



Produced by Mark C. Orton, Keith Edkins and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)





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

       *       *       *       *       *


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