No More Learning

Skeat's synopsis is as follows: 'Soon they
meet with one Activa-Vita, who is a minstrel and seller of wafers.
Patience instructs Activa-Vita, and declares that beggars shall
have joy hereafter. ' But the significant features are here omitted.
Activa-Vita is the honest labourer, who provides bread for every-
body, but, because he cannot please lords with lies and lewd jests,
receives little reward. He is the friend and follower of Piers the
Plowman. Yet, since he is Activa-Vita, in contact with the world,
he is not spotless. The author therefore begins to tell us of the
spots on Activa-Vita's coat, and, naturally, distributes them in the
categories of the seven deadly sins. As soon as he enters upon
this task he is perfectly helpless; he cannot control himself or his
conceptions; and, consequently, he represents poor Activa-Vita as
guilty of every one of the sins in its most wicked and vilest
forms. The author of the C-text removed these passages to the
confessions that followed the preaching of Conscience in the
second vision, possibly, as Skeat thinks, in order to bring together
passages of similar content and treatment, but, possibly, because
such a contradiction in the character of Activa-Vita was too
gross and glaring.
Recognising, then, the limitations with which every synopsis of
the continuation by B must be received, we may say, briefly, that B
adds seven visions, two and a fraction devoted to Do-well, two and
a fraction to Do-better and two to Do-best. In the first (passus
XI) there is no allegorical action; the dreamer meets various
allegorical characters, such as Fortune, Recklessness, Nature and
Reason, and hears them talk or talks himself either to them or
to his readers. The subjects discussed are, as we have seen, very
various ; but chief among them are predestination, the value of
poverty, incompetent priests and man's failure to follow reason as
animals do. Following this, but not a vision, though it is dis-


## p. 27 (#45) ##############################################

B's Continuation of the Poems
27
tinguished from one only by the fact that the author is awake,
is a long disquisition by Imaginative, containing views concerning
the dangers and the value of learning and wealth very different
from those expressed in A XI. The second vision begins with
a dinner, given by Reason, at which are present the dreamer,
Conscience, Clergy, Patience and a doctor of the church. Again
there is no allegorical action; the dinner is only a device to
bring together the disputants, who discuss theological subtleties.
Following the dinner comes the interview with Activa-Vita de-
scribed above. Conscience and Patience then instruct Activa-Vita
to make amends by contrition and confession, and discuss at great
length the benefits of poverty. The next vision is notable, though
not unique, in containing a vision within a vision. In the first
part (passus XV) Anima (also called Will, Reason, Love, Con-
science, etc. , an entirely different character from the Anima of
A 1x) discourses for 600 lines, mainly on knowledge, charity and
the corruptions of the age due to the negligence of prelates; in
the second part, when Anima, after describing the tree of Charity,
says that it is under the care of Piers the Plowman, the dreamer
swoons, for joy, into a dream, in which he sees Piers and the tree,
and hears a long account of the fruits of the tree which gradually
becomes a narrative of the birth and betrayal of Christ. At the
close of this he wakes, and wanders about, seeking Piers, and
meets with Abraham (or Faith), who expounds the Trinity; they
are joined by Spes (Hope); and a Samaritan (identified with Jesus)
cares for a wounded man whom neither Faith nor Hope will help.
After this, the Samaritan expounds the Trinity, passing uninten-
tionally to an exposition of mercy; and the dreamer wakes. In
the next vision (passus xix) he sees Jesus in the armour of Piers
ready to joust with Death; but, instead of the jousting, we have
an account of the crucifixion, the debate of the Four Daughters of
God and the harrowing of hell. He wakes and writes his dream,
and, immediately, sleeps again and dreams that Piers, painted
all bloody and like to Christ, appears.
Is it Jesus or Piers ?
Conscience tells him that these are the colours and coat-armour of
Piers, but he that comes so bloody is Christ. A discussion ensues
on the comparative merits of the names Christ and Jesus, followed
by an account of the life of Christ. Piers is Peter (or the church),
to whom are given four oxen (the evangelists) and four horses
(the four fathers of the church) and four seeds to sow. A house,
Unity, is built to store the grain, and is attacked by Pride and his
host; but this is forgotten in the episodes of the brewer's refusal


## p. 28 (#46) ##############################################

28
Sequence
Piers the Plowman and its
and its to partake of the Sacrament, the vicar's attack on the cardinals
and the justification by the king and lords of their own exactions.
The dreamer wakes and encounters Need, who gives him in-
struction very similar to that of Conscience in the preceding
dream. Falling asleep again, he has a vision of the attack of
Antichrist and Pride and their hosts upon Unity, which insensibly
becomes an attack by Death upon all mankind, varied by certain
actions of Life, Fortune, Sloth, Despair, Avarice and the friar
Flattery. Conscience, hard beset by Pride and Sloth, calls vainly
for help to Contrition, and, seizing his staff, starts out on a search
for Piers the Plowman. Whereupon the dreamer wakes.
Some scholars have regarded the poem as unfinished; others,
as showing by the nature of its ending the pessimism of the
author. It is true that it ends unsatisfactorily, and that one or
more visions might well have been added; but it may be doubted
whether the author ever could have written an ending that would
have been artistically satisfactory. He had, as we have seen, no
skill in composition, no control of his materials or his thought.
The latter part of the poem is supposed to be devoted in regular
order to Do-well, Do-better and Do-best; but it may be said,
without injustice, that these subjects determine neither the nature
of the main incidents nor the manner in which they are developed,
and that what the author himself would doubtless have cited as
the supreme expression of his view of Do-well, Do-better and
Do-best occurs early in the vision of Do-well—I mean, of course,
—
the famous Disce, Doce, Dilige, taught to Patience by his leman,
Love. He could never have been sure of reserving to the end
of his poem the subjects with which he intended to end, or of
ceasing to write at the point at which he wished to cease. It
remains curious, nevertheless, and, perhaps, significant, in view of
the continual recurrence in the work of B of invectives against
the corruptions of the age, that the poem does end with the
triumph of Antichrist, and that there is no hint, as in Kirchmayer's
Pammachius, of preparations for his defeat and the coming of an
age of endless peace and good.
The reader who has been impressed with what has been said
about the vagueness and lack of definite organisation and move-
ment in B's work may be inclined to ask, What merits are his
and what claim has he upon our interests? The reply is that
his merits are very great indeed, being no less than those rated
highest by previous students of the poems--Skeat, Jusserand,
ten Brink, Henry Morley and a host of others. The very lack of


