Page:Maid Marian - Peacock (1822).djvu/173

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Maid Marian.

163

many as may be strong enough to manage the matter in hand shall constitute a quorum.

"III. All usurers, monks, courtiers, and other drones of the great hive of society, who shall be found laden with any portion of the honey whereof they have wrongfully despoiled the industrious bee, shall be rightfully despoiled thereof in turn; and all bishops and abbots shall be bound and beaten^[1], especially the abbot of Doncaster; as shall also all sheriffs, especially the sheriff of Nottingham.

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These byshoppes and these archbyshoppesYe shall them bete and bynde,"
says Robin Hood, in an old ballad. Perhaps, however, thus is to be taken not in a literal, but in a figurative sense from the binding and beating of wheat: for as all rich men were Robin's harvest, the bishops and archbishops must have been the finest and fattest ears among them, from which Robin merely proposes to thresh the grain when he directs

[p163-1] 
These byshoppes and these archbyshoppesYe shall them bete and bynde,"
says Robin Hood, in an old ballad. Perhaps, however, thus is to be taken not in a literal, but in a figurative sense from the binding and beating of wheat: for as all rich men were Robin's harvest, the bishops and archbishops must have been the finest and fattest ears among them, from which Robin merely proposes to thresh the grain when he directs

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