Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/102

86 86 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. age for me to St Thomas of Canterbury I2d; " and Katharine of Aragon, in A, D. 1528, provides/ " Item that for my soul some per- sonage go to our Lady of Walsingham in pilgrimage and in going by the way dole xx nobles." The magnificently mendacious Sir John Mandeville, in 1362, in taking leave of his confiding readers, after his marvellous detail of imaginary travels and fabulous mon- sters, invokes from heaven the benefit of his wayfaring upon them.^ In consequence a class of professional pilgrims and palmers grew up whose distinctive badges were the staff and scrip, and in case of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the palm ; or if they had visited Com- postella, the scallop-shell. Statutes were passed for the protection of the pilgrims' families in their absence. Thus an early law in Scotland provided : — " Gif any burges is passed in pilgrimage with license of the kirk and of his neighbors to the Halie Land or to Saint James or to any other Halie place his house and all his haill proper familie sail be in the peace of the king and of the provost and baillies until God bring hira home again." ^ The abuses and excesses, however, to which pilgrimages led, soon produced restrictive acts, and by statutes 5 Rich. II., c. i, § 2; 12 Rich. II., c. 7,^ a license was required ; of which many instances are to be found in Rymer's Federa ; ^ and by an ordinance of Charles VL of France, pilgrimage to Rome was entirely forbidden.^ The sale of pardons and indulgences from Rome was a traffic long known, and the trade of the pardoner was carried on from a very early dayJ It was a purchase for money very thinly disguised, and generally not disguised at all. Thus the Marquis Berkley, in his will Feb. 5, 1491,^ provides that his executors shall — 1 Nicolas, Test. Vet. i. 36. 2 Voiage et Travaile, 316 : "I make hem partneres and graunte hem part of alle the gode pilgrimages. . . that I have don." 8 Regiam Majestatem, p. 126. 6 lb. p. 367 ; Rymer, Feed. vii. p. 468. 8 Recueil d'Isambert, vi. 843. ^ As Hudibras says, i. 1495, — " With crosses, relics, crucifixes, Beads, pictures, Rosaries, and pixes, The tools of working our salvation By mere mechanic operation." 8 Nicolas, Test. Vet. 2, 407.
 * Jusserand, Wayf. Life Eng. pp. 361, 362, 367.