THE ITINERANT PREACHERS.

First I pronounce whennes that I come,
And then my bulles shew I all and some.
Our leige lords sele on my patent,

That shew I first my body to warrant,

That no man be so bold-ne priest ne clerk,

Me to disturb in Christes holy work.-Chaucer.

I.

IN

account is given of the reception of some brethren of that order by the parish priest. He intimates, in no very courteous terms, that he does not wish to have his parsonage scrutinized too closely; and should they chance to observe there either "hen or chickens," to have that circumstance brought forward in their next day's sermon to his parishioners in return for his hospitality. "We are not all of that sort," replied the friars; but the pastor, smarting under former well merited castigation, told them he would not trust St. Peter's self if he came dressed like a friar. Even at the inn, the landlord was equally uncivil, and they might have gone supperless to bed, had they not, by a fortunate accident, brought from the neighbouring town a flask of wine and a roast loin of lamb. The friars, however, find their way to the landlord's better feelings, and by his influence gain possession of the church

pulpit on the following day, he stipulating that they should not abuse the priest.

II. The heartburnings produced by this system of itinerancy can be more readily conceived than described. The abbot and his convent lived respected among their tenantry, until a begging friar came and declaimed against their unpunctual observance of their rule, imputing to all the offences of a few. The village pastor said mass regularly, and thus kept up a weak and diluted light of religion in his parish; but the friar came, and if denied the pulpit, harangued on his deficiencies at the churchyard cross. This was just the method to shake men in such religious feelings as they entertained, without giving them any substitute; for to suppose that instruction communicated in passing by can have had any permanent good effect, except in rare and extraordinary instances, seems unwarranted either by probability or experience. Nor would it appear that any great attainments were necessary for such preaching. A single sermon committed to memory would seem from Chaucer's account to have been sufficient for a pardoner a century before; an ordinary friar might still go forth thus slenderly equipped. "I will tell you now," says Latimer, "a pretty story of a friar to refresh you withal: a limitor of the gray friars in the time of his limitation preached many times, and had but one sermon at all times; which sermon was of the ten commandments. And because this friar had preached this sermon so often, one that heard it before, told the friar's servant that his master was called Friar John Ten-commandments: wherefore the servant shewed the friar his master thereof, and advised him to preach of some other matters, for it grieved the servant to hear his master derided. Now the friar made answer saying, belike then thou knowest the ten commandments well, seeing thou hast heard them so many times. Yea,

said the servant, I warrant you. Let me hear them, saith the master. Then he began: Pride, covetousness, lechery; and so numbered the sins for the ten commandments."

III. The system here described received a check at the dissolution of the monasteries, and if nothing was better than the teaching of the friars, there was a decided improvement. Gilpin, speaking of the northern churches, in his sermon preached at Greenwich, says"Some had not four sermons in sixteen years since the friars ceased their limitations." The evils of the old plan, however were curiously copied in the new; the limitor's place, when supplied at all, was filled by some licensed preacher resident in the neighbourhood, who, from party or pious motives, advocated the old or new opinions; and the "great learned man," a king's or bishop's chaplain, an archdeacon or a dean, took the position of the pardoner. Indifferent as the preachers of the preceding time to unsettleing the minds of men, for whom they could provide no constant and sufficient instruction, the reformers had, however, that honest ardour which made them long to see the people elevated above gross superstition, and taught to serve the great Spirit in spirit and in truth. Few of their opponents excelled them in learning, good taste, or moderation; and although it is mere self-complacency to dissemble their faults, it is most unjust not to acknowledge that they were as good as or better than their rivals. This was very conspicuous in the sermons preached under Henry VIII., when popery and protestantism were struggling for ascendancy; and if Latimer's sermons of the cards and of the plough were composed in a style utterly unworthy of the pulpit, Hubberdin's sermon of the dancers seems more than a match for them. Indeed, if the buffooneries of Ber

* Serm. on 3d Sund. after Trinity.

ridge and Hill in the last generation had not made any anecdote of the kind credible, Fox's authority would scarcely suffice for his "Brief Digression touching the railing of Hubberdin against M. Latimer" :

"At last, riding by a church side, where the youth of the parish were dancing, suddenly this Silenus lighted from his horse, and, causing the bell to toll in the people, thought instead of a fitte of mirth to give them a sermon of dancing. In the which, after he had patched up certain common texts out of scriptures, and then coming to the doctors, first to Augustine, then to Ambrose, so to Hierome, Gregory, and Chrysostom, had made them every one after his dialogue manner to answer to his call for the probation of the sacrament of the altar against Frith Latimer and other heretics; at last, to shew a perfect harmony of these doctors together, as he had made them sing after his tune, now to make them dance after his pipe: first he calleth out Christ and his apostles, then the doctors of the church, as in a round ring, all to dance together, with up, up, Hubberdin! Now dance Christ —now dance Peter Paul-now dance Austin, Ambrose, Hierome; and thus old Hubberdin, as he was dancing with his doctors lustily in the pulpit against the heretics, how he stamped and took on I cannot tell, but crash quoth the pulpit, down cometh the dancer, where altogether he brake not his neck, but he so brake his leg that he never came in pulpit more, and died not long after the same."*

Hubberdin, however, had succeeded in collecting a congregation, under circumstances which once baffled Father Latimer.

"I came myself to a place, riding on a journey homeward from London, and I sent word over night into the town that I would preach there in the morn* Fox, p. 1688.

ing, because it was a holiday, and methought it was an holiday's work. The church stood in my way, and I took my horse and my company and went thither. I thought I should have found a great company in the church, and when I came there the church door was fast locked. I tarried there half an hour and more; at last the key was found, and one of the parish comes to me and says Sir, this is a busy day with us; we cannot hear you, it is Robin Hood's day; the parish are gone abroad to gather for Robin Hood; I pray you let them rest.' I was fain there to give place to Robin Hood; I thought my rochet should have been regarded though I were not, but it would not serve, it was fain to give place to Robin Hood."*

IV. As the Reformation advanced, there was some slight increase of sobriety in preaching. The whole history of Edward's reign is marked by a show of anxiety concerning the pulpit, contrasting strangely with the effectual means which were taken for its depression. The condition of the parochial clergy has already been entered upon at length. It has been shown how they were degraded into a class of men generally unfit to give instruction, who "might, peradventure, partly excuse themselves and say, 'I know my fault and would gladly amend it, if I could; but I am so old I cannot preach, and never used myself thereunto;'"+ while divines still remained unbeneficed who could have discharged their duties with ability. But when neither the church nor the government would remunerate those from whom they expected laborious duties, it was perfectly natural that the preachers so employed should occasionally fall foul of both. The difficulty was to find thorough-going, political anti-papists, who would act as staunch advocates of the *Latimer's Sixth Sermon before Edward. t Hooper's Fifth Sermon on Jonah.