Piers Plowman Tradition - 16th and 17th Centuries

16th and 17th Centuries

(Unless otherwise noted, dates given here refer to the year when the work was first printed.)

Many of the previously mentioned plowman texts, which first circulated in manuscript, reappeared later in print, often with some degree of intentional alteration and editorializing that aimed at construing them as proto-Protestant. This is true also of the first printed editions of Piers Plowman in 1550 and 1561 by Robert Crowley and Owen Rogers. William Tyndale may have (and was thought by some contemporaries) to have supplied the preface to the printed edition of the Praier and Complaynte, which aroused the critical pen of Thomas More. John Foxe did his part to canonize the same text in four editions of his famous Actes and Monuments from 1570 to 1610. Like Jack Upland, The Plowman's Tale became associated with Geoffrey Chaucer and was added by various editors to four editions of Chaucer's collected works between 1542 and 1602. I Playne Piers which Cannot Flatter, a mixture of parts of The Plowman's Tale and new material added some time after 1540, was printed in 1550 and ascribed to the author of Piers Plowman who was then unknown or identified as either Chaucer, John Wycliffe, or Robert Langland. I Playne Piers was reprinted by the Puritan Martinist writers in the Martin Marprelate Controversy in 1589. It was then retitled, O read me, for I am of great antiquitie . . . I am the Gransier of Martin Mare-prelitte.

There were also many new texts produced in the sixteenth century that may be considered parts of the Piers Plowman tradition, such as Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calendar which makes use of a character named "Piers" and consciously borrows lines from The Plowman's Tale. Spenser's character, Colin Clout, who appears in two of his poems, is also a Piers-like figure derived from John Skelton. John Bale regarded Skelton as a vates pierius - poetic prophet, with pierius perhaps alluding to Piers, the pre-eminent English prophet-poet. Bale was pleased with Skelton's attacks on the clergy and his open breach of clerical celibacy. Colin Clout (1521) is one of Skelton's anti-Wolsey satires where the title character, a vagabond, complains about corrupt churchmen.

Sixteenth-century texts that refer to the poem Piers Plowman or the character "Piers Plowman" include:

• The Banckett of Iohan the Reve unto Peirs Ploughman, Laurens laborer, Thomlyn tailer and Hobb of the hille with others (British Library MS Harley 207) was written c. 1532. In it, Jacke Jolie, a Protestant, quotes reformers, including Martin Luther, on the Eucharist. A Catholic Piers defends the Roman doctrine.
• Jack of the North, an anti-enclosure dialogue written c. 1549.
• A Godly Dyalogue and Dysputacyion Betwene Pyers Plowman and a Popysh Preest concernyng the supper of the lorde (c. 1550)
• Thomas Churchyard’s The Contention...upon David Dycers Dreame (c. 1551-52)
• Possibly by Robert Crowley, Pyers Plowmans Exhortation unto the Lordes, Knightes, and Burgoysses of the Parlyamenthouse (c. 1550)
• George Gascoigne, The Fruites of Warre (1575) and The Steel Glas (1576), uses but complicates the tradition. Piers becomes an ambivalent figure capable of self-interest and vice; he is no longer a pure, idealized character. Gascoigne satirizes corrupt clergy and elites as well as the "innocent" plowman types whose complaints are motivated by the same self-interest. Rampant individualism transcends all social divisions.
• Possibly by Francis Thynne, Newes from the North Otherwise called the Conference between Simon Certain and Pierce Plowman (1579)
• Possibly by William Kempe and Edward Alleyn, A Merry Knack to Know a Knave (1594), a late Elizabethan morality play in which Piers Plowman is introduced by Honesty and complains to the king about unjust landlords. When it was performed on 11 June 1592, a riot broke out in the audience; this led to the City Council's order that all theatres be closed until September. Another play, A knack to know an honest man (1596) is probably a response; it involves shepherds and was printed by John Danter, Thomas Nashe's printer.

Less directly associated with Piers are:

