3o THE CHURCH
mill. The Angelus, which J. F. Millet's nineteenth-century
peasants heard at midday in their fields, was a post-Reformation
-practice, but the Mass-bell earlier in the day had sounded down
the ages, and had summoned the fourteenth-century peasant in
similar manner:
And 3ef Łow may not come to chyrche,
Where euer }>at ]>ow do worche,
When )?ow herest to masse knylle,
Prey to God wy}? herte stylle.1
And there was much besides to remind him of his fellowship and
of his duty to the Church. As he moved about the manor he
would see the wayside crosses and the local shrines, where from
time immemorial prayers had been said and offerings made. In
most places he could see from the hillside the spires of many a
church, and the walls of abbeys and priories enclosing great
buildings which were bywords in the village for their opulent
splendour and vast design. If we add to this the constant passage
of wandering friars, of ecclesiastics on business, the occasional
palmer and the more frequent groups of pilgrims, the daily
meetings with the parish priests or his assistants and underlings,
we begin to realise how omnipresent the Church of the Middle
Ages must have seemed to the toilers of the fields.
Nor did it rest at this. The Church was not passive—a kindly
mother waiting the coming pf her children. The medieval Church
was the Church militant in many ways, and her contacts with the
peasant were not solely those of love and mansuetude. When her
rights or privileges were in question no medieval lay-lord was
more instantly in arms, or fiercer upon his quarreL The tithe
barn was an ever-present reminder of the power and needs of
the Church; and many a man must have played the part of Cain
in the Towneley play of The Killing of Abel, where we see him
grudgingly looking over his sheaves, selecting the worst for his
tithe, and grumbling all the time.2 Again, at the death of any
man the Church frequently stepped in and claimed his second-
best beast as a mortuary. This was a severe tax, and was felt the
more since the lord of the manor claimed the best beast as a
1 Myrc, Instructions for Parish Priests (E.E.T.S.), 1L 1603 ff.
1 Towneley Plays (E.E.T.S.), 15, and see p. 330.