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KEY Commentary Side Textual Bibliographic Scriptural
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we their prayars better then the pore laye mens / then for their
disgysynges and ceremonies? ye and what other vertue se we in the
holiest of them / then to wayte vppon dumme
supersticious ceremonies ?
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125/6
the wild Irish and
the welch. Cf. CWM 6/1.236/33–237/ 2. The Norman-Welsh
churchman Gerald of Wales (c1146—c1220) visited Ireland with Prince John
in 1185, and Wales with the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1188.
Gerald does not comment on theft among the Irish, but he observes of the
Welsh, "This nation conceives it right to commit acts of
plunder, theft, and robbery, not only against foreigners and hostile
nations, but even against their own countrymen." Cf. History of the Conquest of Ireland, tr. Thomas Forester, and
Description of Wales, tr. Richard Colt Hoare
(p. 509) in The Historical Works of Giraldus
Cambrensis, ed. Thomas Wright (London: Bell, 1892). Because
they had been guilty of theft and arson, the Irish, Scots, and Welsh
were not admitted to Cambridge in 1429 without providing sureties
against disorderly conduct, cf. Williams 243. Keith Thomas (115 and n3)
cites no other source for the "widely inappropriate" prayers of the
Irish and Welsh than this passage from More. Falstaff would later
justify his foray into highway robbery: "Why, Hal, 'tis my
vocation, Hal. 'Tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation," 1 Henry IV 1.2.92–93 (performed 1596–97,
published 1598). Tyndale was born near the marches of Wales, where
thieves were formally cursed by the locate curates (Obedience N8v). Glanmor Williams (334, 496, 497) notes the
powerful curses of the clergy at the shrines of St. David in
Pembrokeshire and St. Derfel in Merionethshire.
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Yee and how cometh it that a poore laye man hauinge wife and
.xx. children and not able to fynde them / though
all his neybours
know his necessite / shall not gett with bedgynge
for Christes sake / in a longe somers daye / ynough to fynde
them .ij. dayes honestly / when iff a disgysed monster come /
he shall with an houres lyenge in the pulpit / gett ynough to
fynde .xxx. or .xl. sturdy lubboures a moneth longe / of which
the weakest shalbe as stronge in the bely when he cometh vn to
the manger / as the mightiest porter in the weyhousse or best
courser that is in the kynges stable? Is ther any other cause
then disgisynge and ceremonyes? For the dedes of the ceremonies
we count better then the dedes which god commaundeth to be done
to our neyboure at his nede. Who thinketh it as good a dede to
fede the pore / as to stecke vpp a candle before a poste or as
to sprencle him selfe with holy water? Nether is it possible to be other wise / as longe as the significacion is lost. For what
other thinge can the people thinke / then that soch deades
beordeyned of god / and because as it is euident / they serue
not our neyboures nede / to be referred vn to the person of god
and he though he be a
spirite / yet serued therwith? And then he can not
but forth on dispute in his blynde reason / that as god is
greater then man / so is that dede that is appoynted to serue
god greater than that whych serueth man. And then when it is
not possible to thinke them ordeyned for
nought / what can I
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125/9–10
Prayar . . .
awaye. Cf. Mark 13.33, Luke 18.1.
bedgynge] begging 1573
125/26
the soules ... to
perish. Cf. 1 Cor. 8.11.
125/30
Abraham and
Melchisedec. Cf. Gen. 14.16, 20, Heb. 7.2.
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