he
Semi-Saxon and the old English, in point of language, retaining the
alliterative feature of the former; and, as a teacher of history, it
displays very clearly the newly awakened spirit of religious inquiry, and
the desire for religious reform among the English people: it certainly was
among the means which aided in establishing a freedom of religious thought
in England, while as yet the continent was bound in the fetters of a
rigorous and oppressive authority.

Peter, the ploughboy, intended as a representative of the common people,
drops asleep on Malvern Hills, between Wales and England, and sees in his
dream an array of virtues and vices pass before him--such as Mercy, Truth,
Religion, Covetousness, Avarice, etc. The allegory is not unlike that of
Bunyan. By using these as the personages, in the manner of the early
dramas called the Moralities, he is enabled to attack and severely scourge
the evil lives and practices of the clergy, and the abuses which had
sprung up in the Church, and to foretell the punishment, which afterward
fell upon the monasteries in the time of Henry VIII., one hundred and
fifty years later:

And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon, and all his issue forever,
_Have a knock of a king, and incurable the wound_.

His attack is not against the Church itself, but against the clergy. It
is to be remarked, in studying history through the medium of literature,
that the works of a certain period, themselves the result of history,
often illustrate the coming age, by being prophetic, or rather, as
antecedents by suggesting consequents. Thus, this Vision of Piers Plowman
indicates the existence of a popular spirit which had been slowly but
steadily increasing--which sympathized with Henry II. and the
priest-trammelling "Constitutions of Clarendon," even while it was ready
to go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket, the illustrious
victim of the quarrel between Henry and his clergy. And it points with no
uncertain finger to a future of greater light and popular development, for
this bold spirit of reform was strongly allied to political rights. The
clergy claimed both spiritualities and temporalities from the Pope, and,
being governed by ecclesiastical laws, were not like other English
subjects amenable to the civil code. The king's power was thus endangered;
a proud and encroaching spirit was fostered, and the clergy became
dissolute in their lives. In the words of Piers Plowman: