62–64 God … spene: RK advance these three lines, which appear in the manuscripts after line 69; their discussion (pp. 172–73) ignores the obvious explanation of misinsertion after a line ending in serue (as both 61 and 69 do). Sledd 1940 offers a punctuation (followed by Pearsall1) that makes the manuscript order reasonably sensible.
70–81 Ac sythe … ychaunged: Pearsall properly notes that this long sentence to the end of line 79 is formed by a series of five parallel clauses, all dependent on Ac sythe; the remaining pair of clauses outlines the results that have occurred. Will moves naturally from insisting on keeping clerkes and knaues separate to a calamitous view of contemporary disaster, ending with a prophecy reminiscent of such earlier moments as Prol.62–65, 118–24.
The depopulation following the Black Death reduced the number of available priests. In this shortage, canonical distinctions could no longer be sustained, and there were “innumerable dispensations … sanctioning the ordination of candidates who did not possess the usual qualifications of age, of legitimate and free birth, of education, etc.” (Putnam 1916:13). Will thus offers a different reading of the situation already discussed at Prol.81–94.
This prospect reminds him of manifold analogous breakdowns. Boundaries between estates should be preserved, but in all the (hypothetical) cases Will mentions, aristocratic privilege is subject to incursions from every direction. Yet Will attacks behavior exactly analogous to his own. Will’s claim broadens the case far past his own particular merits to show Reason’s undue fastidiousness about his own apparent lawlessness; Reason irrationally selects to prosecute but one of many social distortions. Post-Plague society has become so depraved that Will’s valid claims to gentility have been undermined from every side and thus appear lacking, yet one further modern instance of depravity. Moreover, the vagueness of the concluding line—Will’s inability to imagine social improvement—is linked with his necessary vagueness about his personal amendment in subsequent lines.
However, one should see that it is only within this “vague space” that the poem PP can come into existence and be written. The text answers the dreamer-poet’s disquiet at contemporary conditions, amply illustrated in the first vision (not to mention his interrogation here). Equally, as 1–108n and 11n argue at some length, the poem can only evolve (roll out) as the compulsive substitute for that penance the dreamer cannot bring himself to undertake. The passage, more directly than Will’s return to this complaint at 9.204–13L, inspires PPCrede 744–67.
70 bondemen barnes haen be mad bisshopes: At the best, Will in his doomsterism probably alludes to the use, developing through the first half of the fourteenth century, of bishoprics to support royal administrators. While no bishop during the century seems to have risen, as Will alleges, from serfdom, a number of candidates useful to the king for their administrative ability were branded “laicus” or “illiteratus” when presented (see Pantin 1962:13–14). In practice, in the later fourteenth century “a new type of bishop appeared, drawn from the higher aristocracy” (ibid. 23).
71 And barones bastardus haen be Erchedekenes. Lords were expected to provide benefices for their servants, household chaplains, and clerical staff, and certainly expected to look after their families. Pantin cites (1962:32) the Liber Niger Edwardi IV, which assumes that magnates will reward clerics in their service with “officialships [an erchedeken was a bishop’s chief administrative officer; cf. Pantin 1962:26–27], deaneries, prebends …”
72–75 And sopares … kynges worschipe: The word sopar has been persistently misconstrued (including by MED) and has nothing to do with soap. It means simply “shop-keeper, merchant,” as in the London street “Sopare(s) Lane” in Cheapside. The etymon is British Medieval Latin soparius, derivative of scopa/shopa/sopa “shop,” all presumably representing an unrecorded OE *scopa, *scopere. Cf. Nightingale 1995:81–82. London soap-making seems to have been a post-Langlandian industry; cf. Thrupp 1948:10; Stow, Survey 1:251.
Thrupp discusses at length (1948:234–87) the efforts of merchants to penetrate the ranks of genteel landed society. Perhaps particularly interesting is the case of the grocer John Wiltshire, who could purchase his knight’s fee but could not persuade others to let him perform the associated coronation services in 1377 (see 259). Cf. O’Connor’s description (1994) of the activities of John Pyel, a fringe player who escaped prosecution by the Good Parliament in 1376. In fact, the only London merchants elevated to knighthoods in the period, mayor William Walworth and three companions, received the honor for “military service,” their aid in dispatching Wat Tyler at Smithfield in 1381; cf. Barron 2000:410–12. Here the reversal of roles resembles the exchange knight/mercer that Covetise describes at 6.248–52; the knight’s son must become a laborer, impoverish himself, in order to perform his appropriate military duty (lines 74–75 recall 1.90–106).
76–77 And monkes … ypurchased: The income of monasteries, which should be expended in the conventional monastic alms, hospitality to the sick and dying, and weekly doles of bread and ale, has been diverted to the militaristic aggrandizement of relations. Under William Gray, bishop of Lincoln 1431–36, the severest visitation formula for an ill-run house states, “elemosina consumitur; hospitalitas non observatur” (the funds for alms are dissipated; the rules of hospitality—often opulent and extended to wealthy patrons, not the poor—not observed) (cited Knowles 1957:211 n1). Instead of this socially useful occupation, in which the monk of genteel birth performs with proper spiritual gentility, a place in a religious establishment has become an extension of the family household and the assets of the community are transferred to private use (cf. the examples of abbots making personal use of revenues mentioned by Knowles 211, 213). Reason hears this complaint and addresses it in his sermon, lines 156–67 below (esp. 165–66).
78–79 Popes … to kepe: The dreamer addresses two similar abuses, both involving a purchase from which an individual like him, poor but noble by birth, would be excluded. From Popes, one would receive a provision to occupy a certain benefice (see Pantin 1962:47–75); patrones would hold the advowson of, the right of appointment to, a particular benefice (cf. again the discussion of 13.104–14). The notion that such appointments might be purchased leads to the charge that successful applicants are Symondus sones, the children of Simon Magus (Acts 8:18–24); cf. 2.65–66n.
83–88 For in my Consience … alle thynges: Given the current state of the world, no external spiritual guidance is trustworthy. The individual can only rely on his own conscience as he pursues justice. The dreamer appeals to Conscience for support in claiming that his whole mode of lowly living—which Reason identifies as having no regimen but that lines 86–88 define in terms of the B version’s doctrine of nonsolicitousness—amounts to a penitential act (as Will will in passus 9 claim of the deserving poor en masse).
However different the modality, the phrase penaunce discrete (84) recalls the end of the upcoming vision in the A and B versions. There Piers, the poem’s closest approximation to a parfit man, takes on penaunce discrete as his primary métier. This passage is “the displaced form of Piers’s tearing of the Pardon sent from Truth that is cancelled in C” (Middleton 1997:263, cf. 292). Here the dreamer’s effort to replace Piers and to enact this promise (in lines 105–8 below) only turns out to be a further example of the recursion he will shortly describe, a fall back into the habit of sleeping (and of poetic composition).
Will also attempts to wrap himself in the ne solliciti sitis ethic prominent in AB. Skeat compares B 7.126–35, and one might also notice resemblances to the lunatic lollers of 9.105–39. But Will’s behavior might be distinguished from Patience’s invocation of the same verses at 15.244–49 and his seriousness perceived as tempered, a self-serving joke. Given the description of line 46, the pater noster, with other associated prayers, is completely responsible