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This don, the officers that come with the preestes aske of the master and maryners chese, butter, befe, bacon, and candles, as beggers, and they give it to them for feare they have of them, and so they goe from the shippes with their walletts full of victualls. The master doth pay four ryalls of plate for the barke that bringeth them aboorde to visite them.
That pageant ouerpast, there rusht vpon him a miserable rabblement of iunior graduats, that all crid out vpon him mightily in their gibrige lyke a companie of beggers, God saue your grace, God saue your grace, Jesus preserue your highnes, though it be but for an houre.
Typical of such works is the Supplicacyon for the Beggers produced by one Simon Fish in 1527, which has been seriously treated as a sober indictment.
The Clergy, from Bishops to "Somners" are a "rauinous cruell and insatiabill generacion" ... "counterfeit holy and ydell beggers and vacabundes" ... "that corrupt the hole generation of mankind," committing "rapes murdres and treasons". They are a "gredy sort of sturdy idell holy theues" habitually guilty of every conceivable form of vice and profligacy.
But I note with pained surprise that the farmers are still selling middling cotton below six cents, buying bacon and wearing pea-green patches on the bust of their blue jeans two-dollar hand-me-downs; that I can hire all the common labor I want at 75 cents a day despite the advance in flour; that scores of mechanics are idle; that there is no longer a wage rate in any trade; that the streets are full of able-bodied beggers, while merchants offer me 2 per cent a month for the use of a little money.
Most of the English writing of the reign took the form of controversial or personal pamphlets in prose or verse; such as the extravagant Supplicacyon for the Beggers, a rabid tirade against the clergy, or Skelton's rhyme Why come ye nal to Court, an attack chiefly on the Cardinal. The splendid raciness of Hugh Latimer's sermons belongs to oratory rather than to letters.
"That ever his soule be in blysse, He holpe me out of my tene; Ne had not be his kyndenesse, Beggers had we ben." The story wanders on, through pages of verse like the above, but we may fitly end it with a page of prose. The old singers are somewhat prolix; it behooves us to be brief. A twelvemonth passed. The day fixed by the knight to repay his friend of the merry greenwood came.
In the report on the state of Ireland presented to Henry VIII. it is admitted that, though the bishops and rectors and vicars neglected their duty, the "poor friars beggers" preached the word of God.
And old hound bytes fair. A sloathfull man is a Beggers brother. As soon comes the Lamb-skin to the market as the old Sheeps. At open doors Dogs come in. An hungry man sees far. All is not tint that is in peril. As the Sow fills the Draff fowres. A good asker should have a good nay-say. A good ruser was never a good rider. A Lyar should have a good memory.
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