165 (B 10.319) be hemsulue at ese: Cf. the complaint of “The Disendowment Bill” (Hudson, SEWW 137/90–92): “But of euery estate [worldly clerics] take luste and ese and putte fro hem the travaylle and takyth profytes that shulden kome to trewe men”; and Wimbledon, lines 271–76. On the religious’ fall from their original poverty, see Mum 540–50 (perhaps particularly of Augustinian canons) and Hereford 239/65–66 “in sua prima fundacione non dedignabantur vocari et esse serui et rustici, set iam …” (In their first foundation, they did not disdain to be called—indeed, to be—servants and peasants, but now …).
166 (B 10.320) puyre chartre: The noun refers to the document recording the monastery’s endowment, the gift of secular lords. The word “charity” is presumably a loud subtext, mirroring the very suppression of their responsibilities by bad religious (cf. the “chartered streets” of Blake’s London). Cf. the similar submerged word-play of Prol.62, where one hears “chaplain,” not Chapman.
168–79 (B 10.322–35) Reason waxes prophetic: This passage, far more so than a second, more pointed example (17.204–38) was central to L’s sixteenth-century reception. George Puttenham (1589) identifies L as a “malcontent of that time” who “bent himselfe wholy to taxe the disorders of that age and specially the pride of the Romane Clergy, of whose fall he semeth to be a very true Prophet” (60). Similarly, Crowley’s preface (1560), which specifically singles out this passage (“concerning the suppression of Abbaies”), speaks of L and Wycliffe together: “it pleased God to open the eyes of many to se hys truth, geuing them boldenes of herte, to open their mouthes and crye oute agaynste the worckes of darckenes” (Skeat 2:lxxiii–v).
For these early readers, Reason’s words were apparently “fulfilled” in the 1530s. But modern readings have contentiously swung between hopes that L offers here a specific program and disappointment that that he merely enunciates a future hope. Readings purely prophetic appear with some frequency; by way of indicating the partiality of the Reformation reading (and in deference to the staunchly promonastic reading of the poem in Bloomfield 1961), Pearsall1 (177n) argues that L is only concerned with the millenialistic king of 3.441–42 (a view now retracted in 168–71n, which refers to the powers of an English king). In addition to Adams 1985, Kerby-Fulton 1990 provides extremely rich documentation for a generally prophetic reading. In a strenuous effort at detaching the poem from specifically English discourses, she draws attention to a mainly female visionary tradition with concerted interests in “clerical reform” and “repristination” through disendowment. For analogues and discussion relevant to this passage, see particularly 36–39, 43–45, 106 (and 108–9 on the arator as reformer in St. Bridget), 173, 175–77, 184–86 (the ME “The Last Age of the Church,” 1356), 190.
Yet simultaneously, L, who has been relying upon contemporary speculation about disendowment, cannot simply shut off such language at the head of the prophecy. Skeat cites parallel passages from Gower’s CA, and Pearsall adds (168–71L) abundant Lollard parallels on royal power; both Baldwin (1981:93–94) and Simpson (1990:179–80) adduce parallel opinions from Wycliffe’s Latin works, c. 1376–79. Aers (1980:70) and Simpson (1990:179 n5) note L’s reliance here on Lollard corrective rhetoric, but, for them, the allusion to chronicles or to Cain (178) unfortunately defers practical action to some millenialistic date. This line of argument seems the most persuasive, but see the qualification introduced in 178n.
168 (B 10.322) þer shal come a kyng: The royal servant Reason views the king as supreme lord, whose right to coerce obedience, even from supposedly exempt clerics, must be absolute. Cf. the Lollard “Dialogue between a Knight and a Clerk” (Hudson SEWW 134/94–97): “in all þinge þat longeþ to temperalte, [clerics] schuld be suggetes to þe kinge and to oþer lordes temperales, and, ʓeue þai wiþstonde þe temperale power, þe kinge and þe lordes temperals schuld chastise hem and constreyne hem, for þerto þai bereþ þe swerd.” If religious have just been damned for appropriating aristocratic behavior, Reason’s discourse is asymmetrical and places the king, the center of the state and its law, under no such restriction. In fact, given the insistently sacerdotal language of confesse/bete/amende/potte to ʓoure penaunce in lines 168–71, Reason selfconsciously builds into his language a provocative royal usurpation of clerical discourse and power. Indeed, at lines 176–80, Reason will suggest that the particularistic claim of religioun, that it is the unique heavenly model in this world, overstates: he there will associate the heavenly commune with the harmonious realm itself. See further 21.424–27n.
