“Mynding oonelie theyre owne lucres, and nothing the profite or ease of the diseased or patient, [they] have sued, troubled and vexed divers honest persones aswell men as woomen, whome God hathe endued with the knowledge of the nature, kinde, and operacion of certeyne herbes, rotes, and waters, . . . and yet the saide persones have not takin any thing for theyre peynes and cooning, but have mynistred the same to the poore people oonelie for neighbourhode and Goddes sake, and of pite and {191} charytie; and it is nowe well knowen that the surgeons admytted wooll doo no cure to any persone, but where they shall knowe to be rewarded with a greater soome or rewarde than the cure extendeth unto, for in cace they wolde mynistre theyre coonning to sore people unrewarded, there shoulde not so manye rotte and perishe to deathe for lacke of helpe of surgerye as dailie doo.” Besides, in spite of the examinations by the Bishop of London, “the most parte of the persones of the said crafte of surgeons have small coonning.” For which cause all the king’s subjects who have, “by speculacion or practyse,” knowledge of the virtues of plants, roots, and waters, may as before, notwithstanding enactments to the contrary, cure any malady apparent on the surface of the body, by means of plasters, poultices, and ointments “within any parte of the realme of Englande, or within any other the kinges dominions.”[242] A radical change, as we see; the secrets and “speculacions” of country people were no longer those of sorcerers, but precious recipes which they had received from God by intuition; the poor, subject to die without a doctor, rejoiced, the quacks breathed once more—but were led again onto the boards of the comic stage just as before. Ben Jonson, that bold pedestrian who walked all the way from London to Scotland, and who, in his long rambles through villages or cities, had become familiar with the variegated characters haunting their market places, painted, in his turn, the portrait of the “mountebank doctor,” one of the best, not better however than Rutebeuf’s, and very similar to it, for, as we said, the type passed on from century to century, unchanged.