From James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London Longman, 1990)

Groat (= 4 pennies)

Penny (= roughly a day’s wage for a laborer; contains about .0347 troy oz. of silver)

Farthing (= ¼ penny)

EDWARD D G REX ANGLIA FRANC D HIB

(Edward, by God’s grace King of England & France & Lord of Hibernia)

Outer: POSVI DEUM ADIVTOREM ME

(I have made God my helper)

Inner: CIVITA EBORACI

(City of York)

From Walsingham

From Canterbury Cathedral

From St. James, Compostella

From Rome

Pilgrim with a badge-covered hat

Course of the plague, 1346-53

Burial of plague victims at Tournai, 1349Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique MS 13076-7, f. 24v

Richard II (mid-1390s?)

Richard sails to meet the rebels, June 1381

The Tower of London

Death of Wat Tyler, June 1381

Death of Wat Tyler, June 1381BL MS Royal 18.E.I, f.175

William Walworth’s dagger?

From James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London Longman, 1990)

From James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London Longman, 1990)

THREE-AND-A-HALF VIEWS OF THE TEARING OF THE PARDON

1. In the context of the second vision, the tearing fulfills the Mosaic typology of the biblical genre that has arisen as Langland's latest experiment in finding an authoritative mode for his poem.

2. In the context of the poem at large, the tearing arises from the conflict of the priest and Piers over the pastoral authority to wield such a document (7.107-147.).

3. In the context of the previous passus--of the real world of which Piers is a part--the tearing results from an insurmountable disjunction between the idealized and traditional social relations described by the Pardon and the intractable class and economic conflicts revealed elsewhere in the poem:

a. 7.61-64 vs. 6.302-318, on landless laborersb. 7.9-12, kings and knights, vs. 6.21-56 (the bargain with Piers) and 6. 159-70 (the knight's

failure to discipline Waster)c. 7.40-60a, lawyers, vs. 3.13-25, justices and Meedd. 7.18-39, merchants, vs. 2.213-217, 3.76-92, 5.198-273, esp. 242ff, on the undermining of the feudal order

3A: Simpson's view, that Piers realizes the harshness of the creed's demands: that one simply can't do well enough to earn one's salvation. This turns into the theme of the poem after Will awakes, though right away we can see a problem: Will is looking for a person, a noun, a personification; the "pardon" contained a verb. Moreover, one could argue that Piers is confronted here by the same harsh terms he dealt out to the wasters in the previous passus.

From James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London Longman, 1990)