## p. 29 (#47) ##############################################

The Merits of B's Work
29
control, which is his most serious defect as an artist, serves to
emphasise most convincingly his sincerity and emotional power, by
the inevitableness with which, at every opportunity, he drifts back
to the subjects that lie nearest his heart. Writing, as he did,
without a definite plan and without power of self-direction, he
touched, we may feel sure, not merely all subjects that were
germane to his purpose, as a better artist would have done, but all
that interested him deeply; and he touched most frequently those
that interested him most. These subjects are, as is well known,
the corruptions in the church, chiefly, perhaps, among the friars,
but also, in no small measure, among the beneficed clergy; the
dangers of riches and the excellence of poverty; the brotherhood
of man; and the sovereign quality of love. To these should be
added the idealisation of Piers the Plowman, elusive as are the
forms which this idealisation often assumes. On the other hand,
great as is the interest in political theory displayed by the author
in the passages inserted in the prologue, this is not one of the
subjects to which he constantly reverts; indeed, the only passage
(XIX, 462—476) on this subject in the later passus touches it so
lightly as to suggest that the author's interest in it at this time
was very slight. The frequency with which subjects recur is, of
course, not the only indication of the sincerity and depth of the
author's interest; the vividness and power of expression are
equally significant.
'Let some sudden emotion fill his soul,' says Jusserand, . . . . and we shall
wonder at the grandeur of his eloquence. Some of his simplest expressions
are real trouvailles; he penetrates into the innermost recesses of our hearts,
and then goes on his way, and leaves us pondering and thoughtful, filled
with awe.
Such are:
And mysbede (mistreat) nouzte thi bonde-men, the better may thow
spede.
Thowgh he be thyn underlynge here, wel may happe in hevene,
That he worth (shall be) worthier sette, and with more blisse,
Than thow, bot thou do bette, and live as thow sulde;
For in charnel atte chirche cherles ben yvel to knowe,
Or a knizto from a knave,-knowe this in thin herte. VI, 46 ff.
For alle are we Crystes creatures, and of his coffres riche,
And brethren as of o (one) blode, as wel beggares as erles. XI, 192 ff.
Pore peple, thi prisoneres, Lord, in the put (pit) of myschief,
Conforte tho creatures that moche care suffren,
Thorw derth, thorw drouth, alle her dayes here,
Wo in wynter tymes for wanting of clothes,
And in somer tyme selde (seldom) soupen to the fulle;
Comforto thi careful, Cryst, in thi ryche (kingdom)! xiv, 174 ff.


## p. 30 (#48) ##############################################

30
Piers the Plowman and its Sequence
The date usually assigned to the C-text is 1393-8. The only
evidence of any value is the passage iv, 203—210, in which the
author warns the king of the results of his alienation of the
confidence and affection of his people. This, Skeat takes to be
an allusion to the situation after the quarrel between the king
and the Londoners in 1392; and, consequently, he selects 1393 as
the approximate date of the poem, though he admits that it may
be later. Jusserand argues that this local quarrel, which was soon
composed, does not suit the lines of the poem as well as does the
general dissatisfaction of 1397–9; and he, therefore, suggests
1398—9 as the date. Jusserand's view seems the more probable;
but, even so early as 1386, parliament sent to inform the king that
si rex . . . nec voluerit per jura regni et statuta ac laudibiles ordinationes
cum salubri consilio dominorum et procerum regni gubernari et regulari,
sed capitose in suis insanis consiliis propriam voluntatem suam singularem
proterve exercere, extunc licitum est eis. . . . regem de regali solio abrogare.
(Knighton, 11, 219. )
Of the changes and additions made by C we can here say very
little, mainly for the reason that they are numerous, and small,
and not in pursuance of any well-defined plan. There are multi-
tudinous alterations of single words or phrases, sometimes to
secure better alliteration, sometimes to get rid of an archaic word,
sometimes to modify an opinion, but often for no discoverable
reason, and, occasionally, resulting in positive injury to the style
or the thought. Certain passages of greater or less length are
entirely or largely rewritten, rarely for any important modification
of view; never, perhaps, with any betterment of style. At times,
one is tempted to think they were rewritten for the mere sake
of rewriting, but many whole pages are left practically untouched.
Transpositions occur, sometimes resulting in improvement, some-
times in confusion. Excisions or omissions may be noted which
seem to have been made because C did not approve of the
sentiments of the omitted passages; but there are other omissions
which cannot be accounted for on this ground or on that of any
artistic intention. The additions are all of the nature of elabora-
tions or expansions and insertions. Some of these have attracted
much attention as giving information concerning the life and
character of the dreamer or author; these will be dealt with
below. Others give us more or less valuable hints of the views
and interests of the writer; such are: the passage accusing priests
of image worship and of forging miracles; an account of the fall
of Lucifer, with speculations as to why he made his seat in the


## p. 31 (#49) ##############################################

The Author of the C-text 31
north; an attack on regraters; the long confused passage? com-
paring the two kinds of meed to grammatical relations. Still
others modify, in certain respects, the opinions expressed in the
B-text. For example, XV, 30—32 indicates a belief in astrology
out of harmony with the earlier condemnation of it; the attitude
on free-will in XI, 51–55 and xvII, 158—182 suggests that, unlike B,
and the continuator of A, C rejected the views of Bradwardine on
grace and predestination; several passages on riches and the rich?
show a certain eagerness to repudiate any such condemnation of
the rich as is found in B; and, finally, not only is the striking
passage in B*, cited above, in regard to the poor, omitted, but,
instead of the indiscriminate almsgiving insisted upon by B, C dis-
tinctly condemns itt and declares that charity begins at home
'Help thi kynne, Crist bit (bids), for ther begynneth charite. '
On the whole, it may be said that the author of the C-text
seems to have been a man of much learning, of true piety and
of genuine interest in the welfare of the nation, but unimagina-
tive, cautious and a very pronounced pedant.
The reader may desire a justification, as brief as possible, of
the conclusion assumed throughout this chapter that the poems
known under the title, Piers the Plowman, are not the work of
a single author. So much of the necessary proof has already been
furnished in the exposition of the different interests and methods
and mental qualities displayed in the several parts of the work
that little more will be necessary. The problem seems very
.
simple: the differences pointed out and others which cannot
be discussed heredo exist; in the absence of any real reason
to assume that all parts of this cluster of poems are the work
of a single author, is it not more probable that several writers
had a hand in it than that a single writer passed through the
series of great and numerous changes necessary to account for the
phenomena? To this question an affirmative answer will, I think,
be given by any one who will take the trouble to examine sepa-
rately the work of A (i. e. A, prol. - passus VIII), the continuator
of A (A, IX-XII, 55), B and C—that is, to read carefully any
passages of fifty or a hundred lines showing the work of each of
these authors unmixed with lines from any of the others. In such
an examination, besides the larger matters discussed throughout
this chapter, the metre and the sentence structure will repay
1 rv, 835.
9 XIII, 154—247; XIV, 26–100; XVIII, 21; x1, 232-246.
IV, 174–180.
• 2, 71–281.
5 XVIII, 58–71.
8


