'But in the cuppe wil I me bethinke Upon some honest tale, whil I drinke.' THE PARDONERES PROLOGUE. Title. The Latin text is copied from l. 334 below; it appears in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS. The A. V. has--'the love of money is the root of all evil'; 1 Tim. vi. 10. It is well worth notice that the novel by Morlinus, quoted in vol. iii. p. 442, as a source of the Pardoner's Tale, contains the expression--'radice malorum cupiditate affecti.' 336. _bulles_, bulls from the pope, whom he here calls his 'liege lord'; see Prol. A. 687, and Piers the Plowman, B. Prol. 69. See also Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 308. _alle and somme_, one and all. Cf. Clerkes Tale, E. 941, and the note. 337. _patente_; defined by Webster as 'an official document, conferring a right or privilege on some person or party'; &c. It was so called because 'patent' or open to public inspection. 'When indulgences came to be sold, the pope made them part of his ordinary revenue; and, according to the usual way in those, and even in much later times, of farming the revenue, he let them out usually to the Dominican friars'; Massingberd, Hist. Eng. Reformation, p. 126. 345. 'To colour my devotion with.' For _saffron_, MS. Harl. reads _savore_. Tyrwhitt rightly prefers the reading _saffron_, as 'more [270] expressive, and less likely to have been a gloss.' And he adds--'Saffron was used to give colour as well as flavour.' For example, in the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 275, we read of 'capons that ben coloured with saffron.' And in Winter's Tale, iv. 3. 48, the Clown says--'I must have saffron to colour the warden-pies.' Cf. Sir Thopas, B. 1920. As to the position of _with_, cf. Sq. Ta., F. 471, 641. 346. According to Tyrwhitt, this line is, in some MSS. (including Camb. Dd. 4. 24. and Addit. 5140), replaced by three, viz.-- 'In euery village and in euery toun, This is my terme, and shal, and euer was, _Radix malorum est cupiditas_.' Here _terme_ is an error for _teme_, a variant of _theme_; so that the last two lines merely repeat ll. 333-4. 347. _cristal stones_, evidently hollow pieces of crystal in which relics were kept; so in the Prologue, A. 700, we have-- 'And in a _glas_ he hadde pigges bones.' 348. _cloutes_, rags, bits of cloth. 'The origin of the veneration for relics may be traced to Acts, xix. 12. Hence _clouts_, or _cloths_, are among the Pardoner's stock'; note in Bell's edition.