Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) The English Scholar's Library of Old and Modern Works. Edited by EDWARD ARBER, F.S.A., etc., _LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE ETC., UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON._ SIMON FISH, _of Gray's Inn, Gentleman_. A SUPPLICATION FOR THE BEGGARS. [1529.] Only to be obtained by _postal_ application to EDWARD ARBER, _at Southgate, London, N.; England_. No. 4. 15 August 1878. _UNWIN BROS., IMP._] Eighteen Pence. [_CHILWORTH & LONDON._ To _my Godfathers in English Literature_, HENRY MORLEY, ESQ., _PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE_, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON. AND HENRY PYNE, ESQ., Late _ASSISTANT TITHE COMMISSIONER_, ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, LONDON. _this_ Old Series _is, with blended admiration and gratitude, filially_ Inscribed. The English Scholar's Library etc. No. 4. _A Supplication for the Beggars._ [Spring of 1529.] The English Scholar's Library of Old and Modern Works. [SIMON FISH, of Gray's Inn, Gentleman.] _A Supplication for the Beggars._ [Spring of 1529.] Edited by EDWARD ARBER, F.S.A., etc., _LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE ETC., UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON._ SOUTHGATE, LONDON, N. 15 August 1878. No. 4. (_All rights reserved._) _CONTENTS._ PAGE Bibliography vi INTRODUCTION vii-xviii _A Supplicacyon for the Beggers_ 1 1. _The yearly exactions from the people taken by this greedy sort of sturdy idle holy thieves_ 3 They have a Tenth part of all produce, wages and profits 4 What money pull they in by probates of testaments, privy tithes, men's offerings to their pilgrimages and at their first masses; by masses and _diriges_, by mortuaries, hearing of confessions (yet keeping thereof no secrecy), hallowing of churches, by cursing of men and absolving them for money; by extortion &c.; and by the quarterage from every household to each of the Five Orders of begging Friars, which equals £43,333 6s. 8d. [= _over £500,000 in present value_] a year 4 400 years ago, of all this they had not a penny 4 These locusts own also one Third of the land 5 Or in all more than half of the substance of the realm 5 Yet they are not in number, one to every hundred men, or one in every four hundred men women and children 5