Seynte Marie prest of Ȝork, 'priest of St. Mary's of York' (cp. note to I 44), a great Benedictine abbey founded soon after the Conquest; see Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. iii, pp. 529 ff. Marie does not take the s inflexion, because it has already the Latin genitive form, cp. Mary-ȝet X 163.
d 2. Iohan Nameles, 'John Nobody', for nameless has the sense 'obscure', 'lowly'.
d 6. Hobbe þe Robbere. Hob is a familiar form for Robert, and it has been suggested that Hobbe þe Robbere may refer to Robert Hales, the Treasurer of England, who was executed by the rebels in 1381. But Robert was a conventional name for a robber, presumably owing to the similarity of sound. Already in the twelfth century, Mainerus, the Canterbury scribe of the magnificent Bible now in the library of Sainte-Geneviève at Paris, plays upon it in an etymological account of his family: Secundus (sc. frater meus) dicebatur Robertus, quia a re nomen habuit: spoliator enim diu fuit et praedo. From the fourteenth century lawless men were called Roberts men. In Piers Plowman Passus v (A- and B-texts) there is a confession of 'Robert the Robber'; and the literary fame of the prince of highwaymen, 'Robin Hood', belongs to this period.
d 14. do wel and bettre: note this further evidence of the popularity of Piers Plowman, with its visions of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest.
[XV]
a 8. Þe clot him clingge! 'May the clay cling to him!' i.e. 'Would he were dead!'
a 12. Þider: MS. Yider, and conversely MS. Þiif 23 for Yiif 'if'. y and þ are endlessly confused by scribes.
b 1. Lenten ys come... to toune. In the Old English Metrical Calendar phrases like cymeð... us to tune Martius reðe, 'fierce March comes to town', are regular. The meaning is 'to the dwellings of men', 'to the world'.