+A Clerk.+ And a Clerk said to me, "How wilt thou make this good, that the people will give freely to priests their livelihood; since that now, by the law, every priest can scarcely constrain the people to give them their livelihood?" =CHRIST LIVED WHOLLY UPON ALMS.= +William.+ And I said, "Sir, it is now no wonder, though the people grudge to give the priests the livelihood that they ask! for mickle people know, now, how that priests should live; and how that they live contrary to CHRIST and His Apostles. And therefore the people are full heavy to pay, as they do, their temporal goods to Parsons and to other Vicars and Priests; which should be faithful dispensators of the parish's goods, taking to themselves no more but a scarce living of tithes nor of offerings by the Ordinance of the Common Law. For whatsoever priests take of the people, be it tithes or offering, or any other duty or service, the priests ought not to have thereof no more but a bare living: and to depart [_give away_] the residue to the poor men and women, specially of the parish of whom they take this temporal living. But the most deal [_greater portion_] of priests now waste their parish's goods, and spendeth them at their own will, after the world in their vain lusts: so that in few places poor men have duly, as they should have, their own sustenance, neither of tithes nor of offerings, nor of other large wages and foundations that priests take of the people in divers manners, above that they need for needful sustenance of meat and clothing. But the poor needy people are forsaken and left of priests, to be sustained of the paroshenis [_parishioners_]; as if the priests took nothing of the parishioners, for to help the poor people with. And thus, Sir, into over great charges of the parishioners, they pay their temporal goods twice; where once might suffice, if priests were true dispensators. "Also, Sir, the parishioners that pay their temporal goods, be they tithes or offerings, to priests that do not their office among them justly, are partners of every sin of those priests: because that they sustain those priests' folly in their sin, with their temporal goods. If these things be well considered, what wonder is it then, Sir, if the parishioners grudge against these dispensators?" +Archbishop.+ Then the Archbishop said to me, "Thou that shouldest be judged and ruled by Holy Church, presumptuously, thou deemest Holy Church to have erred in the ordinance of tithes and other duties to be paid to priests! It shall be long ere thou thrive, losell! that thou despisest thy ghostly Mother! How darest thou speak this, losell! among the people? Are not tithes given to priests for to live by?"