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After Avarice came Gluttony in like manner to Repentance, and confessed his evil ways. On his way to church on a Friday fast-day, when he passed the house of Betty the brewster, she bade him good morrow, and asked whither he went.

"To holy church," he said, "to hear mass, and then sit and be shriven, and sin no more."

"I have good ale, gossip Glutton, wilt thou assay?"

"What hast thou?" quoth he. "Any hot spices?" "I have pepper and peony-seed, and a pound of garlic, a farthing's worth of fennel-seed for fasting days."

Then goeth Glutton in, and Great-oaths after. Ciss the sempstress sat on the bench, Wat the warrener and his wife drunk, Tom the tinker and two of his boys, Hick the hackneyman and Hugh the needler, Clarice of Cock Lane, the Clerk of the church, Sir Piercy Pridie and Pernel of Flanders, Daw the ditcher, with a dozen idle lads of porters and of pick-purses and of pilled tooth-drawers. A ribibour and a ratcatcher, a raker and his boy, a roper and a riding-king, and Rose the disher, Godfrey the garlicmonger, Griffith the Welshman, and a heap of upholders early in the morning gave Glutton with glad cheer good ale for hansel. Clement the cobbler cast off his cloak and put it up at New Fair.3 Hick the hackneyman threw his hood after, and bade Bet the butcher be on his side. Chapmen were chosen to appraise the goods. Then arose great disputing and a heap of oaths, each seeking to get the better of the other, till Robin the roper was named umpire to end the dispute. Hick the hackneyman had the

All Iniquity in relation to the Mercy of God is as a spark in the midst of the sea.

2 Ribibour, player on the rebeck, or rude country fiddle.

3 There was in 1297 a mart called the New Fair in Soper Lane, Cheapside, and others like it were called "Eve-chepings." They were for the sort of barter still popular among schoolboys as swapping." Something is offered in exchange against some other thing, and if necessary something else must be thrown in to make the exchange equal. New Fair is in our day carried on through papers devoted to the satisfaction of a taste for "swapping" among grown-up boys and girls. Clement the cobbler has many descendants who contribute to them, and manage exchanges more politely than their ancestor, by inserting and answering advertisements like this:"Wanted, lady's large new dark brown soft felt hat, broad brim. Exchange swansdown muff and collarette.-7116 P."

cloak, in covenant that Clement should fill the cup and have the hackneyman's hood, and hold himself satisfied; and whoever first repented should arise after and greet Sir Glutton with a gallon of ale. Then follows a lively picture of Glutton's drunkenness, and his being helped home by Clement the cobbler. His wife put him to bed, where he slept all Saturday and Sunday, and the first words he said when he woke were, "Who holds the bowl?" His wife and his conscience rebuked him of sin; he became ashamed, shrove himself to Repentance, and cried, "Have mercy on me, thou Lord that art on high. To thee, God, I Glutton, yield me guilty of my trespass with the tongue, swearing, I cannot tell how often, by 'thy Soul' and by 'thy Sides,' and 'so help me God Almighty!' where no need was, many times falsely; I have over-supped myself at supper, and sometimes eaten at dinner more than nature could digest. I cannot speak for shame of my filthiness. Before noon on fast-days I fed me with ale out of reason, among ribalds to hear their ribaldry. Hereof, good God, grant me forgiveness of all my ill living in all my lifetime."

Sloth, described with the same homely truth as really seen and known among the people, came to Repentance after Gluttony, and completed the embodiment of the chief misdeeds of the world in the confessions of the Seven Deadly Sins. Then Repentance prayed for all the penitents, and after the prayer of Repentance, Hope blew on a horn "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven," till all the saints joined with the sinners in the song of David, "O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God!"

Then thronged a thousand men together, crying upward to Christ and to his pure mother, that they might have grace to find Truth. But there was none who knew the way. They went astray like beasts over the brooks and hills.

They met a Palmer in his pilgrim's weeds, with bowl and bag and vernicle, and asked him "Whence he came?" "From Sinai," he said, "and from the Sepulchre. I have been to Bethlehem and Babylon, to Armenia, Alexandria, Damascus. You may see by the tokens in my cap that I have been to shrines of good saints for my soul's health, and walked full widely in wet and in dry."

"Knowest thou," they asked him, "of a saint that men call Truth; and could'st thou show us the way to where he dwells."

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The Palmer was one who visited the shrines of many saints. Living upon the way by charity, his bowl was for what he found to drink, his bag for bread and meat that might be given to him. The vernicle, worn with other tokers in the cap, was a little copy of the miraculous transfer of the face of Christ to the handkerchief offered him by St. Veronica when he was bearing his own cross to Calvary.

