“And were mercy in mean men no more than in rich | mendicants meatless might go to bed. | God is much in the gorge of these great masters, | but among mean men his mercy and his works. | Friars and faitours have found such questions, | to plese with proud men sithen the pestilence tyme, | and prechers at Saint Poules, for pure envye of clerkis, | that folke is nought firmed in the feith ne fill of their goodes. | ... Ne be plentyous to the pore as pure charitye wolde, | but in gayness and in glotonye forglotten her goode hem selve, | and breken noughte to the beggar as the Boke techeth.” The friars had lost altogether the enthusiasm of their early days: “And how that friars followed folk that was rich, | and folk that was poor at little price they set; | and no corpse in their kirk-yard nor in their kirk was buried, | but quick he bequeath them aughte or should help quit their debts.” As for the monks, the same might have been said of them before; but now more land had been thrown into their possession by the mortality: “Ac now is Religion a ryder, a rowmer bi streetes, A leader of love-days, and a lond-buyer, A pricker on a palfrey fro manere to manere, An heap of houndes at his ers, as he a lord were. And but if his knave kneel, that shall his cup bringe, He lowreth on hym, and axeth hym who taught hym curtesye.” According to Langland’s poem, the country clergy left their livings and came up to London:-- “Parsons and parish priests plained them to the bishop | that their parishes were poor sith the pestilence time; | to have licence and leave at London to dwell | and syngen there for simony, for silver is sweet. | Bishops and bachelors, both masters and doctours, | that have cures under Christ and crowning in token and sign, | that they should shrive their parishours, preach and pray for them and the poor feed, | live in London in Lent and all”-- some of them serving the king in the offices of Exchequer and Chancery, and some acting as the stewards of lords. It is undoubted that the business of the courts in London received a great impetus after the mortality, as one can readily understand from the number of inheritances, successions, and feudal claims that had to be settled. Several of the Inns of Chancery date from about that time. Gascoigne, who was “cancellarius” at Oxford about 1430, and had access to the rolls of former “cancellarii,” was struck by the increase of legists after the commotion of 1349: “Before the great pestilence there were few disputes among the people, and few pleas; and, accordingly, there were few legists in the realm of England, and few legists in Oxford, at a time when there were thirty thousand scholars in Oxford, as I have seen in the rolls,” etc.[357]