This claim fell with great severity upon widows in poor
circumstances, who were, in too many instances, thus deprived of their
only means of subsistence. Then came fees and fines to the holy Church,
so that the bereaved and disconsolate creature had need to wish herself
in the dark dwelling beside her husband. Sir David Lindsay may not be
unaptly quoted in illustration of this subject. His poem called "The
Monarch" contains the following frightful picture of the exactions and
enormities committed on these defenceless and unoffending victims of
their rapacity:--
"And also the vicar, as I trow,
Will not fail to take a cow,
And uppermost cloths, though babes them an,
From a poor seely husbandman,
When he lyes ready to dy,
Having small children two or three,
And his three kine withouten mo,--
The vicar must have one of tho,
With the gray cloke that covers the bed,
Howbeit that they be poorly cled;
And if the wife die on the morn,
And all the babes should be forlorn,
The other cow he takes away,
With her poor cote and petycote gray:
And if within two days or three
The eldest child shall happen to dy,
Of the third cow he shall be sure,
When he hath under his cure;
And father and mother both dead be,
Beg must the babes without remedy.
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