5 "Peter!" was a common exclamation in the fourteenth century. It has perhaps a designed fitness in the introducing of Piers Plowman, Peter being the rock on whom Christ built his Church.

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Conscience and Kind-wit1 kenned me to his place

And maked me sykeren him siththen to serve him for ever,

Both to sowe and to setten, the while I swink3 might,

Within and without to wayten his profit.

I have been his follower all these forty winter,
And served Truth soothly, somdel to paye.
In all kynne craftes that he couth devise
Profitable to the plough, he put me to learn;
And though I say it myself I served him to paye.
I have mine hire of him well, and otherwhile more;
He is most prest payer that any poor man knoweth.
He withholds non hewe7 his hire over even;

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He is low as a lamb, and leal of his tongue,

And whoso wilneth to wites where that Truth woneth
I will wissen 10 you well right to his place."

In this manner Piers the Plowman first appears in the Vision. In the field full of folk "working and wandering as the world asketh," repentant men turn from the ills of life, look up to God, and seek for Truth. Those who toil in the mere form of search, but want its soul, know nothing of their need and cannot help. But what is hidden from the wise of this world God has revealed to the humble. "Whosoever would be chief among you let him be your servant, even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." Under the figure, therefore, of the Plowman, faithful to his day's labour, the poet first introduces the humility that becomes servant to Truth. Once introduced, the Plowman presently rises to his place in the poem as a type of Christ himself.

The pilgrims to Truth offered meed to Piers for showing them the way; but he set that aside and freely told them that they must all go through Meekness, till they came to Conscience, known to God Himself, and loyally" love him as their lord; that is, they must rather die than do any deadly sin, and must in nowise hurt their neighbours or do otherwise to them than they would have them do to themselves. Then as they followed the brook they would find the ford Honour-your-fathers; therein they should wade and wash them well. Then they would come to Swear-not-but-for-need, and by the croft Covet-not, from which they must be careful to take nothing away. Near by it are two stocks, Steal-not and Slay-not, but do not stay there; strike on to the hill Bear-nofalse-witness, through a forest of florins. Pluck there no plant, on peril of thy soul ! Next they would see Say-sooth, and by that way come to a court clear as the sun; the moat is of Mercy, and the walls are of Wit that Will cannot win; the battlements are of Christendom, the buttresses are of Believe-so-or-thou-be'st-not-saved. The houses are

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roofed, not with lead, but all with love and loyalty; the bars are of buxomness as brethren of one body, the bridge is Pray-well-and-the-better-speed. pillar is of penance and prayers to saints; almsdeeds are the hinges of the gates, which are kept by Grace and his man Amend-you. "Say to him this for token, 'I am sorry for my sins, so shall I ever be, and I perform the penance that the priest commanded." Ride to Amend-you, humble yourselves to his master Grace to open the high gate of Heaven that Adam and Eve shut against us all. Through Eve that gate was closed, and through the Virgin Mary it is opened. She hath a latchkey, and can lead in whom she loveth. If Grace grant thee to enter in this wise, thou shalt see Truth where he sits in thine own heart, and solaces thy soul and saves thee from pain. charge Charity to build a temple within thine whole heart, to lodge therein all Truth and find all manner of folk food for their souls, if Love and Loyalty and Our Law be true. Beware then of Wrath, for he

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has envy against him who sitteth in thine heart and urges Pride in thee to praise thyself. If thy wellbeing make thee bold and blind, thou wilt be driven out and the gate locked and latched against thee, so that thou mayest not enter again for a hundred years. To that place belong Seven Sisters, who serve Truth ever, and are porters at the postern. They are Abstinence, Humility, Charity, Chastity, Patience, Peace, and Liberality. Unless one be sib12 to these seven it is hard to enter in at the gate unless Grace be the more."

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"Yea,"

"I have no kin among them," said a cut-purse; "Nor I," said an ape-ward; "Nor I," said a wafer maker. "Yes," said Piers Plowman, and urged them all to good: "Mercy is a maid there who hath might over them all, and she and her Son are sib to all the sinful. Through the help of these two ye may get grace there, if ye go betimes." quoth one, "I have bought a piece of ground, and now must I thither to see how I like it," and took leave of Piers. Another said, "I have bought five yoke of oxen, and therefore I must go with a good will at once to drive them; therefore, I pray you, Piers, if peradventure you meet Truth, so tell him. that I may be excused." Then there was one named Active, who said, I have married a wife who is changeable of mood, and if I were out of her sight for a fortnight she would lour on me and say I loved another. Therefore, Piers Plowman, I pray thee tell Truth I cannot come, because my Kit so cleaves Uxorem duxi et ideo non possum venire." Quoth Contemplation, "Though I suffer care, famine, and want, yet will I follow Piers. But the way is so difficult that, without a guide to go with us, we may take a wrong turning."

to me.

