The Friar's Tale
At the conclusion of the Wife of Bath's tale, the Friar says, hey, that was great. No more talking now because I promised I was going to dunk on the Summoner, and that's what I'm going to do. I hope I don't offend anyone present when I say that Summoners are just the worst. They're about as bad as tax collectors; maybe even worse, since they'll hit you with a subpoena just for fornicating.
"Okay, you've made your point," says the Host. "You can lay off now."
"I can take it," replies the Summoner. "Let him talk all he wants."
So the Friar begins his tale: there was once an archdeacon who was incredibly strict, and wrote people up for very minor offenses. He employed a summoner who was arguably worse; he built up a supply of informants who could always tell him who was sinning, so he could extort fines from them, even if the archdeacon hadn't cited them yet. He even has one woman on payroll whose job it is to sleep with men, just so the summoner can turn around and extort them right away. On top of that, he's skimming off the top of what's supposed to go back to the archdeacon.
"Basically, summoners are the absolute worst," says the Friar. "I don't mind saying as much, because Friars aren't in their jurisdiction, so I'll talk shit about them all night."
"I take it back. Please shut him up," says the actual Summoner, until the Host tells him off.
The summoner is heading out to go extort some poor widow when he crosses paths with a yeoman along the way. The summoner realizes the yeoman is also out serving subpoenas today, and they immediately become fast friends and swear brotherhood to one another. Hey, it worked in Three Kingdoms I guess (it did not work in Three Kingdoms).
As they are out traveling together, the summoner asks the yeoman, hey, where do you live? Just in case I want to drop by someday.
The yeoman says, are you really sure you want to hang out with me? After all, I'm an absolute fiend. I can barely scrape by on my normal wages, so I have to blackmail people into paying up for things they didn't do. People curse me for being sent to earth from hell.
The summoner says actually, I don't mind because I'm also a terrible person! Now really, where do you live?
The yeoman tells him, when I said I was from hell, that wasn't a metaphor. I'm a literal demon.
"Neat," says the summoner, and they continue on their way.
In their travels, they wind up stuck behind a cart pulled by a couple of horses. The cart hits the middle-ages equivalent of a pothole, and the driver starts cursing the horses out. "May the devil take you, and this damned cart!"
"Hey!" says the summoner, turning to the yeoman, "That's you! I guess you just got a free cart!"
But the yeoman explains, nah, even though he's literal hellspawn, he won't be that big of a dick because the driver didn't actually mean it. And when they reach their destination, they watch the driver give the horses carrots and tell them what good ponies they are.
The summoner then remembers he was going to go extort an old widow about half the story ago, and he invites the yeoman to come with him. When he arrives, he announces that the woman is being summoned to court for the crime of fornication. She recognizes this is basically him asking for a bribe, because she quite clearly remembers NOT fornicating, so she asks how much she has to pay for the matter to be dropped, and is quoted a price of 12 shillings.
At this, the widow begins to rail against the summoner, claiming everything in her home isn't worth more than a couple pence. The summoner says, well, give me your newest frying pan and we'll call it even. But the widow is all worked up now, cursing the summoner, asking that the devil send him and the stupid frying pan both to hell.
"Excuse me," says the yeoman, "would you mind repeating that into this microphone here?"
The widow says, "Gladly! If the summoner won't repent for his wicked deeds, then damn him to hell for eternity."
"And do you repent?" the yeoman asks, turning the microphone over to the summoner.
"Ha! Never! Being evil is too much fun!" says the summoner, to the collective facepalming of the audience.
"Well, sounds like that's settled then," says the yeoman, and he grabs the summoner and drags him down into hell, where all the other summoners end up. Chaucer neglects to mention whether or not he takes the frying pan too.
Here ends the Friar's Tale.