## p. 32 (#50) ##############################################

32
Piers the Plowman and its Sequence
special attention. The system of scansion used will make no
difference in the result; but that expounded by Luick will bring
out the differences most clearly. It will be found that the writers
differ in their conceptions of the requirements of alliterative verse,
A being nearest to the types established by Luick, both in regard
to stresses and secondary stresses and in regard to alliteration.
This can be most easily tested by Luick's plan of considering
separately the second-half-lines. Another interesting test is that
of the use of the visual imagination. A presents to his own
mind's eye and to that of his reader distinct visual images of
figures, of groups of figures and of great masses of men; it is he
who, as Jusserand says, 'excels in the difficult art of conveying
the impression of a multitude. ' A also, through his remarkable
faculty of visual imagination, always preserves his point of view,
and, when he moves his action beyond the limits of his original
scene, causes his reader to follow the movement; best of all for
the modern reader, he is able, by this faculty, to make his allegory
vital and interesting; for, though the world long ago lost interest
in personified abstractions, it has never ceased to care for signi-
ficant symbolical action and utterance. On the other hand, B,
though capable of phrases which show, perhaps, equal power of
visualising detail, is incapable of visualising a group or of keeping
his view steady enough to imagine and depict a developing action.
The continuator of A and the reviser C show clearly that their
knowledge of the world, their impressions of things, are derived
in very slight measure, if at all, from visual sensations These
conclusions are not invalidated, but rather strengthened, by the
fondness of B and C and the continuator of A for similes and
illustrations, such as never appear in A.
Moreover, the number of instances should be noted in which
B has misunderstood A or spoiled his picture, or in which C has
done the same for B. Only a few examples can be given here.
In the first place, B has such errors as these: in II, 21 ff. Lewte
is introduced as the leman of the lady Holy Church and spoken
of as feminine; in 11, 25, False, instead of Wrong, is father of
Meed, but is made to marry her later; in 11, 74 ff. B does not
understand that the feoffment covers precisely the provinces of
the seven deadly sins, and, by elaborating the passage, spoils the
unity of the intention; in II, 176, B has forgotten that the bishops
are to accompany Meed to Westminster, and represents them as
borne 'abrode in visytynge,' etc. , etc. Worst of all, perhaps,
B did not notice that, by the loss or displacement of a leaf be-


## p. 33 (#51) ##############################################

Parallel Passages
33
tween A, V, 235, 236, the confessions of Sloth and Robert the
Robber had been absurdly run together; or that in A, VII, 71-74
the names of the wife and children of Piers, originally written in
the margin opposite 11. 89—90 by some scribe, had been absurdly
introduced into the text, to the interruption and confusion of the
remarks of Piers in regard to his preparations for his journey.
Of C's failures to understand B two instances will suffice. In the
prologue, 11-16, B has taken over from A a vivid picture of
the valley of the first vision:
Thanne gan I to meten a merveilouse swevene,
That I was in a wildernesse, wist I never where;
As I behelde in-to the est an hiegh to the sonne,
I seigh a toure on a toft, trielich ymaked;
A depe dale benethe, a dongeon there-inne,
With depe dyches and derke and dredful of sight.
C spoils the picture thus:
And merveylously me mette, as ich may 30w telle;
Al the welthe of this worlde and the woo bothe,
Wynkyng, as it were, wyterly ich saw hyt,
Of tryuthe and of tricherye, of tresoun and of gyle,
Al ich saw slepynge, as ich shal 30w telle.
Esteward ich byhulde, after the sonne,
And sawe a toure, as ich trowede, truthe was ther-ynne;
Westwarde ich waitede, in a whyle after,
And sawe a deep dale; deth, as ich lyuede,
Wonede in tho wones, and wyckede spiritus.
The man who wrote the former might, conceivably, in the decay
of his faculties write a passage like the latter; but he could not,
conceivably, have spoiled the former, if he had ever been able to
write it. Again, in the famous rat-parliament, the rat 'renable
of tonge' says:
I have ysein segges in the cite of London
Beren bizes ful brizte abouten here nekkes,
And some colers of crafty werk; uncoupled thei wenden
Bothe in wareine and in waste, where hem leve lyketh;
And otherwhile thei aren elles-where, as I here telle.
Were there a belle on here beiz, bi Ihesu, as me thynketh,
Men myzte wite where thei went, and awei renne!
B, Prol. 160-6.
Clearly the ‘segges' he has seen wearing collars about their
necks in warren and in waste are dogs. C, curiously enough,
supposed them to be men:
Ich have yseie grete syres in cytees and in tounes
Bere byzes of bryzt gold al aboute hure neckes,
And colers of crafty werke, bothe knyztes and squiers.
Were ther a belle on hure byze, by Iesus, as me thynketh,
Men myzte wite wher thei wenten, and hure wey roume!
R. L. II. CH, I.
3


## p. 34 (#52) ##############################################

34 Piers the Plowman and its Sequence
Other misunderstandings of equal significance exist in con-
siderable number; these must suffice for the present. I may add
that a careful study of the MSS will show that between A, B
and C there exist dialectical differences incompatible with the
supposition of a single author. This can be easily tested in the
case of the pronouns and the verb are.
With the recognition that the poems are the work of several
authors, the questions concerning the character and name of the
author assume a new aspect. It is readily seen that the supposed
autobiographical details, given mainly by B and C, are, as Jack
conclusively proved several years ago, not genuine, but mere parts
of the fiction. Were any confirmation of his results needed, it
might be found in the fact that the author gives the names of
his wife and daughter as Kitte and Kalote. Kitte, if alone, might
not arouse suspicion, but, when it is joined with Kalote (usually
spelled 'callet'), there can be no doubt that both are used as typical
names of lewd women, and are, therefore, not to be taken literally
as the names of the author's wife and daughter. The picture of the
dreamer, begun by A in prologue, 2, continued by the continuator
in ix, 1 and elaborated by B and C, is only a poetical device,
interesting in itself but not significant of the character or social
position of any of these authors. Long Will, the dreamer, is, ob-
viously, as much a creation of the muse as is Piers the Plowman.
1
What shall we say of the name, William Langland, so long
connected with the poems? One MS of the C-text has a note in
a fifteenth century hand (but not early):
Memorandum, quod Stacy de Rokayle, pater Willielmi de Langlond,
qui Stacius fuit generosus et morabatur in Schiptone under Whicwode,
tenens domini le Spenser in comitatu Oxon. , qui praedictus Willielmus
fecit librum qui vocatur Perys Ploughman.
Another fifteenth century note in a MS of the B-text says:
‘Robert or William langland made pers ploughman. ' And three
MSS of the C-text (one, not later than 1427) give the author's name
as 'Willelmus W. Skeat is doubtless right in his suggestion that
the name Robert arose from a misreading of C, XI, 1; but he
and Jusserand find in B, xv, 148:
I have lyved in londe, quod I, my name is long wille,
confirmation of the first note quoted above. It is possible, how-
ever, that this is really the source of the name. Curiously enough,
this line is omitted by C, either because he wished to suppress
it or because he did not regard it as significant. Furthermore,
1


