Of the Covetousness of the Spiritualty

Furthermore, like insatiable wretches—unmindful of why they were shaved and shorn [tonsured for the clergy]—because they will stand at no man’s mercy or be in any man’s debt, they have gotten into their own hands, first, the tithe, or tenth, of the whole realm. Then I suppose,

we may reckon, a little under or altogether, a third part of all the temporal lands. Consider well how many parsonages or vicarages there are in the realm that have at least a plowland [as much land as one plow can till] apiece. Then take note of the lands of bishops, abbots, priors, nuns, knights of Saint John’s, cathedral churches, colleges, chantries, and free chapels. For though the house fall into decay and the founder’s endowment be lost, yet they will not let go of the lands. Whatever comes in once may never come out again. They turn it into a free chapel, so that whoever thinks it must come to nothing is mistaken. Besides all this, how many chaplains do gentlemen maintain at their own cost in their houses? How many sing for souls by bequest of testaments? Then there is the proving of testaments and the appraising of goods—the Archbishop of Canterbury’s prerogative. Is that not a great sum throughout the realm in a year? Four offering days, and private tithes. There is no servant but he must pay some part of his wages. None shall receive the body of Christ at Easter—be he ever so poor a beggar, or ever so young a lad or maid—but they must pay something for it. Then mortuaries [death dues to the parish], for forgotten tithes (as they say). And yet what parson or vicar is there that will forget to keep a pigeon house to peck up something both at sowing time and at harvest,

when the corn is ripe? They will forget nothing. No man shall die in their debt, or if any man does, he shall pay it when he is dead. They will lose nothing. Why? It is God’s; it is not theirs. It is Saint Luder’s rents, Saint Alban’s lands, Saint Edmund’s right, Saint Peter’s patrimony, say they, and none of ours. Likewise, if a man die in another man’s parish, besides that he must pay at home a mortuary for forgotten tithes, he must there pay also the best possession he has there—whether it be a horse worth twenty pounds, or however good he may be, or a chain of gold worth a hundred marks, or five hundred pounds, if it so happen. It is very much, truly, for so little labor taken in confession and in administering the sacraments. The beadrolls [lists of the dead to be prayed for]. Likewise the chrisom [fee for the cloth used at baptism], churchings [fees for the rite purifying women after childbirth], banns, weddings, offerings at weddings, offerings at burials, offerings to images, offerings of wax and lights—all come to their profit, besides the superstitious waste of wax in torches and tapers throughout the land. Then there are brotherhoods and pardoners. What do they also get by confession? Yes, and many enjoin penance: to give a certain sum to have so many masses said, and to desire to provide a chaplain for themselves. Soul masses, diriges [the Office for the Dead], month minds, year minds [commemorations a month and a year after death], All Souls’ Day, and trentals [sets of thirty masses for the dead]. The mother church and the high altar must have something in every testament.

Offerings at priests’ first masses. Likewise, when a man is professed into any religious order whatsoever, he must bring something. The hallowing—or rather conjuring—of churches, chapels, altars, super-altars, chalices, vestments, and bells. Then book, bell, candlestick, organs, chalice, vestments, copes, altar cloths, surplices, towels, basins, ewers, ship [the incense boat], censer, and every kind of ornament must be provided for them free of charge; they will not give a mite toward it. Last of all, what swarms of begging friars there are. The parson shears, the vicar shaves, the parish priest polls, the friar scrapes, and the pardoner pares; we lack only a butcher to flay off the skin.

What do they gain in their spiritual law (as they call it) in a year, at the Arches [the Court of Arches] and in every diocese? What do the commissaries and officials, with their summoners and apparitors, gain by their bawdry in a year? Will you not find plenty of curates who, to flatter the commissaries and officials with everything they can—so that they may get off scot-free themselves—will open up to them the confessions of the richest in their parishes? These men they cite privately and charge in secret. If the accused wish to know who their accusers are, “No,” they say, “the matter is well enough known—and to more people than you are aware of. Come, lay your hand on the book; if you perjure yourself, we shall bring proofs; we will handle you—

we will make an example of you.” Oh, how terrible they are! “Come and swear,” they say, “that you will be obedient to our injunctions.” And by that trick they wring people’s purses and make them drip as long as there is a penny in them. In three or four years they will get enough in those offices to pay for a bishop’s bulls. What else are these in a realm but horse-leeches, and indeed the very maggots, cankers, and caterpillars that devour everything green and nothing else—and those wolves whom Paul prophesied would come and would not spare the flock (Acts 20), and whom Christ said would come in lambs’ skins, bidding us beware of them and judge them by their works.