If every bishop had been a Brunton, and every parish priest had been like the parson of the Canterbury Tales, Master Rypon's sad confession about the excesses of “the mercenary brethren” in the parishes might never have been made, and Jack Upland's complaint about the burden of so many extra evangelists in the land would have been well justified:

The same sermon-writers whose evidence has helped to enlighten such a statement may be expected with good reason to tell us something about those other preachers, “es esglises, et cimitoirs, einzes Marches, Feires et autres lieux publiques,” the itinerant friars. But first a glance will not be inappropriate at the older and less mobile Orders, “the monkes and cannons,” who, as the rude satirist reminds his friar opponent, are still a regular part of the swarming clerical throng.

Under the Cluniac and Cistercian revivals monastic oratory had enjoyed its golden age a full century before the successes of the Mendicants. Apart even from its substantial contribution to homiletic literature, its queer mystical and allegoric moods, its unquestioned influence upon the purity and zeal of monastic life, it had had even a series of popular triumphs. For at one time vast throngs had welcomed St Bernard in his missionary campaigns, as later they were one day to welcome the Poverello and his sons.