“Aryse be tyme oute of thi bedde, And blysse thi brest and thi forhede, Then wasche thi handes and thi face, Keme thi hede, and aske God grace The to helpe in all thi werkes; Thou schall spede better what so thou confes, Then go to ye chyrche, and here a masse.” Andrew Borde also, in his _Regyment_, says that after rising and dressing, “then great and noble men doth use to here Masse, and other men that can not do so, but must apply theyr busyness, doth serve God with some prayers, surrendrynge thankes to hym for hys manyfolde goodnes, with askynge mercye for theyr offences.” In the Introduction to _The Lay Folks Mass Book_ Canon Simons has gathered together a considerable number of authorities for holding that people were supposed to hear their daily Mass, with the exception of those “common people,” who were employed on work and could only be present on the Sundays and holidays. In Wynkyn de Worde’s _Boke of Kervynge_ the chamberlain is instructed “at morne” to “go to the chyrche or chapell to your soveraynes closet and laye carpentes and cuysshens and pute downe his boke of prayers, then drawe the curtynes.” And so, too, Robert of Gloucester says of William the Conqueror, reflecting the manners of the time in which he himself wrote: “In chyrche he was devout ynou, for hym non day abyde that he na hurde masse and matyns and evenson[g] and eche tyde.” And Canon Simmons adds-- “But that the rule of the church was not a dead letter is perhaps most unmistakably shown by the matter-of-course way in which hearing mass before breaking fast is introduced as an incident in the everyday life of knights and other personages in works of fiction, which, nevertheless, in their details were no doubt true to the ordinary habits of the class they intended to portray....” For example, in _Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_ Gawayne, after the lady has kissed him-- “Dos hir forth at ye dore, with outen dyn more And he ryches him to ryse and rapes hym sone, Clepes to his chamberlayn, choses his wede Bozez forth, quen he watz boun, blythely to Masse And thenne he meued to his mete, that menskly hym keped.” And so again the lord hears Mass before he eats, and goes hunting at daybreak-- “Ete a sop hastyly, when he hade herde Masse With bugle to bent felde he buskez by-lyve.”