een
decorations in churches, houses, and streets. There were also
games, dances, street bonfires in front of building doors, and
general relaxation of social controls. Sometimes there was drunken
licentiousness and revelry, with peasants gathering together to
make demands of lords for the best of his goods. May Day was
celebrated with crowns and garlands of spring flowers. The village
May Day pageant was often presided over by Robin Hood and Maid
Marion.

People turned to mysticism to escape from the everyday violent
world. They read works of mystics, such as "Scale of Perfection"
and "Cloud of Unknowing", the latter describing how one may better
know God. They believed in magic and sorcery, but had no religious
enthusiasm because the church was engendering more disrespect.
Monks and nuns had long ago resigned spiritual leadership to the
friars; now the friars too lost much of their good reputation. The
monks became used to life with many servants such as cooks,
butlers, bakers, brewers, barbers, laundresses, tailors,
carpenters, and farm hands. The austerity of their diet had
vanished. The schedule of divine services was no longer followed
by many and the fostering of learning was abandoned. Into
monasteries drifted the lazy and miserable. Nunneries had become
aristocratic boarding houses. The practice of taking sanctuary was
abused; criminals and debtors sought it and were allowed to
overstay the 40-day restriction and to leave at night to commit
robberies. There were numerous chaplains, who were ordained
because they received pay from private persons for saying masses
for the dead; having to forego wife and family, they had much
leisure time for mischief. Church courts became corrupt, but
jealously guarded their jurisdiction from temporal court
encroachment. Peter's Pence was no longer paid by the people, so
the burden of papal exaction fell wholly on the clergy. But the
church was rich and powerful, paying almost a third of the whole
taxation of the nation and forming a majority in the House of
Lords. Many families had kinsmen in the clergy. Even the lowest
cleric or clerk could read and write in Latin.

People relied on saint's days as reference points in the year, because
they did not know dates of the year. But townspeople knew the hour and
minute of each day, because clocks driven by a descending weight on a
cord were in all towns and in the halls of the well-to-do. This
increased the sense of punctuality a