oet of the people, Piers Plowman--

But now is Religion a rider, a roamer through the streets,
A leader at the love-day, a buyer of the land,
Pricking on a palfrey from manor to manor,
A heap of hounds at his back, as tho he were a lord;
And if his servant kneel not when he brings his cup,
He loureth on him asking who taught him courtesy.
Badly have lords done to give their heirs' lands

Away to the Orders that have no pity;
Money rains upon their altars.
There where such parsons be living at ease
They have no pity on the poor; that is their "charity".
Ye hold you as lords; your lands are too broad,
But there shall come a king and he shall shrive you all
And beat you as the bible saith for breaking of your Rule.

Another step through history, and in the early part of the sixteenth
century here is Simon Fish, addressing King Henry the Eighth, in the
"Supplicacyon for the Beggars", complaining of the "strong, puissant
and counterfeit holy and ydell" which "are now increased under your
sight, not only into a great nombre, but ynto a kingdome."

They have begged so importunatly that they have gotten ynto
their hondes more than a therd part of all youre Realme. The
goodliest lordshippes, maners, londes, and territories, are
theyres. Besides this, they have the tenth part of all the
corne, medowe, pasture, grasse, wolle, coltes, calves,
lambes, pigges, gese and chikens. Ye, and they looke so
narowly uppon theyre proufittes, that the poore wyves must
be countable to thym of every tenth eg, or elles she gettith
not her rytes at ester, shal be taken as an heretike.... Is
it any merveille that youre people so compleine of povertie?
The Turke nowe, in your tyme, shulde never be abill to get
so moche grounde of christendome.... And whate do al these
gredy sort of sturdy, idell, holy theves? These be they that
have made an hundredth thousand idell hores in your realme.
These be they that catche the pokkes of one woman, and here
them to an other.

The petitioner goes on to tell how they steal wives and all their
goods with them, and if any man protest they make him a heretic, "so
that it maketh him wisshe that he had not done it". Also they take
fortunes for masses and then don't say them. "If the Abbot of
west-minster shulde sing every day as many masses for his founders as
he is bounde to do by his foundacion, 1000 m