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"I pray you," said Piers, "for your own profit, that some sew the sack to prevent shedding of the wheat; and ye worthy women who work on fine silk with your long fingers, work at fit times chasubles for chaplains to do honour to the church; wives and widows spin wool and flax, Conscience bids you make cloth for profit of the poor and pleasaunce of yourselves. For I shall feed them, unless the earth fail, as long as I live, for our Lord's love in heaven. And all manner of men whom this earth sustains, help me, your food-winner, to work vigorously."

I

Quoth a knight, "He counsels the best. I never was taught to drive a team. I wish I could. should like to try some time, as it were, for pleasure."

"Surely, Sir Knight," said Piers then, "I shall toil and sow for us both, and labour for thee while thou livest, on condition that thou keep Holy-Church and myself from wasters and wicked men who destroy this world. Go boldly to hunt the beasts that break my hedges, and fly falcons at the wild fowl that defile my corn."

Then said the Knight, "According to my power, Piers; I plight my troth faithfully to defend thee, and fight for thee if need be."

THE KNIGHT.

From the Abbey Church at Tewkesbury.

Then the Knight was warned also to respect his bondmen, and remember that before God it was hard to distinguish knight from knave or queen from quean. Ranks might be reversed, when to the lowly it would be said, " Friend, go up higher." The knight is bound to be courteous and avoid the com

pany of idle chatterers who help the devil to draw men to sin. The Knight promised for himself and his wife to obey his conscience and work as Piers directed.

Then Piers apparelled himself to go as a pilgrim with those who sought Truth; he hung his seedbasket on his neck instead of a scrip, and a bushel of bread-corn was within, "For I will sow it myself," he said, "and then we will go upon our journey. My plough-foot shall be my staff to help my coulter to cut and cleanse the furrows, and all who help me to plough and to weed shall have leave, by our Lord, to go and glean after, and be merry therewith, grudge who may. And I shall feed all true men who live faithfully; not Jack the juggler, Daniel the diceplayer, Robin Ribald, Friar Faitour, and folk of that order."

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Piers had a wife, Dame Work-when-time-is, and the names of his son and daughter mean Obedience. Piers made a will, leaving his body to the Church, to his wife and children all that he had truly earned. Debts he had none. He always bare home what he borrowed ere he went to bed.

Then Piers went to the ploughing of his half-acre by the roadside, and had many to help. At high prime Piers let the plough stand to see who wrought best; he should be hired thereafter when harvesttime came. Some sat and sang at the ale, helping to plough the half-acre with "Hoy, trolly lolly!' When urged to work with the threat that not a grain should gladden them in time of need, they pleaded that they were blind, or lame, and could not work: "But we pray for you, Piers, and for your plough too, that God of his grace will multiply your grain and reward you for your almesse that ye give us here. We have no limbs to labour with, we thank the Lord."

"Your prayers would help, I hope, if ye were true," said Piers, "but Truth wills that there be no feigning among those who beg. I fear ye are wasters, who devour what loyal toil has raised out of the land. But the halt, the blind, the prisoners shall eat my corn and share my cloth."

Then one of the Wasters offered to fight with Piers Plowman, and spoke to him contemptuously. Another came bragging, and said, "Will thou or nill thou, we will have our will, and fetch thy meat and flour whenever we like to make us merry." Piers looked to the Knight for help. The Knight warned Waster courteously that if he did not amend his way he must be beaten, and set in the stocks. "I was never used to work," said Waster, "and

I will not begin now." So he took little heed of the law, and less of the Knight, and set Piers at defiance.

Then Piers fetched Hunger to punish these misdoers. Hunger soon seized Waster by the throat, wrung him by the belly till his eyes watered, and buffeted him about the cheeks till he looked like a lanthorn all his life after. Piers had to pray off Hunger with a loaf of pease-bread. "Hunger, have mercy on him," said Piers, "and let me give him

1 Faitour, Make-believe.

beans. What was baked for the horse may save him." Then the feigners were afeared, and flew to Piers's barns, and threshed with their flails so stoutly from morning to evening that Hunger was afraid to look on them. Hermits cut their copes into short coats, took spades, spread dung, weeded, for dread of their death, such strokes gave Hunger. Friars of all five orders worked, for fear of Hunger. Piers was glad, and was sending Hunger away, but asked counsel of him first; since many were at work for fear of famine, not for love.

