Lack-learning

In those lack-learning times, and in barbarized Italy, began that vulgar and easie kind of Poesie which is now in vse throughout most parts of Christendome, which we abusiuely call Rime, and Meeter, of Rithmus and Metrum, of which I will now discourse.

It was therefore an unconſtitutional prohibition, which was inſerted in the king's writs, for the parliament holden at Coventry, 6 Hen. IV, that no apprentice or other man of the law ſhould be elected a knight of the ſhire therein: in return for which, our law books and hiſtorians have branded this parliament with the name of parliamentum indoctum, or the lack-learning parliament; and ſir Edward Coke obſerves with ſome ſpleen, that there was never a good law made thereat.

So few persons among the laity were acquainted with the art of writing, that the science itself acquired the name of 'clergy.' The term ' clerk' became equivalent to 'penman;' and our common nomenclature still bears testimony to the lack-learning of ancient times.