Leel and ful of love, And no lord dreden, Merciable to meek, And mylde to the goode, And bytynge on badde men Bote yf thei wolde amende, And dredeth nat for no deth To distruye by here powere Lecherie among lordes, And hure luther custymes, And sithen lyve as thei lereth men, Oure lorde Treuthe hem graunteth, To be peeres to Apostles, &c. 4525. _sette scolers to scole._ It was common in the _scholastic_ ages for scholars to wander about gathering money to support them at the universities. In a poem in MS. Lansdowne, No. 762, the husbandman, complaining of the many burdens he supports in taxes to the court, payments to the church, and charitable contributions of different kinds, enumerates among the latter the alms to scholars:-- Than cometh clerkys of Oxford, and mak their mone, To her scole-hire they most have money. 4547. Psa. xiv, 5. Qui pecuniam suam non dedit ad usuram, et munera super innocentem non accepit. 4571. Psa. xiv, 1. 4593. Matt. vii, 12. Luke vi, 31. 4618. _the clerc of stories._ Called, elsewhere, _maister of stories_. These names were given popularly to Peter Comestor, author of the famous Historia Scolastica, a paraphrase of the Bible history, with abundance of legendary matter added to it. The title given him by the author of Piers Ploughman is not uncommon in English treatises of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 102 (Ed. Halliwell), speaks of Comestor thus:-- _Maister of storyes_, this doctour ful notable, Holding a chalice here in a sonne cliere. 4619. _Catons techyng._ "Cui des videto," is the twenty-third of the "Distichorum Lemmata" of Dionysius Cato. 4621. Instead of ll. 4621-4658, the following long and curious passage is substituted in the text adopted by Mr. Whitaker:--