancient French poem pretending
to eulogise a new conventual order for both men and women, who are to
live together in great luxury and be bound to perpetual idleness.
Several monasteries in England are mentioned as affording instances of
such a mode of living.

The earliest literary assault we have on the church in this country was
written probably in the thirteenth century--Warton says, soon after the
conquest--in a mixture of Saxon and Norman. A monastery, composed of
various kinds of gems and delicacies, represents the luxury of the
monks--

"Fur in see, bi west Spayngne
Is a lond ihote Cokaygne:
Ther nis lond under heuen-riche
Of wel of godness hit iliche.

"Ther is a wel fair abbei,
Of white monkes and of grei,
Ther beth bowris and halles
Al of pasteiis beth the walles
Of fleis, of fisse, and rich met,
The likfullist that man mai et.
Fluren cakes beth the schingles[40] alle
Of cherche, cloister, boure, and halle.
The pinnes[41] beth fat podinges
Rich met to princez and kinges.

"An other abbei is ther bi
For soth a gret fair nunnerie;
Vp a riuer of sweet milke,
Whar is gret plente of silk."

He goes on to speak of the monks and nuns as dancing together in a very
indecorous manner.

The clergy were often humorous themselves--Nigellus Wireker, a monk of
Canterbury, who is supposed to have lived in the time of Richard I.,
wrote a very amusing attack on his brethren. It is in Latin elegiac
verse, and as being directed against ambition and discontent may be
compared with the first satire of Horace. But he wrote in a less
advanced state of civilisation to that in which the Roman poet lived,
and he carries on his discourse by means of conversations of animals.
The work is called the Brunellus--the name of an ass.

The poem is directed against passion and avarice--and especially against
the monks, who, he says deserve to be called pastors, not _a pascendo_
but _a poscendo_. But he takes so much interest in the animals he
introduces, that he seems to lose sight of his moral object. He delights
in the speeches of a cock and c