The sanctity of the institution and the unworthiness of many of its members caused it to be at once venerated and detested; however contemptible be the man, what if, after all, the keys of heaven were in his hand? Respect mingled with fear in the feeling for him. Thus poets laughed at the friars, popular story-tellers scouted them; distrust, doubt, contempt spread, extending from the lowly friar to the reverend bishop himself; churchmen were caricatured on the very stalls upon which they sat; Master Reynard was represented delivering a sermon while wearing episcopal insignia, and neither the miniaturist, charged with illuminating an imposing volume of Decretals, nor those who had entrusted him with the work, found anything improper in his satirising on the margin the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy, from bishops to monks or clerks. One of the latter is shown forgetting in the kitchen his sprinkler and bucket of holy water; {305} then remembering what he has come for and going to sprinkle the masters at table, then returning to the kitchen maid.[417] In the same ironical spirit the author of a popular song of the fourteenth century wrote: “Preste ne monke ne yit chanoun, Ne no man of religioun, Gyfen hem so to devocioun As done thes holy frers. For summe gyven ham to chyvalry, Somme to riote and ribaudery; Bot ffrers gyven ham to grete study, And to grete prayers.” Several stanzas follow which cannot be quoted.[418] The people, therefore, fitfully saw in the friars their protectors and allies in case of revolt, while at other times they pursued them in the streets with stones, struck them and lacerated their garments: angels or else devils? they were not sure. “At the same time the preaching friars took to flight because they feared to be maltreated and ruined, because the commonalty bore with them very reluctantly, on account of their proud behaviour, for they did not behave as friars ought.”[419] “Know ye,” says the king, “that we have understood, that some persons of our kingdom of England, by the instigation of the evil spirit, . . . do and daily strive to do harm and scandal to our beloved in Christ, the religious men, friars of the order of minors, . . . openly and secretly stirring up our people against them to destroy the houses of the said friars, tearing their habits from them, striking some, and ill-treating them, against our peace.”[420] From another point of view, that of public safety, the {306} Commons were indignant at the number of foreigners among the friars, whom they considered a permanent danger to the State. They requested “that all the alien friars, of whatever habit they might be, should void the realm before the Feast of St. Michael, and if they remained beyond the said feast they should be held as out of the common law,” that is, outlawed.[421]