Besides the chantry priests and guild priests, there was a great crowd of priests who gained a livelihood by taking temporary engagements to say masses for the souls of the departed. Nearly every will of the period we are considering provides for the saying of masses for the soul of the testator. Sometimes it is only by ordering a fee to be paid to every priest who shall be present at the funeral, sometimes by ordering the executors to have a number of masses, varying from ten to ten thousand, said as speedily as may be; sometimes by directing that a priest shall be engaged to say mass for a certain period, varying from thirty days to forty or fifty years. These casual masses formed an irregular provision for a large number of priests, many of whom performed no other clerical function, and too often led a dissolute as well as an idle life. Archbishop Islip says in his "Constitutions:"[241]--"We are certainly informed, by common fame and experience, that modern priests, through covetousness and love of ease, not content with reasonable salaries, demand excessive pay for their labours, and receive it; and do so despise labour and study pleasure, that they wholly refuse, as parish priests, to serve in churches or chapels, or to attend the cure of souls, though fitting salaries are offered them, that they may live in a leisurely manner, by celebrating annals for the quick and dead; and so parish churches and chapels remain unofficiated, destitute of parochial chaplains, and even proper curates, to the grievous danger of souls." Chaucer has introduced one of this class into the Canon's Yeoman's tale:-- "In London was a priest, an annueller,[242] That therein dwelled hadde many a year, Which was so pleasant and so serviceable Unto the wife there as he was at table That she would suffer him no thing to pay For board ne clothing, went he never so gay, And spending silver had he right ynoit."[243]