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er recur, and the orators of the old platform should revive a taste for anti-papal agitation, they might find in Matthew Paris as rich a repertory of testimonials against Roman aggression and greed as the most rabid Irish Protestant could desire. 'O thou Pope,' he bursts out once, 'thou the father of all the fathers in Christ, how it is that thou sufferest the realms of Christendom to be fouled by such creatures as are thine?' The 'creatures' were the papal legates and nuncios and all their belongings, who were plundering England without shame. 'Harpies they were and blood-suckers,' says Matthew, 'mere plunderers, skinning the sheep, not shearing them only.' Then there were the King's Justiciars--'Justice'--nay, with that they had nothing to do. Why tell of their unrighteous deeds? he asks. 'Better forbear from vainly writing about the _wrongers_, and return to the story of the wronged.' Of course the friars come in for their share of strong words--chiefly because the Pope made use of them so vilely, and not less because they set themselves above their betters--us, to wit--monks of the old houses. 'They started with such fair professions, they were going to be so very poor, and so very unworldly, and were going to supplement our work and interfere with nobody, and give us all a helping hand. Look at them now!' says Matthew; 'they march through the streets in pompous array with banners flaunting in the sun and waxen tapers, and rich burghers in holiday garments joining in the long train, and if they have no land they have money, good store, and as for their churches, they are eclipsing us all. Their invasion of our territory is a dreadful scandal, and they sneer at us and at all other religious men and women and they flout the parish priests and call them humdrums, and schism is at work horribly, and the people are running away from the old guides, and there is no end to them. Actually in the year of grace 1257,' he says, 'a new order of these fellows turned up in London. Friars of the sack, forsooth, because they were clothed in sackcloth! Of course they came armed with a papal licence as usual. What did these fellows come for? Was it to make confusion worse confounded? Alas! Alas! If we had only been as we were in the golden age, these friars would never have had a chance--not they! We too are not as the m
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