## p. 35 (#53) ##############################################

John But
35
Pearson showed pretty conclusively that, if the author was the son
of Stacy de Rokayle (or Rokesle) of Shipton-under-Wychwood, his
name, if resembling Langland at all, would have been Langley.
If this were the case, Willelmus W. might, obviously, mean William
of Wychwood, as Morley suggested, and be merely an alternative
designation of William Langley-a case similar to that of the
Robertus Langelye, alias Robertus Parterick, capellanus, who died
in 19 Richard II, possessed of a messuage and four shops in the
Flesh-shambles, a tenement in the Old Fish-market and an
interest in a tenement in Staining-lane, and who may, con-
ceivably, have had some sort of connection with the poems.
It is possible, of course, that these early notices contain a
genuine, even if confused, record of one or more of the men
concerned in the composition of these poems. One thing, alone,
is clear, that Will is the name given to the figure of the
dreamer by four, and, possibly, all five, of the writers; but it
is not entirely certain that A really meant to give him a name.
Henry Bradley has, in a private letter, called my attention to
certain facts which suggest that Will may have been a conventional
name in alliterative poetry.
If we cannot be entirely certain of the name of any of these
writers except John But, can we determine the social position of
any of them? John But was, doubtless, a scribe, or a minstrel like
the author of Wynnere and Wastoure. B, C and the continuator
of A seem, from their knowledge and theological interests, to
have been clerics, and, from their criticisms of monks and friars,
to have been of the secular clergy. C seems inclined to tone
down criticisms of bishops and the higher clergy, and is a better
scholar than either the continuator of A (who translated non
mecaberis by slay not' and tabescebam by 'I said nothing')
or B (who accepted without comment the former of these errors).
A, as has been shown already, exempts from his satire no order
of society except monks, and may himself have been one; but,
as he exhibits no special theological knowledge or interests, he
may have been a layman.
In one of the MSS of the B-text occurs a fragment of a poem
which is usually associated with Piers the Plowman. It has no
title in the MS and was called by its first editor, Thomas Wright,
A Poem on the Deposition of Richard II; but Skeat, when he
re-edited it in 1873 and 1886, objected to this title as being
3_2


## p. 36 (#54) ##############################################

36 Piers the Plowman and its Sequence
inaccurate, and re-named it Richard the Redeless, from the first
words of passus I. Henry Bradley has recently called attention
to the fact that it was known to Nicholas Brigham in the first
part of the sixteenth century as Mum, Sothsegger (ie. Hush,
Truthteller). There can be no doubt that this was, as Bradley
.
suggests, the ancient title; for it is not such a title as would have
been chosen either by Brigham or by Bale, who records it. The
copy seen by Brigham, as it had a title, cannot have been the
fragmentary copy that is now the only one known to us. Wright
regarded the poem as an imitation of Piers the Plowman ; Skeat
undertook to prove, on the basis of diction, dialect, metre, state-
ments in the text itself, etc. , that it was the work of the same
author. But claims of authorship made in these poems are not
conclusive, as will be seen in the discussion of the Ploughman's
Tale; and the resemblances in external form, in dialect, in versi-
fication, etc. , on which Skeat relies, are not greater than might
be expected of an imitator, while there are such numerous and
striking differences in diction, versification, sentence structure and
processes of thought from every part of Piers the Plowman, that
identity of authorship seems out of the question. The poem, as
has been said, is a fragment; and Skeat thinks that it may have
been left unfinished by the author in consequence of the de-
position of Richard. But the MS in which it is found is not the
original, but a copy; and the prologue seems to imply that the poem
had been completed when the prologue was written. The author
professes to be a loyal subject and friendly adviser of Richard,
but the tone of the poem itself is strongly partisan to Henry
of Lancaster, and, curiously enough, nearly all the remarks in
regard to Richard imply that his rule was entirely at an end.
This latter fact is, of course, not incompatible with Skeat's view
that the poem was written between the capture and the formal
deposition of Richard, i. e. between 18 August and 20 September
1399. As to the form and contents of the poem, it is not a vision,
but consists of a prologue, reciting the circumstances of its com-
position, and three passus and part of a fourth, setting forth the
errors and wrongs of Richard's rule. Passus I is devoted to
the misdeeds of his favourites. Passus II censures the crimes of
his retainers (the White Harts) against the people, and his own
folly in failing to cherish such men as Westmoreland (the Grey-
hound), while Henry of Lancaster (the Eagle) was strengthening
his party. PassUS III relates the unnaturalness of the White
Harts in attacking the Colt, the Horse, the Swan and the Bear,


## p. 37 (#55) ##############################################

Wynnere and Wastoure
37
with the return of the Eagle for vengeance, and then digresses
into an attack upon the luxury and unwisdom of Richard's
youthful counsellors. Passus IV continues the attack upon the
extravagance of the court, and bitterly condemns the corrupt
parliament of 1397 for its venality and cowardice.
The influence of Piers the Plowman was wide-spread and
long-continued. There had been many satires on the abuses of
the time (see Wright's Political Poems and Political Songs and
Poems), some of them far bitterer than any part of these poems,
but none equal in learning, in literary skill and, above all, none
that presented a figure so captivating to the imagination as the
figure of the Ploughman. From the evidence accessible to us it
would seem that this popularity was due, in large measure, to the
B-text, or, at least, dated from the time of its appearance, though,
according to my view, the B-text itself and the continuation
of A were due to the impressiveness of the first two visions of
the A-text.
Before discussing the phenomena certainly due to the influence
of these poems, we must devote a few lines to two interesting but
doubtful cases. In 1897, Gollancz edited for the Roxburghe Club
two important alliterative poems, The Parlement of the Thre
Ages and Wynnere and Wastoure, both of which begin in a manner
suggestive of the beginning of Piers the Plowman, and both of
which contain several lines closely resembling lines in the B-text
of that poem. The lines in question seem, from their better re-
lation to the context, to belong originally to Piers the Plowman
and to have been copied from it by the other poems; if there
were no other evidence, these poems would, doubtless, be placed
among those suggested by it; but there is other evidence.
Wynnere
and Wastoure contains two allusions that seem to fix its date at
c. 1350, and The Parlement seems to be by the same author. The
two allusions are to the twenty-fifth year of Edward III (1. 206),
and to William de Shareshull as chief baron of the exchequer
(1 317). The conclusion is, apparently, inevitable that the imita-
tion is on the part of Piers the Plowman. In The Parlement the
author goes into the woods to hunt, kills a deer and hides it.
Then, falling asleep, he sees in a vision three men, Youth, Middle-
Age and Age, clad, respectively, in green, grey and black, who
dispute concerning the advantages and disadvantages of the ages
they represent. Age relates the histories of the Nine Worthies,


