Among the foreign money, mostly of a base quality, which came into this country in the fourteenth century, the coinage of the counts of Luxemburg, or, as it was then called, Lusenburg (hence called _lussheburwes_ and _lusscheburghes_), seems to have been the most abundant, and to have given most trouble. These coins were the subject of legislation in 1346, 1347, 1348, and 1351; so that the grievance must have been at its greatest height at the period to which the poem of Piers Ploughman especially belongs. Many of these coins are preserved, and found in the cabinets of collectors; they are in general very much like the contemporary English coinage, and might easily be taken for it, but the metal is very base. 10368. _Grammer, the ground of al._ In the scholastic learning of the middle ages, grammar was considered as the first of the seven sciences, and the foundation-stone of all the rest. See my Essay on Anglo-Saxon Literature, introductory to vol. i. of the _Biographia Britannica Literaria_, p. 72. The importance of grammar is thus stated in the _Image du Monde_ of Gautier de Metz (thirteenth century):-- Li primeraine des vij. ars, Dont or n'est pas seus li quars, A ichest tans, chou est gramaire, Sans laquele nus ne vaut gaire Qui à clergie veut aprendre: Car petit puet sans li entendre. Gramaires si est fondemens De clergie et coumenchemens; Cou est li porte de science, Par cui on vient à sapience. De lettres en gramaire escole Qui ensegne et forme parole, Soit en Latin ou en Roumans, Ou en tous langages palans; Qui bien saroit toute gramaire, Toute parole saroit faire. Par parole fist Dius le monde, Et sentence est parole monde. 10398. _Corpus Christi feeste._ Corpus Christi day was a high festival of the Church of Rome, held annually on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, in memory, as was said, of the miraculous confirmation of transubstantiation under pope Urban IV. 10418. _This Makometh._ This account of Mohammed was the one most popularly current in the middle ages. According to Hildebert, who wrote a life of the pseudo-prophet in Latin verse in the twelfth century, Mohammed was a Christian, skilled in magical arts, who, on the death of the patriarch of Jerusalem, aspired to succeed him:-- Nam male devotus quidam baptismate lotus, Plenus perfidia vixit in ecclesia. . . . . . . Nam cum transisset Pater illius urbis, et isset In coelum subito corpore disposito, Tunc exaltari magus hic et pontificari Affectans avide; se tamen hæc pavide Dixit facturum, nisi sciret non nociturum Si præsul fiat, cum Deus hoc cupiat.