That there may be no mistake about the sort of people to whom the pleasant art of stretching a lie is so familiar, Chaucer is careful to name them, and there we find almost every one of our friends already mentioned or hereafter described, the sea or land wayfarers: “And lord! this hous in alle tymes Was ful of shipmen and pilgrimes, With scrippes (bags) bret-ful of leseyngs (lies) Entremedled with tydynges, {227} And eke allone be hemselve, O many a thousand tymes twelve Saugh I eke of these pardoners, Currours, and eke of messangers With boystes crammed ful of lyes.” What Chaucer gathered from these shipmen, pardoners, couriers, and messengers, he assures us it was not his intention to tell the world, “For hit no nede is redely; Folke kan hit synge bet than I.” Whether or not some doubt may have afterwards entered his mind about the great poetical faculty of “folke,” certain it is that, for the delight of future ages, he did not stick to his word, as every reader of the “Canterbury Tales” well knows. [Illustration 45. A PROFESSIONAL MESSENGER. (_From the MS. 10 E. IV._)] These “boystes” which Chaucer represents, carried by messengers and couriers, were filled in the way he describes only in a metaphorical sense, and this left room for more solid ware, for letters and parcels too, since in those old simple days, the messengers were the only equivalent for mail and for parcels post. They were to be found in the service of abbots, bishops, nobles, sheriffs, courts of justice,[300] and of the king. Such a costly forerunner of the post was not, of course, available for everybody; people did as they best could. The poor man {228} waited till some friend was going a journey; the rich only had express messengers, entrusted with their errands to distant places and with the carrying of their letters, generally written at dictation by a scribe on a sheet of parchment, and then sealed in wax with the master’s signet.[301] The king kept twelve messengers with a fixed salary; they followed him everywhere, in constant readiness to start; they received threepence a day when they were on the road, and four shillings and eightpence a year to buy shoes.[302] They were entrusted with letters {229} for the kings of France and Scotland; sent to call together the representatives of the nation for Parliament; to order the publication of the papal sentence against Guy de Montfort; to call to Windsor the knights of St. George; to summon the “archbishops, earls, barons, and other lords and ladies of England and Wales” to London to be present at the funeral of the late queen (Philippa); to prescribe the proclamation in the counties of the statutes made in Parliament; to command the “archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, deans, and chapters of the cathedral churches of all the shires to pray for the soul of Anne, late Queen of England, deceased.”[303]