"And now is religion a rider, a roamer by streets; A leader of love-days, and a land-buyer; A pricker on a palfrey from manor to manor; An heap of houndes at his ears, as he a lord were, And but if his knave knele that shal his cap bringe, He loureth[2] on him, and asketh him who taught him courtesy."
The whole poem is full of allusions to the manner of life of the clergy, their ill-gotten wealth, and the neglect of their duties. In another place he says--
"Bishopes and bachelers, both masters and doctors, That have cure under Christ, and crowning[3] in token And signe that they should shrive their parishioners, Preach and pray for them and the poor faith, Live in London in Lent and other times; Some serve the Kinge, and his silver tellen In chequer and in chancery."
In an extravagant age the clergy were especially marked by their wild and foolish extravagance, their love for fine clothes, for the chase, for show and pageantry of all kinds. Even the mendicant orders partook of this, and the Franciscan Friars, who had pledged themselves to the most absolute poverty, amassed wealth, and only obeyed the dictates of their order by abstaining from all labour. As a political ballad of the time says--
"Full wisely do they preche and say, But as they preche nothing do they."
And even of their preaching Langland says--
"I find these friars, all the four orders, Preach to the people for profit of themselven, Glosed the gospel as them good liked."
The Church seemed to have lost all its early simplicity, and to have departed entirely from the teaching of the apostles.
The clergy absorbed all the chief offices of state. This had come about naturally, from the fact that till now they had been the only educated body in the state, and so they only had been fit to transact its business. But now learning had become more general. A new class, that of the lawyers, was springing up, and men were no longer willing to see everything in the hands of the clergy. The great opponent of their power was John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the King's third son. He was an ambitious and unscrupulous man, and his aim was to get the entire control of affairs during the last years of Edward III.'s reign. His opposition to the clergy sprung only from his own personal ambition; he wished to exclude the clergy from the offices of the state that he might fill them with his own creatures. The power of the Commons was as hateful in his eyes as the power of the clergy. He put himself at the head of a reactionary body of great barons, who wished to bring back the old order of things, and restore the power of their own order.