attacked, as the clergy formed a prominent mark in every parish in the country, and were safer game than the king or barons.  Thus, in the Harleian MSS., there is an ancient French poem pretending to eulogise a new conventual order for both men and women, who are to live together in great luxury and be bound to perpetual idleness.  Several monasteries in England are mentioned as affording instances of such a mode of living.

The earliest literary assault we have on the church in this country was written probably in the thirteenth century—­Warton says, soon after the conquest—­in a mixture of Saxon and Norman.  A monastery, composed of various kinds of gems and delicacies, represents the luxury of the monks—­

  “Fur in see, bi west Spayngne
   Is a lond ihote Cokaygne: 
   Ther nis lond under heuen-riche
   Of wel of godness hit iliche.

  “Ther is a wel fair abbei,
   Of white monkes and of grei,
   Ther beth bowris and halles
   Al of pasteiis beth the walles
   Of fleis, of fisse, and rich met,
   The likfullist that man mai et. 
   Fluren cakes beth the schingles[40] alle
   Of cherche, cloister, boure, and halle. 
   The pinnes[41] beth fat podinges
   Rich met to princez and kinges.

  “An other abbei is ther bi
   For soth a gret fair nunnerie;
   Vp a riuer of sweet milke,
   Whar is gret plente of silk.”

He goes on to speak of the monks and nuns as dancing together in a very indecorous manner.

The clergy were often humorous themselves—­Nigellus Wireker, a monk of Canterbury, who is supposed to have lived in the time of Richard I., wrote a very amusing attack on his brethren.  It is in Latin elegiac verse, and as being directed against ambition and discontent may be compared with the first satire of Horace.  But he wrote in a less advanced state of civilisation to that in which the Roman poet lived, and he carries on his discourse by means of conversations of animals.  The work is called the Brunellus—­the name of an ass.

The poem is directed against passion and avarice—­and especially against the monks, who, he says deserve to be called pastors, not a pascendo but a poscendo.  But he takes so much interest in the animals he introduces, that he seems to lose sight of his moral object.  He delights in the speeches of a cock and crow, but his main story is that the ass, Brunellus, is dissatisfied, because, having long ears he thinks he ought to have a long tail.  He betakes himself to Galienus to consult him, who endeavours to dissuade him from adopting any surgical or medical means, and reminds him that if he has a short tail he has a very large head.  He inculcates contentment by a story of two cows, one of which, through impatience when her tail has stuck in the mud, says it is not an honour but an onus, and so pulls it off, and becomes a laughing stock to the world.  The other cow waits patiently, and makes a long speech containing references to Cato and the Trojan war.