• God Spede the Plough
• A Lytell Geste how the Plowman lerned his Pater Noster (c. 1510), printed by Wynkyn de Worde and in circulation as late as 1560 and 1582. In it a Catholic priest is the figure of right religion while the plowman is an avaricious ignoramus. Perhaps broad sympathy for this point of view explains why Piers Plowman was not printed until 1550.
• Of Gentylnes and Nobylyte: A dyaloge betwene the marchaunt the knyght and the plowman dysputyng who is a verey gentylman and who is a noble man and how men shuld come to auctoryte, compiled in a maner of an enterlude, or the Dialogue of the Gentleman and Plowman... (1525). This is a dramatic work that is often mistitled as the Dialogue of the Gentleman and Plowman. Its printer, John Rastell, or John Heywood may have been the author. In the dialogue, the plowman takes over and wins the debate, arguing for individual merit based on inner virtue. In the process, the plowman critically examines the bases of the wealth of the landed aristocracy.
• A Proper Dialogue Between A Gentleman and a Husbandman (1529 and 1530), mixes fourteenth and fifteenth-century Lollard texts with contemporary Protestant material.
• The Pilgrim's Tale (c. 1530s)
• John Bon and Mast Parson (1547 or 1548)
• Barnabe Googe, Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonettes (1563)
• The Kalender of Shepardes (c. 1570), translated from the French by Robert Copland.
• A Pedlar's Tale to Queen Elizabeth (1578-90?) A play in which the main character is an itinerant laborer with prophetic, satirical analysis and advice for elites regarding social ills.
• Death and the Five Alls, an illustrated broadside depicting the plowman as the pillar of society.
• A Compendious or Briefe Examination of Certayne Ordinary Complaints, first published in 1581. Reprinted in 1583 as De Republica Anglorum: A Discourse on the Commonwealth of England. Attributed to Sir Thomas Smith as well as William Stafford and John Hales. It discusses history and economic conditions under Edward VI. Depicts a complaining farmer/husbandman in a dialogue with a doctor who tells him to rethink his old-fashioned ideas about the agricultural economy. Outlines English social hierarchy: 1) gentlemen, 2) citizens and burgesses, 3) yeomen, 4) the fourth sort of people who do not rule. Affirms orthodox opinion that it is not for the commons to discuss or influence public matters and policy; they are politically disenfranchied within a paternalistic system which is nevertheless undercut by acknowledgment of their power even as it is denied. The common yeoman is identified as distinct from the rogue; it is the yeoman who forms the basis of English society and economy. Yet he is not to be compared to gentlemen on the basis of wit, conduct or power. The Yeomen are numerous, obedient, strong, able to endure hardship, and courageous. (I.e., they make excellent, loyal, patriotic conscripts.)
• An Almanac for 1582 predicts the commons will be "factious...quarrelous, impatient, and outragious, one envying the estate and degree of another: as the poor the rich, the ploughman the gentleman."
• John Harvey, A Discorsive Problem concerning the Prophecies, How far they are to be valued, or credited, according to the surest rules, and directions in Divinitie, Philosophie, Astrologie and other learning (1588) states, "For how easily might I heer repeate almost infinite examples of villainous attempts, pernitious uprores, horrible mischeefes, slaughters, blasphemies, heresies, and all other indignities, and outrages, desperately committed, and perpetrated through means of such inveterate, and new broched forgeries. . . . neither shal I therefore neede to ransacke Pierce Plowmans satchell; nor to descant upon fortunes, newly collected out of the old Shepherds Kalendar..."
• Richard Harvey, Plaine Percevall the Peace-Maker of England (1590), an unsophisticated man of common-sense, Percevall attacks all the anti-Martinists but purports to settle the controversy.
• Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, books 1-3 (1590) In the first book, the Redcross knight's origins are rich with multiple meanings: as a national symbol, he is St. George, England's patron saint, and Spenser stresses the humble, agricultural origins of the name George (Georgos is Greek for "farmer"). On a more individualized level, Redcrosse represents a radical social mobility, going from the plow to the queen's court. Spenser is no doubt expressing a kind of personal allegory that would resonate with other ambitious men with humble origins, but such mobility also threatens the agrarian order by eroding the fixity of the social hierarchy upheld by the earlier, conservative agrarian complaints:

Thence she thee brought into this faerie Lond, And in an heaped furrow did thee hyde, Where thee a Ploughman all unweeting fond, As he his toylsome teme that way did guyde, And brought thee up in ploughmans state to byde, Whereof Georgos he thee gave to name; Till prickt with courage, and thy forces pryde, To Faery court thou cam'st to seeke for fame, And prove thy puissant armes, as seemes thee best became.

• Robert Greene, A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592), the basis for a lost play performed by The Chamberlain's Men, Clothbreeches and Velvethose (1600).
• Thomas Nashe, Pierce Pennilesse His Supplication to the Devil (1592)
• Gabriel Harvey, Pierce's Supererogation (1593), a response to Nashe's attacks on Harvey and his brothers.
• Robert Wilson The Cobler's Prophecy (1594), a play.
• Pedler's Prophecie (1595), a play.
• Henry Chettle, Piers Plainnes seaven yeres Prentiship In Arcadia, a picaro Piers talks about his life (much of it spent in London) to Arcadian shepherds in Tempe. He has served as an apprentice under seven bad masters (an occasion for another taxonomy of London life and vices). Giving up on the court as an exception to general corruption, Chettle's Piers follows the precedent from Virgil to Wyatt and Spenser: satisfaction will only be found in pastoral retirement. Like much other late Elizabethan prose, John Lyly's Euphues is an obvious source of inspiration. The influence of other masterpieces of rogue literature is apparent, especially Nashe's Pierce Pennilesse and The Unfortunate Traveller.

Like Thomas More and Robert Crowley, Bishop Hugh Latimer valued "commune wealth" more than "private commodity." He was an outspoken critic of enclosure, the abuses of landlords, and the aristocrats who lined their pockets through the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Like Crowley, Latimer was able to be especially outspoken when Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset had controlling influence in the court as Lord Protector of England during part of the minority of Edward VI. A famous sermon of Latimer's that represented preachers as God's plowmen, "The Sermon of the Plowers," was delivered at St. Paul's Cross, 18 January 1548 and was printed that year by John Day. This was the last of four "Sermons on the Plough;" unfortunately the first three are lost. While Latimer's message is spiritual, it has a sharp political edge that also acknowledges the material concerns of people affected by enclosure. Latimer attacks idle clergy as "plowmen" who cause a spiritual famine, and enclosure is used as a metaphor for hindrances to proper preaching. The devil is called the busiest bishop and greatest plowman in England; he is seeding the land with the ritual and ornamental trappings of popery. Latimer himself, through the style of his sermons, typifies the plain, homely and direct speech of Piers and popular Protestantism. Anthony Anderson's The Shield of our Safetie (1581) uses Latimer's figure of the pastor as a plowman but is unwilling to ascribe special virtue to the commons and rural laborers. Godliness is lacking "from top to toe" in England, "from the Nobilitie, to the Plowman and his mate." George Gifford's A Briefe Discourse of Certaine Points of the Religion which is among the Common Sort of Christians (1583) asserts that "it is not for plowmen to meddle with scriptures."