In the context of protracted unease following the death of Richard II in 1399 we find the writer of Dives and Pauper, in about 1410, drawing on ‘Properties’, either in the Latin form or in Trevisa’s translation, for examples of proper relations between high and low. He dwells upon the mutual obligations of each and the necessity for each to maintain his place for the support of the whole social structure — it is Pauper who preaches, and Dives who learns, analogous perhaps to those of the first estate who instruct those of the second. The treatise is organised as a sequence of sermons or meditations on each of the Ten Commandments. The writer may have been a Franciscan friar, and another proper relation implicit in this treatise is that of preacher and audience. The sermon on each commandment contains colourful examples, parables and stories from the Old Testament and other sources. On the precept ‘Thou shalt not kill’, Pauper refers to Bartholomew as ‘Master of Kind’ when citing him on the properties of the insinuating adder:
Also flatereris ben lykenyd to a neddere þat is clepyd dipsa, whiche, as seith þe Maystir of Kende, libro xviii, he is so lytil þat þou a man trede þeron he may nout sen it, but his venym is so violent þat it sleth a man or he felyth it & he dyyth withoutyn peyne.
Also, flatterers are likened to the adder that is called dipsa, which, as the Master of Kind says in Book 18, is so little that a man may tread on it without seeing it, but its venom is so violent that it kills a man before he can feel it and he dies painlessly.[39]
Later in the same Commandment, he uses an example from Bartholomew to illustrate harmony and discord in Christian life, referring back to Bartholomew’s biblical source:
Tellyt þe Mayster of Kende, lib.xviii, þat þouʒ þe harpe be wel stryngyd with stryngis mad of a schep & þer be on stryng þat is mad of a wolf set in þat harpe it schal makyn alle oþere at discord, so þat þei schul nout mon acordyn whil it is þere, & it schal fretyn on two alle þe oþere cordis. Ryʒt so, þey man or woman kepe wel alle þe comandementis as to manys syʒthe, ʒif he breke on he is gylty of alle in Godis syʒthe, as Sent Iamys seith.
The Master of Kind, in Book 18, says that even if a harp is well strung with strings made of sheep gut, if there is one string made of wolf gut set into that harp it will make all the others out of tune … Just as, though a man or woman keeps all the Commandments well in the sight of mankind, yet if he or she breaks one he or she is guilty of breaking them all in the sight of God, as St James says.[40]
In particular, the fourth Commandment, to obey one’s parents, provides the writer with an opportunity to make the point that rich and poor, high and low, young and old must observe each other’s needs as well as the precepts of scripture for society to be stable; worldly riches do not absolve great ones from the Commandments and do not last. To illustrate care of dependants in general, the author draws on ‘The Master of Properties’ for the stories of the stork and of the pelican to represent ideal relations of mutual care, dominance and subordination on the text of the Commandment ‘thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother’.[41]
The writer goes on to create a further metaphor of society as a structure with interdependent parts, in the image of the tree unshaken by tempest. If each level of the tree holds to its allotted role, the social body will remain firm: the canopy of the tree is like the lords and great men; the tempest is that of pride and sin; the root is the commons, which must hold firm for the tree to survive.[42] The idea of the tree’s roots as that which sustains and supports the body of the tree (like the root that nourishes the plant, and the body of a beast which sustains all the limbs and members) was available in the Latin ‘Properties’ and in the English Properties, in Books 17 and 18. Besides the pelican and the tree, the stone called ‘crisolite’ is another created thing whose properties make it a reminder of the fifth commandment, and again the author refers to the ‘Master of Kind’s’ words on ‘crisolite’ and its supposed ability to record the passage of time.[43] The author of Dives and Pauper offers the reader entry points into an interwoven set of ideas that is also a schema of salvation: pelican, stork, tree, crisolite, ageing, deference to elders and betters, passage of time, arrival at evening. For this complex intellectual purpose the writer invokes a scholarly authority: the Master of Properties, or Master of Kind. But, while this allows us to conclude that Bartholomew had acquired a certain status among scholars, we cannot assume that he was being quoted at first hand.
The second estate had the task of protecting and ruling the realm, and some of those perceived to fail in this have been pinned down for us in caustic verse, under the guise of animals. In the late years of Richard II’s reign, the unknown author of the satire Mum and the Sothsegger concealed criticism of the court using the bee community as an ideal of industrious citizenship in the garden of England, bothered by pests. The bees forage in a fertile landscape where labourers, beasts and birds can be seen in productive and pleasing array. In a lyrical passage the narrator describes the delights of this domain, where the franklin, ‘gardyner of þis garth’, keeps all in order, including his beehives. He is busy killing drones as they fly back to the hive — creatures which do not fulfil the natural function of bees but, parasitically, consume the honey. In a polemical passage on ‘þe bee-is bisynes’ as an example of social equity and order, the speaker cites Bartholomew on ‘The bomelyng of þe bees, as Bartholomew vs telleth’, in which each bee knows the others’ voices, their king rules mercifully, with king and bees supporting each other, while the drones simply ‘deceipuen þaym and doon no þing elles’. The franklin assures the narrator that the drones will be discovered and killed, ‘As Bartholomew þe Bestiary bablith on his bokes’.[44] This line suggests that the relevant parts of ‘Properties’ could have the function of a bestiary for people of this time, helping to preserve, with its details and sources, the example of the bee as virtuous, obedient and industrious and of the drone as a mere parasite. Day and Steele consider that the narrator’s source is ‘ultimately’ Bartholomew if not directly, and that he is selective — omitting Bartholomew’s description of bees that desert a weak king to join a stronger. This would be in keeping with the poet’s wish to present an analogy with strong rule and loyal, industrious subjects.