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Transcriber's note: A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected:
they are listed at the end of the text.

In this edition line numbers are displayed on every tenth line--in the
printed work they were synchronised to the pagination, with sometimes only
one number per page. Lines marked = were printed AND COUNTED as two lines.

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Thorn and eth
characters (in cited passages) are expanded to th and dh respectively. In
the main text of The Vision, the numbers of the original pages are enclosed
in curly brackets to facilitate the use of the glossary.

Project Gutenberg has the other volume of this work.
Volume II: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43661

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Library of Old Authors.

[Illustration: Spede the plough & send us korne enough]

  THE VISION AND CREED

  OF

  PIERS PLOUGHMAN.

  EDITED,
  FROM A CONTEMPORARY MANUSCRIPT,
  WITH A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION,
  NOTES, AND A GLOSSARY,

  BY THOMAS WRIGHT, M.A. F.S.A. &c.

  Corresponding Member of the Imperial Institute of France,
  Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.

  IN TWO VOLUMES.

  VOL. I.

  _SECOND AND REVISED EDITION._

  LONDON:
  REEVES AND TURNER, 196 STRAND.
  1887.

_PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION._

It is now thirteen years since the first edition of the following text of
this important poem was published by the late Mr. Pickering, during which
time the study of our old literature and history has undergone considerable
development, and it is believed that a reprint at a more moderate price
would be acceptable to the public. Holding still the same opinion which he
has always held with regard to the superior character of the manuscript
from which this text was taken, the editor has done no more than carefully
reprint it, but, in order to make it as useful as he could, he has revised
and made additions to both the Notes and the Glossary.

The remarkable poem of The Vision of Piers Ploughman is not only so
interesting a monument of the English language and literature, but it is
also so important an illustration of the political history of our country
during the fourteenth century, that it deserves to be read far more
generally than it has been, and the editor will rejoice sincerely if he
should have contributed by this new edition to render it more popular, and
place it within the reach of a greater number of readers. Independent of
its historical and literary importance, it contains many beauties which
will fully repay the slight labour required to master its partially
obsolete language, and, as one of the purest works in the English tongue as
it existed during the century in which it was composed, it is to be hoped
that, when the time shall at length arrive when English antiquities and
English philology and literary history are at length to be made a part of
the studies in our universities and in the higher classes of our schools,
the work of the Monk of Malvern, as a link between the poetry and language
of the Anglo-Saxon and those of modern England, will be made a prominent
text-book.

THOMAS WRIGHT.

  14, SYDNEY STREET, BROMPTON,
             _Nov. 1855_.

_INTRODUCTION._

The History of the Middle Ages in England, as in other countries,
represents to us a series of great consecutive political movements,
coexistent with a similar series of intellectual revolutions in the mass of
the people. The vast mental development caused by the universities in the
twelfth century led the way for the struggle to obtain religious and
political liberty in the thirteenth. The numerous political songs of that
period which have escaped the hand of time, and above all the mass of
satirical ballads against the Church of Rome, which commonly go under the
name of Walter Mapes, are remarkable monuments of the intellectual history
of our forefathers. Those ballads are written in Latin; for it was the most
learned class of the community which made the first great stand against the
encroachments and corruptions of the papacy and the increasing influence of
the monks. We know that the struggle alluded to was historically
unsuccessful. The baronial wars ended in the entire destruction of the
popular leaders; but their cause did not expire at Evesham; they had laid
foundations which no storm could overthrow, not placed hastily on the
uncertain surface of popular favour, but fixed deeply in the public mind.
The barons, who had fought so often and so staunchly for the great charter,
had lost their power; even the learning of the universities had faded under
the withering grasp of monachism; but the remembrance of the old contest
remained, and what was more, its literature was left, the songs which had
spread abroad the principles for which, or against which, Englishmen had
fought, carried them down (a precious legacy) to their posterity. Society
itself had undergone an important change; it was no longer a feudal
aristocracy which held the destinies of the country in its iron hand. The
plant which had been cut off took root again in another (a healthier) soil;
and the intelligence which had lost its force in the higher ranks of
society began to spread itself among the commons. Even in the thirteenth
century, before the close of the baronial wars, the complaints so
vigorously expressed in the Latin songs, had begun, both in England and
France, to appear in the language of the people. Many of the satirical
poems of Rutebeuf and other contemporary writers against the monks, are
little more than translations of the Latin poems which go under the name of
Walter Mapes.

During the successive reigns of the first three Edwards, the public mind in
England was in a state of constant fermentation. On the one hand, the
monks, supported by the popish church, had become an incubus upon the
country. Their corruptness and immorality were notorious: the description
of their vices given in the satirical writings of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries exceeds even the bitterest calumnies of the age of
Rabelais or the reports of the commissioners of Henry the Eighth.[1] The
populace, held in awe by the imposing appearance of the popish church, and
by the religious belief which had been instilled into them from their
infancy, were opposed to the monks and clergy by a multitude of personal
griefs and jealousies: these frequently led to open hostility, and in the
chronicles of those days we read of the slaughter of monks, and the burning
of abbeys, by the insurgent towns-people or peasantry. At the same time,
while the monks in revenge treated the commons with contempt, there were
numerous people who, under the name of Lollards and other such
appellations,--led sometimes by the love of mischief and disorder, but more
frequently by religious enthusiasm,--whose doctrines were simple and
reasonable (although the church would fain have branded them all with the
title of heretics),--went abroad among the people preaching not only
against the corruptions of the monks, but against the most vital doctrines
of the church of Rome, and, as might be expected, they found abundance of
listeners. On the other hand, a new political system, and the
embarrassments of a continued series of foreign wars, were adding to the
general ferment. Instead of merely calling together the great feudal barons
to lead their retainers to battle, the king was now obliged to appeal more
directly to the people; and at the same time the latter began to feel the
weight of taxation, and consequently they began to talk of the defects and
the corruptions of the government, and to raise the cries, which have since
so often been heard, against the king's "evil advisers." These cries were
justified by many real and great oppressions under