45–47 The lomes … seuene psalmes: Recall lines 12–21 above; the dreamer may, once again, rely on Statute language. To forestall wage inflation, Parliament requires open hiring meetings, to be held in a public place in boroughs; to these laborers are to “bring openly in their Hands … their Instruments” (25 Edw. III, c. 2.1; SR 1:311). The dreamer shifts allegorical—and argumentative—levels in a way that anticipates more powerful shifts of this kind later in this vision, where spiritual values become the metaphorical meanings of agrarian acts—see 7.161ffnn and the later reformulations of 8.1–4n etc., as well as the citation of B 15.125 above. Here, in self-defense, Will inverts the later technique and claims a literal hard labor out of spiritual action, cf. 48 here soules.
The word lome recalls other themes. For not only does it refer to a laborer’s instrument, at GGK 2309 it refers to military weaponry, a sense that looks ahead to line 58 and Will’s claim to belong to a nonmilitary aristocracy. Moreover, when at line 35, the dreamer may imply that his education has been like a maiming, he suggests that he has (or should have) exchanged one lome, his penis (see WA 4877 and cf. 22.195), for a second, the (prayer-)book—and if priestly, for chastity as well. He should no longer sow physical seed but spiritual; his plowshare (cf. the uses of the implement in Jean de Meun’s Rose and Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale, and the lengthy discussion, Barney 1973) is prayer—or what Will often substitutes for it, the composition of his poem. His claim for an equality of manual and spiritual work is perhaps affirmed in B 6.247–49, lines revised out in the C version.
The locution þat y… with must be read with both verbs in line 45. One might further notice that deserue, an echo of lines 12 and 32, here seems to attract honorific overtones (“merit”) largely absent in the previous use in line 42 (where the word seems to mean only “earn”). Both uses pun on Statute language, where “servantz” and “servir” define, respectively, those covered by the legal prescription and the act that they are to perform; cf. the climax of this argument in Crist for to serue 61, in context opposed to to labory and lordes kyn to serue 69.
When he comes to list his lomes, Will mentions a series of common prayers that he routinely repeats on behalf of others. At least in part, he is thinking of Conscience’s visionary prediction at 3.464–65 (q.v.), where these prayers, and not the manual labor enjoined on everyone else, constitute the appropriate duties of perfect, messianic-age priests. Such a memory leads up to Will’s claim to perfection in line 84, itself in part an appeal to the Conscience who spoke the lines in C 3 to defend him as fulfilling an ideal status. For the “Pater noster,” see 16.322–23n.
To the prayers Conscience has already mentioned, Will here adds the primer. The word describes the “Book of Hours [of the Virgin],” the customary private prayer-book for laity. Such volumes typically include the penitential psalms and Office of the Dead as well as the hours; for their usual contents and a good introductory statement about their use, see de Hamel 1986:159–64. A much more detailed survey (unfortunately, none of the books described are English) appears in Wieck 1988; for typical contents, see esp. 149–67. Duffy 2011 provides compensating images of English examples. For the equivalent modern volume, see Officium parvum; for ME vernacular examples, see Maskell 1882, 2:1–179 (“placebo” and “dirige” at 110, 123); and The Prymer (“placebo” and “dirige” at 105:52, 56).
To a certain extent, as Galloway notes (1992:96, following Donaldson 1949:221, cf. 208–9), Will’s prayers provide “a neat summary of what was considered paradigmatic by the late fourteenth century for being ‘letterede.’ ” But Will’s self-presentation is calculatedly poised against a specific “professional” status, that of the “lewed Ermyte.” This phrase translates Latin heremita non literatus, a term limited to one narrow discursive context, discussions of the liturgical offices assigned hermits in those few surviving rules for that status. In such contexts (see Clay 1914:201–2), the prayers assigned the lettered hermit—and apparently closed to “lewed” ones—precisely correspond to Will’s lomes (see Hanna 1997:36–38).
As Skeat noted, not just the requiem masses Will is not qualified to say, but prayers also, have power to remit time in Purgatory. Cf. PC 3586–89 and the canonistic text underpinning this view, Decretum 2.13.2.22 (CJC 1:728). The dreamer’s apparent engagement in intercessory prayer should probably be read forward into his meditations at 9.318–52. His deprecation there of acts geared simply to remitting purgatorial time, rather than an effort to Dowell, represents a substantial change of opinion peculiar to this version.
49–50 fouchensaf … | To be welcome: Vouchsafe occurs most frequently in the fourteenth century in romances to describe grants, of property, of a spouse, or of goods. The locution underwrites Will’s subsequent claims to membership in a new aristocracy (cf. line 58). In contrast to the suggestion of a back-door beggar in hacches 29, Will claims he is an honored guest in households.
50 oþerwhile in a monthe: The adverb again echoes Imaginative’s attack on the dreamer’s poetry (cf. B 12.23), canceled in this version. The lines may lie behind the claim at Mum 193–99 that a wise king would let a truth-teller visit once a month.
52 but my wombe one: Will’s claim to an appropriately modest pay may also gain further resonances from the Statutes. For, in a situation of expansive demand and reduced labor force, government officials charged that chantry priests, like field laborers, were demanding higher wages after the Black Death. Edward III’s council appears to have perceived such activities as widespread when it promulgated the original Statute of Laborers. On publication, separate letters containing the ordinance were sent to sheriffs and to bishops, and Edward commanded the latter, inter alia, “that you likewise moderate the Stipendiary Chaplains of your said Diocese, who, as it is said, do now in like manner refuse to serve without an excessive Salary; and compel them to serve for the accustomed Salary, as it behoveth them, under Pain of Suspension and Interdict” (23 Edw. III, in fine; SR 1:308). For episcopal efforts at holding down clerical wages, the three promulgations of the constitution “Effrenata,” see Putnam 1908:188–89, 432–33; Putnam 1916; Harding 1984:185–86; and cf. Scase 1989:144–45.
53–60L And also … constringit[ur]: With a certain (mock?) deference to his interlocutor (cf. “syre resoun,” perhaps also an effort to enlist him as fellow clerk), Will presents the general case that clerics might well fall outside Reason’s legislative ambit. With their crounes (the tonsure), they form a special sort of aristocracy. He readily converts the absence of his frendes’ continuing benefactions into a claim for a spiritual inheritance in the job they had prepared him for (but that he may no longer practice).
Will may be guided by the Statute in terms that recur in lines 61–64: as someone who prays for members of well-to-do households, he might be construed an aristocratic hanger-on, a special type of servant (as a minstrel also is). The 1388 Statute absolves persons with such claims from its prohibitions on unlicensed movement: “The meaning of this Ordinance is not, that any Servants, which ride or go (chivachent ou aillent) in the Business (busoignes) of their Lords or Masters, shall be comprised within the same Ordinance for the Time of the same Business” (12 Rich. II, c. 3; SR 2:56). Tuck (1969:236) suggests that this exclusion was introduced by the magnates during the process of framing the Statute language after receipt of the initial Commons petition, which lacks any such exclusion.
But again, L presents biblical rhetoric and Statute discourse as mutually supportive. And although Will’s most immediate