THE PEASANT AND HOLY ORDERS 289
For shold no clerk be crouned bote yf he ycome were
Of franklens and freemen and of folke yweddede.
Bondmen and bastardes and beggers children,
Thuse by-longeth to labour and lordes kyn to semen
Both god and good men as here degree asketh;
But sith bondemenne barnes han be mad bisshopes,
And barnes bastardes han ben archidekenes,
And sowters and here sones for seluer han be knyghtes,
And lordene sones here labores and leid here rentes to wedde
Lyfe-holynesse and loue han ben longe hennes,
And wole, til hit be wered out or otherwise ychaunged.1
The whole opposition to these upstarts thrusting their way into
the Church and thence into high places came to a head in the
famous petition to Richard II, asking him to forbid villeins to
send their sons to school "to learn clergee".1 This plea was re-
fused, and in 1406 an enactment in Parliament secured the right
*' of every man or woman, of what state or condition he be,... to
set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that
pleaseth them within the realm".2
Before this statute every serf wishing to leave the manor for
this purpose, or wishing to get leave for his son to do so had to
plead for, and usually to buy, his freedom from his lord. The
accounts and Court Rolls are full of these happenings. Thus in
1295, Walter, son of Reginald the carpenter, presented by the
manorial jury of Hemingford Abbots, Hunts, for being or-
dained without leave, appeared before the lord, the Abbot of
Ramsey, and by special grace was licensed to attend school and
take all orders, without being reclaimed as a serf. For this he was
to recite the whole of the psalms ten times for the soul of the late
Abbot William and also to pay a fine of ten shillings.3 When we
remember that the yearly wages of a first-class agricultural
labourer at that time (exclusive of his keep) were seldom more
than half this sum we can realise the importance the lord attached
1 Piers Plozvman, C. vi, 63-81. There was a good deal of truth in this
statement. Cutts (op. cit. 133) tells us that of Archbishops of Canterbury,
Winchelsey was probably of humble bkth; Reynolds, the son of a Windsor
baker and Chichele, a shepherd boy.
2 7 Henry IV, cap. 17.
8 Leach, Schools Medieval England, 206, and cf. 236.
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