Jewell says many of them were the "basest sort of people"
unlearned, fiddlers, pipers, and what not. "Not a few," says Harrison,
"find fault with our threadbare gowns, as if not our patrons but our
wives were the causes of our woe." He thinks the ministers will be better
when the patrons are better, and he defends the right of the clergy to
marry and to leave their goods, if they have any, to their widows and
children instead of to the church, or to some school or almshouse. What
if their wives are fond, after the decease of their husbands, to bestow
themselves not so advisedly as their calling requireth; do not duchesses,
countesses, and knights' wives offend in the like fully so often as they?
And Eve, remarks the old philosopher of Radwinter--"Eve will be Eve,
though Adam would say nay."
The apparel of the clergy, at any rate, was more comely and decent than
it ever was in the popish church, when the priests "went either in divers
colors like players, or in garments of light hue, as yellow, red, green,
etc.; with their shoes piked, their hair crisped, their girdles armed
with silver; their shoes, spurs, bridles, etc., buckled with like metal;
their apparel (for the most part) of silk, and richly furred; their caps
laced and buttoned with gold; so that to meet a priest, in those days,
was to behold a peacock that spreadeth his tail when he danceth before
the hen.
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