## p. 38 (#56) ##############################################

38 Piers the Plowman and its Sequence
and declares that all is vanity. He hears the bugle of Death sum-
moning him, and the author wakes. In Wynnere and Wastoure
the author, a wandering minstrel, after a prologue bewailing the
degeneracy of the times and the small respect paid to the author
of a romance, tells how
Als I went in the weste wandrynge myn one,
Bi a bonke of a bourne bryghte was the sonne.
.
.
I layde myn hede one an hill ane hawthorne besyde.
.
And I was swythe in a sweven sweped belyve;
Methoghte I was in a werlde, I ne wiste in whate ende.
He saw two armies ready to fight; and
At the creste of a cliffe a caban was rered,
1
obtained upon
ornamented with the colours and motto of the order of the
Garter, in which was the king, whose permission to fight was
awaited. The king forbade them to fight and summoned the
leaders before him. There is a brilliant description of the em-
battled hosts. The two leaders are Wynnere and Wastoure, who
accuse each other before the king of having caused the distress
of the kingdom. The end of the poem is missing. Both poems
are of considerable power and interest in themselves, and are
even more significant as suggesting, what is often forgotten, that
the fourteenth century was a period of great and wide-spread
intellectual activity, and that poetical ability was not rare.
Not in the metre of Piers the Plowman, but none the less
significant of the powerful hold which the figure of the Plowman
the English people, are the doggerel letters of the
insurgents of 1381, given by Walsingham and Knighton, and re-
printed by Maurice and Trevelyan. Trevelyan makes a suggestion
which has doubtless occurred independently to many others, that
‘Piers Plowman may perhaps be only one characteristic fragment
of a medieval folk-lore of allegory, which expressed for genera-
tions the faith and aspirations of the English peasant, but of
which Langland's great poem alone has survived. ' One would like
to believe this; but the mention of 'do well and better' in the
same letter with Piers Plowman makes it practically certain
that the writer had in mind the poems known to us and not
merely a traditional allegory; though it may well be that Piers
the Plowman belonged to ancient popular tradition.
Next in order of time was, doubtless, the remarkable poem
called Peres the Ploughmans Crede, which Skeat assigns to 'not
1


## p. 39 (#57) ##############################################

The Crede and the Tale
39
long after the latter part of 1393. The versification is imitated
from Piers the Plowman, and the theme, as well as the title, was
clearly suggested by it. It is, however, not a vision, but an account
of the author's search for some one to teach him his creed. He
visits each of the orders of friars. Each abuses the rest and
praises his own order, urging the inquirer to contribute to it
and trouble himself no more about his creed. But he sees
too much of their worldliness and wickedness, and refuses. At
last, he meets a plain, honest ploughman, who delivers a long
and bitter attack upon friars of all orders, and, finally, teaches
the inquirer the much desired creed. The poem is notable, not
only for the vigour of its satire, but also for the author's re-
markable power of description.
With the Crede is often associated the long poem known as
The Ploughman's Tale. This was first printed, in 1542 or 1535,
in Chaucer's works and assigned to the Ploughman. That it was
not written by Chaucer has long been known, but, until recently,
it has been supposed to be by the author of the Crede. The poem, ,
though containing much alliteration, is not in alliterative verse,
but in rimed stanzas, and is entirely different in style from the
Crede. The differences are such as indicate that it could not
have been written by the author of that poem. It has recently
been proved by Henry Bradley, that very considerable parts of
the poem, including practically all the imitations of the Crede,
were written in the sixteenth century. These passages were also
independently recognised as interpolations by York Powell and this
was communicated privately to Skeat, who now accepts Bradley's
conclusions. Bradley thinks that the poem may contain some
genuine stanzas of a Lollard poem of the fourteenth century, but
that it underwent two successive expansions in the sixteenth
century, both with the object of adapting it to contemporary
controversy. The relation of even the fourteenth century portion
to Piers the Plowman is very remote.
Three pieces belonging to the Wyclifite controversy, which also
bear a more or less remote relation to Piers the Plowman, are
ascribed by their editor, Thomas Wright, to 1401, and by Skeat,
who re-edited the first of them, to 1402. The first of them, called
Jacke Upland, is a violent attack upon the friars by one of the
Wyclifite party. By John Bale, who rejected as wrong the attri-
bution of it to Chaucer, it is, with equal absurdity, attributed to
Wyclif himself. There is some alliteration in the piece, which
made Wright suppose it to have been originally written in


## p. 40 (#58) ##############################################

40
Piers the Plowman and its Sequence
alliterative verse. Skeat denies that it was ever intended as
verse, and he seems to be right in this, though his repudiation of
Wright's suggestion that our copy of the piece is corrupt is hardly
borne out by the evidence. The second piece, The Reply of Friar
Daw Thopias, is a vigorous and rather skilful answer to Jacke
Upland. The author, himself a friar, is not content to remain
on the defensive, but tries to shift the issue by attacking the
Lollards. According to the explicit of the MS the author was
John Walsingham, who is stated by Bale to have been a Carmelite.
This piece is in very rude alliterative verse. The Rejoinder of
Jacke Upland, which is preserved in the same MS with the Reply,
is of the same general character as Jacke Upland, though, perhaps
through the influence of the Reply, it contains a good deal more
alliteration. None of these pieces has any poetical merit, but all
are vigorous and interesting examples of the popular religious
controversy of the day.
Very evidently due to the influence of Piers the Plowman is
a short alliterative poem of 144 lines, addressed, apparently, to
Henry V in 1415, and called by Skeat, its editor, The Crowned
King. In a vision the author looks down into a deep dale, where
he sees a multitude of people and hears a crowned king ask his
commons for a subsidy for his wars; to the king a clerk kneels,
and, having obtained leave to speak, urges him to cherish his
people and beware of evil counsellors and of avarice. The piece
is sensible and well written, but is entirely lacking in special
poetical quality.
Of entirely uncertain date is an interesting allegorical poem
called Death and Liffe, preserved in the Percy Folio MS. Its
relation to Piers the Plowman is obvious and unmistakable. In
a vision, closely modelled on the vision of the prologue, the poet
witnesses a strife between the lovely lady Dame Life and the foul
freke Dame Death, which was clearly suggested by the Vita de
Do-best' of Piers the Plowman. In spite of its large indebted-
ness to the earlier poem, it is a work of no little originality
and power.
In the same priceless MS is preserved another alliterative
poem, which Skeat regards as the work of the author of Death
and Liffe. It is called The Scotish Feilde and is, in the main,
an account of the battle of Flodden. The author, who describes
himself as 'a gentleman, by Jesu' who had his 'bidding place'
'at Bagily' (i. e. at Baggily Hall, Cheshire), was an ardent ad-
herent of the Stanleys and wrote for the specific purpose of
6


