Note 196 — The Table.
Reading edition
A word used by Chaucer. It signifies a person licensed to preach and beg within a certain limit. There was an order of mendicant friars.
"Lordings, ther is in Engelond, I gesse, A mersschly land called Holdernesse, In which there went a lymytour aboute, To preche and eek to begge, it is no doubte." Chaucer's Sompnour's Tale; Works, ed. Bell. ii. 103.