fortunes of a worthy
clothier of Henry the First's time, telling how he rose to wealth and
prosperity, and was finally murdered by an innkeeper. There is
interwoven a relation of the unhappy loves of the "faire Margaret,"
daughter of the exiled Earl of Shrewsbury, and of Duke Robert, the
King's brother, which ends in the Duke losing his eyes, and the fair
Margaret being immured in a convent. The story illustrates some curious
old customs, and is written in an unaffected and easy style, which
makes it still very readable. A passage describing the churching feast
of the wife of one of the "Sixe worthie yeomen," makes a natural and
humorous picture of contemporary manners.

Sutton's wife of Salisbury, which had lately bin deliuered of a
sonne, against her going to church, prepared great cheare; at what
time Simon's wife of Southhampton came thither, and so did diuers
others of the clothiers' wiues, onely to make merry at this
churching feast: and whilest these dames sate at the table, Crab,
Weasell and Wren waited on the board, and as the old Prouerbe
speaketh, Many women, many words, so tell it out at that time; for
there was such prattling that it passed: some talkt of their
husbands' frowardnes, some shewed their maids' sluttishnes,
othersome deciphered the costlines of their garments, some told
many tales of their neighbours: and to be briefe there was none of
them but would have talke for a whole day.

But when Crab, Weazell and Wren saw this, they concluded betwixt
themselves, that as oft as any of the women had a good bit of meate
on their trenchers, they offering a cleane one should catch that
commodity, and so they did; but the women being busie in talke,
marked it not, till at the last one found leisure to misse her
meate * * * The women seeing their men so merry, said it was a
sign there was good ale in the house.[31]

As the decline of disorder and of martial tastes had given men the
opportunity to lead other than military lives, so the decline of the
theological spirit enabled them to attain that diffusion of knowledge
without which there could be no civilization. The Roman clergy, during
many centuries, partly from conscientious motives, and partly to
maintain their own power, had suppressed intellectual and material
advancement, and had kept men in a state of gross ignorance and
superstition. In England the church gradually lost