## p. 41 (#59) ##############################################

The Fourteenth Century
41
celebrating their glorious exploits at Bosworth Field and at
Flodden. The poem seems to have been written shortly after
Flodden, and, perhaps, rewritten or revised later. That the author
of this poem, spirited chronicle though it be, was capable of the
excellences of Death and Liffe, is hard to believe; the re-
semblances between the poems seem entirely superficial and due
to the fact that they had a common model.
The influence of Piers the Plowman lasted, as we have seen,
well into the sixteenth century; indeed, interest in both the poem
and its central figure was greatly quickened by the supposed
relations between it and Wyclifism. The name or the figure of
the Ploughman appears in innumerable poems and prose writings,
and allusions of all sorts are very common. Skeat has given a list
of the most important of these in the fourth volume of his edition
of Piers Plowman for the Early English Text Society.
We are accustomed to regard the fourteenth century as, on
the whole, a dark epoch in the history of England-an epoch
when the corruptions and injustices and ignorance of the Middle
Ages were piling themselves ever higher and higher; when the
Black Death, having devoured half the population of city and
hamlet, was still hovering visibly like a gaunt and terrible vulture
over the affrighted country; when noblemen and gentry heard in
indignant bewilderment the sullen murmur of peasants awakening
into consciousness through pain, with now and then a shriller cry
for vengeance and a sort of blind justice; an epoch when in-
tellectual life was dead or dying, not only in the universities, but
throughout the land. Against this dark background we seemed
to see only two bright figures, that of Chaucer, strangely kindled
to radiance by momentary contact with the renascence, and that
of Wyclif, no less strange and solitary, striving to light the torch
of reformation, which, hastily muffled by those in authority,
smouldered and sparkled fitfully a hundred years before it burst
into blaze. With them, but farther in the background, scarcely
distinguishable, indeed, from the dark figures among which he
moved, was dimly discerned a gaunt dreamer, clothed in the dull
grey russet of a poor shepherd, now watching with lustreless but
seeing eye the follies and corruptions and oppressions of the great
city, now driven into the wilderness by the passionate protests
of his aching heart, but ever shaping into crude, formless but
powerful visions images of the wrongs and oppressions which he
hated and of the growing hope which, from time to time, was
revealed to his eager eyes.


## p. 42 (#60) ##############################################

42
Piers the Plowman and its Sequence
That the Black Death was a horrible reality the statistics of
its ravages prove only too well; that there was injustice and
misery, ignorance and intellectual and spiritual darkness, is only
too true; but the more intimately we learn to know the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, the more clearly do we see, not only
Grosseteste and Ockham and Richard of Armagh, but a host of
forgotten or nameless men who battled for justice, and kindliness,
and intellectual and spiritual light; and our study of the Piers
the Plowman cluster of poems has shown us that that confused
voice and that mighty vision were the voice and vision, not of
one lonely, despised wanderer, but of many men, who, though of
diverse tempers and gifts, cherished the same enthusiasm for
righteousness and hate for evil.


## p. 43 (#61) ##############################################

CHAPTER II
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN THE FOURTEENTH
CENTURY
RICHARD ROLLE. WYCLIF. THE LOLLARDS
It is often difficult to deal adequately with individual writers
in the Middle Ages. Both the general ideas and the literary
habits of the time tended to hide the traces of individual work.
Schools of thought were more important than their individual
members; at times, therefore, single thinkers or writers received
less than their due recognition because their achievements became
the common property of a school. Hence, we find it not always
easy to assign to any single writer his proper place in literary history,
and the difficulty is increased by medieval methods of composition.
Manuscripts were so widely copied, often with alterations and addi-
tions, that individual ownership was almost lost. Then, when in
later days men sought to trace the work and influence of individuals,
they ran two opposite risks : sometimes, they were likely to
under-estimate the individual's influence; sometimes, they were
likely to ascribe to one man tendencies and works which belonged
rather to his school. It is not surprising, then, that a great
deal still remains to be done in the publication and arrange-
ment of manuscripts before a definite verdict can be given upon
some problems of early literary history. As might be expected,
moreover, this difficulty is most to be felt in some of the matters
nearest to daily life : where the feet of generations passed the
oftenest, traces of their forerunners were easiest lost. Richard
,
Rolle of Hampole and John Wyclif were men very different in
their lives and in their ecclesiastical standpoints, but the lives of
both illustrate these statements, and the same kind of difficulty
arises in respect of each of them. Much has been assigned to
them that was not really theirs : after this first mistake has been
repaired, it becomes possible to judge them more fairly. But, even
then, it cannot be done fully and finally until the materials have
been sifted and arranged.


