Thus through several pages this amusing poem goes on to describe the gluttony and drunkenness of the abbot and prior, and the ill-treatment of their inferiors. This composition belongs to the close of the thirteenth century. A song very similar to it in character, but much shorter, is found in a manuscript of the middle of the fifteenth century, and printed with the other contents of this manuscript in a little volume issued by the Percy Society.[58] The writer complains that the abbot and prior drunk good and high-flavoured wine, while nothing but inferior stuff was usually given to the convent; "But," he says, "it is better to go drink good wine at the tavern, where the wines are of the best quality, and money is the butler." _Bonum vinum cum sapore Bibit abbas cum priore; Sed conventus de pejore semper solet bibere. Bonum vinum in taberna, Ubi vina sunt valarna_ (for Falerna), _Ubi nummus est pincerna, Ibi prodest bibere._ [58] "Songs and Carols, now first printed from a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century." Edited by Thomas Wright, Esq. 8vo., London, 1847, p. 2. [Illustration: _No. 111. Caricature upon the Jews at Norwich._] Partly out of the earnest, though playful, satire described in this chapter, arose political satire, and at a later period political caricature. I have before remarked that the period we call the middle ages was not that of political or personal caricature, because it wanted that means of circulating quickly and largely which is necessary for it. Yet, no doubt, men who could draw, did, in the middle ages, sometimes amuse themselves in sketching caricatures, which, in general, have perished, because nobody cared to preserve them; but the fact of the existence of such works is proved by a very curious example, which has been preserved, and which is copied in our cut No. 111. It is a caricature on the Jews of Norwich, which some one of the clerks of the king's courts in the thirteenth century has drawn with a pen, on one of the official rolls of the Pell office, where it has been preserved. Norwich, as it is well known, was one of the principal seats of the Jews in England at this early period, and Isaac of Norwich, the crowned Jew with three faces, who towers over the other figures, was no doubt some personage of great importance among them. Dagon, as a two-headed demon, occupies a tower, which a party of demon knights is attacking. Beneath the figure of Isaac there is a lady, whose name appears to be Avezarden, who has some relation or other with a male figure named Nolle-Mokke, in which another demon, named Colbif, is interfering. As this latter name is written in capital letters, we may perhaps conclude that he is the most important personage in the scene; but, without any knowledge of the circumstances to which it relates, it would be in vain