ABSTRACT
Mede is dressed in rich scarlet, where Holy Church had been clothed in linen: an allusion to the contrast in Revelation between the whore of Babylon, decked in scarlet and precious stones, and the bride of the Lamb “arrayed in fine linen, clean and white.” Mede’s essentially illegitimate nature is at once apparent, for one of the first things we learn about her is that “she is a bastard.” Against that truth stands Mede, the corruDtness of whose influence is measured by her effects on man’s law, as the King and the laws of the land, the forces of positive law, re-enter. Absolute equity between doom and desert will then prevail, and mercy will be dispensed according to the dictates not of meed but of true justice itself, for true mercy can never run counter to true justice: ‘But after the dede that is doon oon doom shal rewardeMercy or no mercy as Truthe moste accorde’.