## p. 44 (#62) ##############################################

44 Religious Movements in the XIV th Century
By the fourteenth century, the north of England had long lost
its former literary leadership, but its impulses had not quite died
away, and the growing connection with Oxford, strengthened by
the foundation of Balliol College (c. 1263), brought even outlying
villages under the influence of great intellectual and religious
movements. When Richard Rolle went up to Oxford, the friars,
with their ideal of poverty, were still a powerful party there,
although, before long, Fitz-Ralph was to attack their view of life;
and contests between realists and nominalists were the chief in-
tellectual interests. The young student's connection with Oxford
did not last long ; but it coloured the whole of his life, and his
first writings were modelled upon academic forms. He must, also,
have gone through much intellectual and spiritual trouble, if we
may judge from the crisis that changed his life. But he took
away with him from Oxford a sufficient knowledge of Latin, an
acquaintance with, and some distaste for, the ordinary philosophical
writers and, above all, a love of the Scriptures. By a regulation
of Grosseteste, the first morning lecture had to be upon the Bible,
which furnished the material for much of the teaching.
Richard Rolle was born, probably about 1300, although the
exact date is unknown, at Thornton-le-Dale, near the old town
of Pickering, if a note in one of the manuscripts concerning him
is to be believed; at Thornton-le-Street, if a modern conjecture,
which places his birth nearer the scenes of his earliest activity, is
to be accepted. When he was nineteen he came home from Oxford,
eager, because he feared disaster to his soul, to follow the life of
a hermit; he asked his sister to meet him near his home and bring
with her two of her frocks, a grey and a white, and, out of these,
along with his father's hood, he made himself a rough and ready
hermit's dress. Thus clad, he visited a church where worshippe
the family of Dalton-two youths of which had known him at
Oxford. On a second visit, he put on a surplice and, with the
leave of the priest, preached an affecting sermon at Mass. The
former undergraduates recognised him and asked him to their
table at home. His father, a man of some substance, was known to
the Daltons, and, struck by Richard's sermon and his earnestness,
they settled him as a hermit upon their estate. Hermits were
a common feature of medieval life: they were under episcopal
control and received episcopal licence; hence, they were often
spoken of by bishops as 'our hermits'; indulgences were often
granted to those who supported them, and they themselves often
did useful service in the repair of roads and keeping up of bridges.


## p. 45 (#63) ##############################################

Rolle's Mysticism
45
After a time-four years at least-he left his first cell for another
at Ainderby, near Northallerton, where a friend of his, Margaret
Kirby, lived in much the same way that he did. Another change
brought him to Hampole, near Doncaster; and here, kindly cher-
ished by Cistercian nuns, he lived for the rest of his days.
The end came 29 September 1349_the year of the Black Death.
So great had been his popularity that the nuns of Hampole
sought his canonisation : an office for his festival—20 January
—was composed (probably about 1381—2), and, later, a collection
of miracles ascribed to his influence was made. Although not
formally canonised, he was regarded as a saint; and his reputation
gave wider currency to his writings.
Rolle was not a priest, although, perhaps, in minor orders. If his
spiritual advice was sought by many–especially by Margaret Kirby,
the recluse of Ainderby, by another recluse at Yedingham and
by nuns at Hampole—it was because of his spiritual insight
rather than his position. He stood equally aloof from academic
thought and general life-ecclesiastical and civil; he wished to
retire from the world and, by contemplation, reach a knowledge
of God and an elevation of soul. Through the mystic stages of
purgation and illumination, he reached, after two and a half years,
the third stage, the contemplation of God through love. Here,
he had an insight into the joys of heaven, and, in this stage, he
passed through the calor, the warmth of divine love, which fired
his being with effects almost physical; then there came into his life
the canor, the spiritual music of the unseen world, the whispering
sound as of heaven itself; and, together with these, he experienced
the dulcor, the sweetness as of the heavenly atmosphere itself. If
he mixed, at times, with the outside world, even with the rich of the
world, if he jested, at times, as he went his way among them, this
was not his true life, which was, henceforth,'hid with Christ in
God. Even the company of his fellows was, at times, distasteful,
for their objects were other than his; yet he sought to win them
over to love “the Author. Contemplative life had drawn him
and set him apart; but it had also given him his mission. He
was to be to others a prophet of the mystic and unseen.
His first impulse had been to win the world to his system through
preaching. There are traces of systematic attempts to gain
influence over others, although not by forming an order or com-
munity; but these ways of influencing others hardly sufficed him, for
1 This is the date usually accepted, on fair evidence, but a manuscript correction by
Henry Bradshaw, in a copy of Forshall and Madden, gives the date as 1348.


## p. 46 (#64) ##############################################

46 Religious Movements in the XIV th Century
be found few like-minded with himself. It seems not improbable
that he even came into collision with ecclesiastical authorities,
for he preached as a free lance and from a particular point of
view. Unrest, and the friction of awkward personal relations (for
he was dependent upon the help of others) worked along with the
difficulty of his general position to drive him from place to place.
At last, his energy found a new outlet and he began to write.
Short ejaculatory poems, then longer and more didactic works,
were the natural expressions of his soul—and thus he found his
true work in life. He describes the impulses which moved him
'if I might be able in some good way to compose or write some-
thing by which the Church of God might grow in divine delight?
Rolle thus deserves a high place among the many poets of the
religious life; and the forms he used, or, at times, elaborated,
have a beauty answering to their thought. Intense personal feeling,
sympathy and simplicity are their chief features, and thus, apart
from their language, they appeal to all ages alike. Beginning with
alliteration only, the author worked into rime. But followers,
such as William Nassyngton, imitated him in poems hard to distin-
guish from Rolle's own; some versified editions of his prose
works-such as that of the Form of Living (or Mending of
Life)—were probably also due to Nassyngton. We thus come to
a cycle of sacred poems, at once mystic and practical, all grouped
around Rolle. At first purely local, they spread beyond south
Yorkshire; copies were made in southern English, 'translated'
(says one MS) 'out of northern tunge into southern, that it schulde
be better be understondyn of men of be selve countreye. ' The
Psalms had been to Rolle himself a source of inspiration and
comfort; he had come to that constant intercourse with God, to
that sense of personal touch with Him, in which even their most
exalted language did not seem unreal or too remote. He could
write: 'grete haboundance of gastly comfort and joy in God
comes in the hertes of thaim at says or synges devotly the
psalmes in lovynge of Jesus Crist. ' His labour at the Psalter had
a wide-reaching influence, and appears in many forms; a Latin com-
mentary upon it is one of his most original works; and, in another
of them, the Latin version is followed by an English translation,
and a commentary; the last has been widely used and highly
praised by pious writers of very different schools, but it is really
a translation of Peter Lombard's commentary, and is, therefore,
devoid of originality and personal touches. This commentary may
not have been his only attempt at translation, as the English
6