The idea invoked here, that of a “national church” under the headship of the king, may be implicit in Prol.141–42, although Clergy there is far broader than merely Religion. Skeat refers to L’s numerous passages to similar effect, e. g., 2.246–51, 3.378–85. Within the argumentative context Reason has created, the royal role extends by analogy the patriarchal injunctions concerning familial governance at 130–39L, and bete ʓow 169 recalls both that passage and Conscience’s discussion of Hophni and Phineas (Prol.109–18).
169 (B 10.323) as þe bible telleth: Pearsall cites, rather tentatively, Isa. 32:1, Jer. 23:5 and 11–12. But L is probably thinking ahead to the verse he will cite at line 177L (and to the knok 177).
171 (B 10.325) ad pristinum statum ire : “To return to the pristine status.” Alford (1984:280–81) points out that the phrase is traditional in canonical discussions of the power of penance to remit sin, to return one to a prior state of merit (Reason’s major purpose), and he cites Gratian’s use of the term at Decretum 1.50.28 (CJC 1:189). The canonist Bartholomeo of Brescia explains Gratian succinctly: “Probat hieronimus post peractam penitentiam sacerdotes poss[unt] deo placere et sacrificare sibi sicut ante peccatum faciebant” (Jerome demonstrates that after having performed penance, priests may please God and make offerings to him, just as they did before they sinned; cited Alford 1984:281).
Like the preceding appropriation of penitential language, L’s usage is figurative. Under magnate correction, a penance, religious will return to the hardship and straitness (another sense of penaunce, e.g., Prol.27–32), the apostolic life associated with their original pristine rule that defines their status (cf. Aston 1984:60). Alford (1992:67) also cites contrasting discussions by Scase (1989:88–96, 202n 14) and Baldwin (in Alford 1988:75).
Simultaneously, ad pristinum statum seems to have become, by the late fourteenth century, subject to varying uses. Kerby-Fulton (1990:186–88) finds it a key to many prophecies, and Bloomfield (1961:87) identifies an example used to describe clerical reformation in the Franciscan Eulogium historiarum. But other uses seem a great deal more neutral, a catch-phrase “set things right in the old way”—e.g., in Thomas Walsingham’s Historia to describe the end of the Peasants’ Revolt and in the monk of Evesham (lines 3916, 4083), to describe the pro-Ricardian goals of the Holland Revolt of 1399/1400. At midcentury, the clause appears in a mid-fourteenth century York register to describe the restoration of a dilapidated chantry to its original form (cited Wood-Legh 1965:201 n2), and the London jurist Andrew Horn, in his Annales Londonienses (76/1:175) speaks of mayor Richer de Reffham’s reformist efforts (1310), both legal return to “ancient customs” and refurbishment of walls and streets, as having “serva[tus] et reforma[tus]” the City “ad pristinam dignitatem et indempnum.” Robert Swanson informs me that the phrase appears as a legal commonplace in cases where plaintiffs win suits in royal courts against sentences of outlawry, as well as in suits for defamation.
172L (B 10.327L) Hij in curribus… : A selective quotation of only the negative threats from Ps. 19:8–9 (Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God. They are bound, and have fallen: but we are risen, and are set upright). As Skeat, Pearsall, and Schmidt indicate, L chooses the verse to answer the monastic fascination with aristocratic horsemanship described in lines 157–60 and to recall Will’s complaint at 72–77, in which true knights are unhorsed as the result of monastic activities.
173–75 (B 10.328–30): L apparently uses friars as a model for the treatment all orders can expect.