The weeping and wailing of Margery Kempe are so un-English a phenomenon, that it is no wonder if many of her fellow pilgrims reviled her as a hypocrite, a Lollard, and a ‘right wicked woman’. It seems never to have occurred to her that most people went on pilgrimage in a somewhat holiday mood, and that therefore her pious table talk was, for them, entirely out of place, to say nothing of her habit of falling down and crying ‘wonder loud’ for compassion of Jesus. With foreigners she usually fared much better, simply because they did not understand the purport of her cries. They would make sympathetic remarks about hot weather and indigestion.

Both at home and abroad, however, Margery had her consolations. There were always the ‘ghostly men who loved and favoured her’, particularly when she cried. ‘Worshipful clerks, both archbishops and bishops, doctors of divinity and bachelors also’, encouraged her to believe that she was led by the Holy Ghost and by no evil spirit, and the list of these is certainly impressive.