It Is Also Remarkable, That Brothers Shew More
Affection To One Another When Dead, Than When Living; For They
Persecute The Living Even Unto Death, But Revenge The Deceased With
All Their Power.
CHAPTER V
Their great exaction, and want of moderation
Where they find plenty, and can exercise their power, they levy the
most unjust exactions. Immoderate in their love of food and
intoxicating drink, they say with the Apostle, "We are instructed
both to abound, and to suffer need;" but do not add with him,
"becoming all things to all men, that I might by all means save
some." As in times of scarcity their abstinence and parsimony are
too severe, so, when seated at another man's table, after a long
fasting, (like wolves and eagles, who, like them, live by plunder,
and are rarely satisfied,) their appetite is immoderate. They are
therefore penurious in times of scarcity, and extravagant in times
of plenty; but no man, as in England, mortgages his property for
the gluttonous gratification of his own appetite. They wish,
however, that all people would join with them in their bad habits
and expenses; as the commission of crimes reduces to a level all
those who are concerned in the perpetration of them.
CHAPTER VI
Concerning the crime of incest, and the abuse of churches by
succession and participation
The crime of incest hath so much prevailed, not only among the
higher, but among the lower orders of this people, that, not having
the fear of God before their eyes, they are not ashamed of
intermarrying with their relations, even in the third degree of
consanguinity. They generally abuse these dispensations with a
view of appeasing those enmities which so often subsist between
them, because "their feet are swift to shed blood;" and from their
love of high descent, which they so ardently affect and covet, they
unite themselves to their own people, refusing to intermarry with
strangers, and arrogantly presuming on their own superiority of
blood and family. They do not engage in marriage, until they have
tried, by previous cohabitation, the disposition, and particularly
the fecundity, of the person with whom they are engaged. An
ancient custom also prevails of hiring girls from their parents at
a certain price, and a stipulated penalty, in case of relinquishing
their connection.
Their churches have almost as many parsons and sharers as there are
principal men in the parish. The sons, after the decease of their
fathers, succeed to the ecclesiastical benefices, not by election,
but by hereditary right possessing and polluting the sanctuary of
God. And if a prelate should by chance presume to appoint or
institute any other person, the people would certainly revenge the
injury upon the institutor and the instituted. With respect to
these two excesses of incest and succession, which took root
formerly in Armorica, and are not yet eradicated, Ildebert, bishop
of Le Mans, in one of his epistles, says, "that he was present with
a British priest at a council summoned with a view of putting an
end to the enormities of this nation:" hence it appears that these
vices have for a long time prevailed both in Britany and Britain.
The words of the Psalmist may not inaptly be applied to them; "They
are corrupt and become abominable in their doings, there is none
that doeth good, no, not one:
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