[Footnote 23: _i.e._, if a priest, who is like gold, allow himself to rust, or fall into sloth or sin, how can he expect the 'lewid man' or layman, who is as iron to him, to be free from these faults?] The final character given to him is:-- A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is. He waytud after no pompe ne reverence, Ne maked him a spiced conscience;[24] But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taught, and ferst he folwed[25] it himselve. [Footnote 24: A nice conscience; to see offence where there is none.] [Footnote 25: Followed.] The majority amongst Chaucer's clergy are, however, of a very different kind. There is the parish clerk, who, when he is waving the censer in church thinks more of the pretty women there than of his duty; the monk who loves hunting, and hates work and reading; the friar who is ready to grant absolution to any one who will give money to the friars; who has a word and a jest for every man, and presents of knives and pins for the women; who takes a farthing where he cannot get a penny, but turns aside from those who have not even a farthing to give; the pardoner, who has for sale sham relics--a piece of the sail of the ship which carried St. Peter on the sea of Galilee, and a glass of pigs' bones, which he was ready to sell as bones of saints, if he could thereby extract something even from the poorest widow. He would not, he said, work with his hands like the apostles. He wanted to have money, wool, cheese, and wheat at other people's expense. Though Wycliffe had failed to reform the Church there was evidently much room for a reformer. [Illustration: Carrying corn--a cart going uphill: from the Luttrell Psalter.] 11. =Roads and Bridges.=--Such men as these latter did not go on pilgrimages through pure religious zeal. Villeins, indeed, were "bound to the soil," and lived and died on land which they tilled; but the classes above them moved about freely, and took pleasure in a pilgrimage, as a modern Englishman takes pleasure in a railway excursion. It was considered to be a pious work to make or repair roads and bridges, and the existence of many bridges especially was owing to the clergy. The most famous bridge in England, London Bridge, had been begun in the place of an old wooden one in =1176=--in the reign of Henry II.--by a priest, Peter Colechurch, who obtained gifts for the purpose from notable people of all kinds. It was completed in =1209=, houses being built upon it in order that their rents might pay for keeping it in good condition. Local taxes were sometimes levied to maintain the roads and bridges, and in default of these, it was held to be the duty of the owners of land to keep the communications open. [Illustration: State carriage of the fourteenth century: from the Luttrell Psalter.]