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Truth," said Piers, taught me once to love them all; teach me, Sir Hunger, how to master them, and make them love the labour for their living."

Hunger advised that the able-bodied who avoided work should be fed only with the bread of dogs and horses. "Give them beans. If any object, bid him Go, work; and he shall sup the sweeter when he hath deserved."

Hunger quoted many words of Scripture in support of his argument that men were born to work. They should not eat till Hunger sent his sauce, or let Sir Surfeit sit by them at table. If men did thus, Physic should sell his furred hood for his food,

"And lerne labore with londe leste lyflode hym faile. Ther aren meny luthere1 leeches, and lele leches fewe; Thei don men deye thorgh here 3 drynkes er destinye hit wolde."

But

Piers said that Hunger was right, and bade farewell; but Hunger would not go till he had dined. It was not yet harvest, and there was nothing to be had but a little curds and cream, an oat-cake, a few loaves of beans and pease, parsley, onions, half-red cherries, a cow and her calf, and a cart-mare. the poor people brought what they could to feed Hunger, who ate all in haste, and asked for more. But when it was harvest-time, and the new corn was in, Hunger ate and was satisfied, and went away. And then the beggars would eat only the finest bread, they would take no halfpenny ale-only the best and brownest that the brewsters sell. Labourers, who had only their hands to live by, would not dine upon worts more than one night old, or penny ale and a piece of bacon, but must have fresh meat and fish, hot, and hotter, because their stomachs were a-cold. They would chide if they had not high wages, and curse the laws; but they strove not so when Hunger frowned upon them. Here the poet, reading signs of the stars according to the astrology that formed part of the undoubted science of his day, warned his countrymen, by the aspect of Saturn, that Hunger was coming back; for famine and pestilence were on the way to them again. It was a sad prediction which, in those days, must needs be fulfilled. The next of the great pestilences followed a

sore famine in 1382.

Truth heard of these things, and sent to bid Piers till the earth; granting a full pardon to him and all

1 Luthere, bad. First-English "lath," evil, whence our "loathe."

2 Don men deye, cause men to die.

3 Here, their.

who in any way helped at his ploughing: to kings and knights who defended him; to bishops if they were loyal and full of love, merciful to the meek, mild to the good, severe to the bad men of whatever rank when they would not amend; to merchants who earned honestly and made a right use of their gain, repairing the hospitals, mending the highways, helping the fatherless, the poor, the prisoner, helping also to bring the young to school. "Do this," said Truth, "and I myself shall send you Michael, mine angel, that no fiend shall hurt you, and your souls shall come to where I dwell, and there abide in bliss for ever and ever." Then the merchants wept for joy, and prayed for Piers Plowman. It was ill with lawyers who would not plead unpaid, but well with them if they would plead for the innocent poor and comfort them, and maintain their cause against injustice of the strong. There follows upon Truth's message a tender picture of the sorrows of the poor mother of many children, whose spinning barely pays the rent of the low cot, the cost of milk and meal to feed the little ones who hunger as she is hungering herself:

"And woe in winter-time with waking a-nights

To rise to the ruel, to rock the cradle,

Both to card and to comb, to clouten and to wash,
To rub and to rely, rushes to pilie,7

That ruth is to read others in ryme shewe

The woe of these women that woneth in cotes."

Still dwelling upon love as the companion of labour, the poet touches on the secret sorrows of poor men, who will not beg or complain or make their need known to their neighbours; whose craft is all their substance, bringing in few pence to clothe and feed those whom they love; to whom a farthing's worth of mussels is a fast-day feast. To help and comfort such as these, and crooked men and blind, is charity indeed. But beggars with their bags, whose church is the brewhouse; if they be not halt, or blind, or sick, if they be idlers who deceive; leave them to work or starve. And those who wander wanting wit, -the lunatics and lepers, to whom cold and heat are as one, and who walk moneyless far and wide, as Peter and Paul did, though they preach not nor work miracles, to my conscience, it is as if God, giver of wit and health, had sent forth these also as His apostles, without bread and bag and begging of no

man, reverencing no man more than another for his dignity, to draw from us love and mercy. They are heaven's minstrels: men give gold to all manner of minstrels in the name of great lords. Rather, ye rich, should ye help with your goods these minstrels of God, whose sins are hid under His secret seal, than the idlers and unlearned eremites who come into the house to rest them and to roast them with their backs to the fire, and leave when they will, to go next where they are most likely to find a round of bacon. These eremites worked till they found out

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that feigners in friar's clothing had fat cheeks. Such men may truly be called lollers.

"As by English of our elders, of old men teaching,
He that lolleth is lame, or his leg is out of joint,

Or maimed in some member, for to mischief it soundeth.
And right so soothly such manner eremites
Lollen agen the Belief and Law of Holy-Church."

