Scase (1989:150) suggests identifying the verses the dreamer may here describe with extra draft materials in the prologue of the Ilchester manuscript. But I show (1996:204–10) that Ilchester has been derived from a standard C text, as that is known from surviving manuscript circulation. Consequently, its intrusions are unlikely to represent anything like Langlandian draft materials.
6 Consience-resoun: The appearance of these figures fills a surprising absence in the earlier versions (one that sets the “Visio” apart from ME dream poetry generally). In the AB “Visio” (as again at the poem’s end), the dreamer engages in no instructional conversations with authoritative figures, what Piehler calls “potentiae” (1971:12–13), after his abortive bout with Holychurch in passus 1. Before attempting to reform the realm (see 111–200n, 112–13n), Conscience and Reason begin at the root of its troubles: since the realm as depicted here reflects only the activity of the dreamer/poet, they examine his potential as a creator, member of the commune, and ostensible contributor to the common profit. The scene distances the dreamer’s claim (5) that he has composed in Reason’s way. Further, the relationship to Conscience he will assert at 83 may well be qualified by the echo of this line at 7.207; there Piers’s identification of Conscience as an initial step in the journey to Truth (cf. 7.184) might imply that, rather than advanced, and an authority worth heeding, the dreamer here only begins his pilgrimage.
But this pair of interlocutors may be further characterized. Although as Pearsall suggests, the scene depicts “the waking dreamer’s own rational self-analysis,” it is a self-analysis often couched within ideas of legal responsibility and legal self-justification. At the end of their preceding appearance in the poem (see esp. 4.184–86, unique to this version) Reason and Conscience hold central positions in the justice system (see Middleton 1990:57); moreover, the Statute of Laborers requires defendants to be imprisoned “tanqe il se voet justicier” (by providing sureties for future good behavior; 34 Edw. III, c. 10; SR 1:367). More to the point, the Statute penalties can be enforced on the testimony of two witnesses: “If any Man or Woman, being so required to serve, will not the same do, that proved by two true men before the Sheriff.” (25 Edw. III, c. 1; SR 1:307).
Here Reason and Conscience function as the representatives of those “mayors, bailiffs, stewards, or constables” who are constantly enjoined to apprehend those violating the Statute (e.g., 12 Rich. II, c. 3; SR 2:56). Indeed, Reason, who uses my twice (13, 17) in discussing rural occupations, may be conceived as an employer seeking to impress Will into his labor force (see 12–20n). Past critics (e.g., Clopper 1989:272–74 and 1992:117–19; Simpson 1990:2–3) have associated the examination with the early Edwardian statutes, but see 7–8n below and the further references there.
7 an hot heruest: The seasonal reference recalls Pearl, the only ME vision with a similar setting; cf. 39–40: “In Augoste in a hyʓ seysoun [usually taken to be Lammas, 1 August] | Quen corne is coruen wyth crokez kene.” The two poems have rarely been linked, although cf. Baker’s exposition of their common “Dialectic Form” (1984) and Schmidt 1984. But connections seem particularly appropriate to this passage: like L’s dreamer who seeks to justify himself (see 28n), the poet of Pearl considers the value of using time in this world (as well as the value of labor for salvation) in his narration of the parable of the vineyard (493–576). Thomas Wimbledon, in his Paul’s Cross sermon, associates the vineyard and the heavenly reward for labor there with the account of one’s stewardship demanded in Luke 16:2; see further 22–25n.
The evocation of the season has other implications, some alien to, others resembling Pearl. Both poems, for example, rely upon a commonplace association, predicated upon passages like Luke 10:2, John 4:36, and Apoc. 14:15, between harvest and the harvest of souls at the Last Judgment. The first of these is associated with the gospel precedents Will invokes at 48–52—see the notes there; and the last is echoed in line 23. Such a topic is particularly important in later parts of the second vision, both in the difficulties Piers experiences in his field work in passus 8 and in the climactic pardon scene of passus 9, and again in the reprise of these materials in passūs 21–22.
Perhaps unique to L’s conception of the season, as Burdach (1926–32:189) long ago suggested, is the feast of the universal church that also falls on 1 August, that of St. Peter ad vincula. This feast celebrates the miraculous liberation of Piers’s patron saint from Herod’s prison (Acts 12:4–17), his salvation from his legalistic tormentors. This allusion—certainly the dreamer hopes for a similar release from his interrogators—intrudes a potential connection of the dreamer and Peter/Piers Plowman; both have “lives” within the poem (cf. 7.200–201n), and the dreamer seeks a close integration with his subject. See further the early touches signaling this identification, at 12–21n, 61–69n, 98Ln, 100–101n.
As Burdach further notes, this feast, in addition to providing an occasion for the tithe of first-fruits, was the day on which the papal tax, “Peter’s pence,” was collected in parish churches. But from 1366 on, Peter’s pence was no longer being sent overseas (cf. 4.125–30 for Reason’s resistance to such export of specie) but into the royal exchequer.
7–8 y hadde myn hele | And lymes to labory with (cf. 10 In hele and unnit); 8–9 louede wel fare | And no dede to do: The dreamer’s self-description places him within a widespread later fourteenth-century discourse specifically designed to distinguish the worthy poor from those deserving of no sympathy or mercy. This discourse develops as specifically secular law a long tradition of canonistic discussions concerning the appropriate recipients of charity (cf. Tierney 1959:109–33, esp. 128–32, and the fuller discussion, 8.71–79n). The original site of such a language of discrimination, the 1349 royal Ordinance of Laborers, identifies those who fall under its purview as “every Man and Woman … able in body (potens in corpore)” (23 Edw. III, c. 1; SR 1:307); these must labor at fixed wages for those who request their “services.”
But the Ordinance equally defines all those who may labor and will not (cf. “no dede to do”): “some rather willing to beg in Idleness, than by Labour to get their Living” or “many right myghti and strong Beggars (multi validi mendicantes) … giving themselves to Idleness and Vice” (i.e., faryng wel; 23 Edw. III, pre. and c. 7; SR 1:307, 308). The regulation criminalizes the giving of any alms “to such, which may labour” (talibus qui commode laborare poterunt) “so that thereby they may be compelled to labour for their necessary living” (ut sic compellantur pro vite necessariis laborare) (c. 7). And this association of beggary, the refusal to labor, and the desire to live at ease off others’ alms was repeated on numerous occasions throughout the century, beginning with the first Statute of Laborers in 1351. Cf. the documents of 1376–77 printed at Dobson PR 72–78, as well as numerous London examples, most especially the splendid 1359 attack on sturdy beggars in Riley 1868:304–5; and see further Prol.22–26n and 41–46n, 13.79–86.
The Statute was initially conceived as economic legislation. As its authors themselves claimed, plague depopulation reduced the number of able-bodied laborers available for harvest work and consequently produced wage inflation (“many seeing the Necessity of Masters, and the great Scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive Wages,” 23 Edw. III, pre.; SR 1:307; similarly 25 Edw. III, 2, pre.; SR 1:311). Higher salaries were required to attract workers in a diminished