Dulcis in hoc mundo, quam gloria laudat inanis."
Symon de Covino, in the Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des
Chartes, tom. ii. p 236.
[8] We have a very remarkable proof of the popularity of Piers Ploughman with the lower orders (among whom probably parts of it were repeated by memory), and of its influence on the insurrections of the peasantry in the reign of Richard II., in the seditious letter of John Ball to the commons of Essex, preserved by Thomas Walsingham (Hist. Angl. p. 275). I am not sure if "John Schep" may not contain an allusion to the opening of the poem; but the second passage, here printed in Italics, refers evidently to Passus VI. and VII., and the third is an allusion to the characters of Do-well and Do-best.
"John Schep sometime Seint Mary priest of Yorke, and now of Colchester, graeteth well John Namelesse, and John the Miller, and John Carter, and biddeth them that they beware of guyle in borough, and stand together in Gods name, and biddeth Piers Plowman goe to his werke, and chastise well Hob the robber, and take with you John Trewman, and all his fellows, and no moe. John the Miller hath y-ground, smal, small, small. The kings sonne of heaven shal pay for all. Beware or ye be woe, know your frende fro your foe. Have ynough, and say hoe: And do well and better, and flee sinne, and seeke peace and holde you therin, and so biddeth John Trewman and all his fellowes."
[9] The mention of Wycliffe and of Walter Brute and other circumstances, fix the date of Piers Ploughman's Creed with tolerable certainty in the latter years of the reign of Richard II. It was probably written very soon after the year 1393, the date of the persecution of Walter Brute at Hereford; and from the particular allusion to that person we may perhaps suppose that like the Vision it was written on the Borders of Wales.
[10] Different circumstances connected with this poem (which also appears to have been proscribed, for we have no early manuscript of it) lead me to suppose that it was written in the reign of Henry IV., when the burning of heretics came into fashion, which is alluded to in the following stanza:—
"Were Christ on earth here, eftsoone
These would damne him to die:
All his hestes they han for-done,