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Because he is a friar, he sits at meat with the first who once sat at a side-bench and second table, tasted no wine all the week, had neither blanket on his bed nor white bread before him. The fault is with bishops who allow such sins to reign. Simon, why sleepest thou? To watch were better, for thou hast great charge. For many strong wolves are broken into the fold; thy dogs are all blind, thy sheep are scattered, thy dogs dare not bark. They have an ill tar, their salve is of supersedeas in the Summoner's boxes. Thy sheep are nearly all scabbed; the wolf tears away their wool. Ho, shepherd! Where is thy dog?"

To such exhortation a priest answered by calling upon Piers to show the form of the Pardon Truth had sent him. Piers unfolded it, and showed it to them all. There were but two lines in it:

"Qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam eternam; Qui vero mala, in ignem æternum.” 1

"Peter!" quoth a priest then, "I can find no pardon here! Nothing but

"Do well and Have well, and God shall have thy soul, Do ill and have ill, and hope thou none other But he that ill liveth shall have an ill end."

Thus the priest disputed with Piers about the Pardon, and with their words, says the Dreamer, I awoke, and saw the sun far in the south, and wandered a mile over Malvern Hills musing upon this dream. What meant Piers Plowman by the Pardon wherewith he would gladden the people? what meant the priest by his contention that it was no pardon at all and the dream seemed to him to mean

- that Do-well Indulgences passede,
Biennals and triennals and bishops' letters.
For whoso doth well here, at the day of doom
Worth faire underfong before God that time.

So Do-wel passeth Pardon and Pilgrimages to Rome.
Yet hath the Pope power pardon to grant

As lettered men us lereth 2 and Law of Holy-Church.
And so I believe loyally, lords forbid else,
That pardon and penance and prayers do save
Souls that have sinned seven siths3 deadly.
Ac1 to trusten upon triennals, truly me thinketh,
Is not so sicker for the Soul certes as is Dowel.
Forthi ich rede you renkes that rich ben on this earth
Up trist of your treasure triennals to have

Be ye never the bolder to break the ten hests.

And nameliche7 ye maistres, mayors, and judges
That han the wealth of this world, and wise men ben hold,"
To purchase you pardon and the Pope's bulls,

At the dreadful day of doom when dead men shullen rise,
And comen all before Christ accounts to yield
How we had our life here and his laws kept,
And how we did day by day, the doom will rehearse:
A poke full of pardon there, ne provincials' letters,
Though we be found in fraternity of all five orders,
And have indulgences doublefold, but 10 Do-wel us help,
I set by pardon not a pea nother a pye-heel.
Forthi ich counsel all Christians to cry God mercy
And Mary his mother be our mene" to Him,
That God give us grace here, ere we go hence,
Such works to work while we ben here
That after our death day Do-wel rehearse
At the day of doom, we did as he taught. Amen.”

Thus ends, with the second dream, the first part of the Vision of Piers Plowman, which I am dwelling on the more fully because the book is not yet read and known as widely as it ought to be, and because there is no other work of the fourteenth century that shows so vividly the life of England in those days, and in the midst of all its ills, the rising spirit of a Reformation that sought grace of God in calling every man-king, knight, priest, merchant, peasant-to his Duty. Langland opposed no doctrines then accepted by his Church. He joins in testimony to the general corruption of the friars, but finds many monks true to their vows; the place held by the Virgin Mary in the medieval Church he gave her without question, and he did not contradict what the Church taught concerning the Pope's power to grant indulgences. Obey Holy-Church, he says, but trust not in what money can buy. A bagfull of pardons will surely help you less at the Last Day, than grace of God obtained by prayer to Him with true penitence shown by undoing of the evil done, and labour to do well all one's life after. He has no faith in the religion of Say-well who turns his back upon welldoing, or in a love of God that does not show itself by love of man and deeds of mercy. He looks to Christ, and bids men strive to read their duty in the pure light of our Saviour's teaching.

The second part of his poem-styled in MSS. the vision concerning Dowel-Langland began by representing himself thus robed in russet, roaming about all a summer season in search of Dowel. He asked of many where he might be found, and met on a Friday two Franciscan friars.

"You travel much about," he said, "in princes' palaces and poor men's cots. Tell me where Dowel dwells."

"He is one of us friars," said one; "always has been, and I hope always will be."

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Nay," said Will, "even the just sins seven times a day. He cannot always be at home with you." "I will explain to you, my son," said a friar, "how we sin seven times a day and have Dowel. If a man be in a boat on the wild sea of the world,

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