## p. 47 (#65) ##############################################

Rolle and Religion
47
version of The Mirror of St Edmund may also be his work. His
own prose is marked by flexibility and tender feeling fittingly
expressed. A metrical Psalter-apparently earlier in date—also
exists, and this, again, was largely copied, but it cannot be
ascribed with absolute certainty to Rolle himself.
From the date of the miracles at Hampole—1381 and there-
abouts—a revival of Rolle's fame seems to have taken place, just
before the great Peasants' Revolt, and just when Lollard" influence
was spreading. To this coincidence is due the reissue of the
commentary upon the Psalter with Lollard interpolations and
additions. From various doctrinal inferences the date of this
reissue has been tentatively fixed as early as 1378, and its authorship
has been sometimes ascribed-although without reason—to Wyclif
himself. Against these Lollard interpolations the writer of some
verses prefixed to one MS complains :
Copied has this Sauter ben of yvel men of Lollardy,
And afterward hit has been sene ymped in with eresy;
They seyden then to lewde foles that it shuld be all enter
A blessyd boke of hur scoles, of Richard Hampole the Sauter.
The writer of this particular MS claims that his copy, on the other
hand, is the same as that kept chained at Hampole itself. The
quarrel raised over Hampole's Psalter, and the use made of it,
illustrates its value. But originality cannot be claimed for it.
Rolle's activity was due to the wish to benefit his fellows, and
hence come a number of plain, practical treatises with religious
ends in view. His commentary upon the Psalms was written for
the edification of the same Margaret of Ainderby for whom he
wrote, in prose, The Form of Living ; his beautiful Ego dormio
i On the continent, the word Lollard was applied to Beghard communities and
men of heretical views in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The name was
soon given to Wyclif's followers (see Fasc. Ziz. pp. 300 and 312 for its use oppro-
briously in 1382): it is then applied to the poor priests. In Wright's Political Songs,
11, 243—4 we have an allusion to Oldcastle
The game is no3t to lolle so hie
Ther fete failen fondement.
:
•
Hit is unkyndly for a knizt,
That shuld a kinges castel kepo
To babble the Bibel day and nizt.
Taken along with the gloss to Walsingham (Hist. Angl. I, 325) hi vocabantur a
vulgo Lollardi incedentes nudis pedibus, vestiti pannis vilibus, scilicet de russeto, the
word seems specially applied to street-preachers, or idlers in streets (lollen, to loll).
But the punning association with lollium, tares, appears in a song of about the year
1382 (Pul. Songs, 1, 232), in humo hujus hortuli . . . . fecit zizania, I quae suffocant virentia, i
velut frumentum lollia,' and Lollardi sunt zizania, | spinae, vepres ac lollia. This
fapoiful derivation became popular.


## p. 48 (#66) ##############################################

48 Religious Movements in the XIV th Century
et cor meum vigilat, a prose work which shows the influence of
those pseudo-Dionysian writings that markedly affected both
Grosseteste and Colet, was written for a nun of Yedingham ;
explanations of the Canticles, the Lord's Prayer and Command-
ments and some prayers in The Layfolk's Massbook, had the same
object. His mysticism still left something practical in his character
-80 much so that, at times, he gave advice which, in spite of his
assured orthodoxy, must have seemed, to some, unusual. Thus, he
speaks of the error of taking too little food, in avoiding too much-
and he never tries to impress upon all others the contemplative
life he sought for himself. He saw that, for most of them, life must
be active; he merely sought to teach them the spirit in which to live.
Of his attitude towards the church little need be said ; he is
a faithful and loyal son, although he keeps some freedom of
speech. In one of his latest works, the lengthy poem Pricke of
Conscience—a popular summary, in 9624 lines, of current medieval
theology borrowed from Grosseteste and others, strong in its sense
of awe and terror of sin, and firm in its application of ecclesiastical
rules to the restraint and the pardon of sins—the abuses he condemns
most strongly are those of individual licence and social life. If he
had any quarrel with the church, it was rather with some of its
theologians who did not share his philosophy than with its
system or its existing development. When he spoke of God's
'loving-kindness in the gates of the daughter of Zion' he in-
terpreted the gates as being the church, under whose shadow he
dwelt.
His doctrine of 'love' was thus not purely mystical or remote
from life: it overflowed into teachings of social righteousness, and
the dignity of labour as a service before God; it made injustice
and offences against love (charity) peculiarly hateful in his eyes.
Yet he had no hatred of the rich or of riches, and, indeed, he had,
at times, been even blamed for his friendship with the rich ; it was
1
merely against the abuse and misuse of riches he protested. Three
things he held needful in daily life: that work should be honest with-
out waste of time, that it should be done in freedom of spirit and
that a man's whole behaviour should be honest and fair. There was
thus in his teaching much that strengthened the democracy of the
times, much that condemned the social and ecclesiastical conditions
of the day. If, on the one hand, his judgment was magna igitur
est vita solitaria si magnifice agatur, on the other hand, he
realised for himself and taught to others the living power of
Christian fellowship. He is as significant in the history of popular
medieval religion as in that of medieval letters.


## p. 49 (#67) ##############################################

Wyclif's Early Life
49
-
Although John Wyclif, like Rolle, was of northern origin, his
life belongs altogether to Oxford and to national affairs. His
northern background not only gave something to his character
but also, probably, determined his career: his family had some
connection with Balliol College, and it was the natural college
for a Yorkshireman. At Oxford he came under the great
influences which shaped himself and his work. But, between
him and Rolle there were resemblances apart from the north
and Oxford; each of them has a special place in the history
of the English Bible as well as of the English tongue, and
Biblical commentaries-probably due to Rolle-have been, at
one time or another, ascribed to Wyclif. In both cases, assump-
tions have been made too readily before the existing works had
been studied and classified: works such as The Last Age of the
Church and An Apology for the Lollards—which could not
possibly have been Wyclif's—have been put down as his. Until
the Wyclif Society began its labours, his Latin works were mainly
in manuscript, and, before they could be studied and compared
with each other, the data for his life and character remained un-
certain. Even now, there remain some points which it is wiser to
leave open, but we know enough to say that certain traditional
views and dates, at any rate, must be cast aside.
John Wyclif was born, according to Leland, at Ipreswel or
Hipswell, near Richmond, in Yorkshire. His family took its origin
from Wycliffe-on-Tees, and he himself is described in a papal
document as of the diocese of York. The date of his birth is
uncertain, but it is generally supposed to have been about 1320,
and certainly not much later. The tradition which says that he
went to Balliol College is probable, for we find him there as
its Master in 1360. The university, which gained through papal
provision some support for its learned sons, petitioned Urban V
to grant Wyclif a canonry with prebend (or parish annexed) in York
Minster. As an answer, he was appointed, by papal provision, to
the prebend of Aust in the collegiate church of Westbury-on-
Trym, in the diocese of Worcester (24 November 1362). And, on
26 December 1373, Gregory XI granted Wyclif leave to hold this
prebend of Aust even after he had received a canonry with prebend
in Lincoln, which he had been previously promised when a vacancy
occurred. In his work De Civili Dominio, Wyclif apparently alludes
to this latter appointment, and speaks, although without bitter-
ness, of his being afterwards passed over for a young foreigner.
Incidentally, it should be noticed that Wyclif was thus, as late as
4
E, L.