Royal MS 18 B XVII

VISION of Piers the Ploughman, with Piers the Ploughman's Creed prefixed, viz.:-

1. Piers the Ploughman's Creed : the alliterative satirical poem, based on the Vision, describing the writer's search for some one to teach him his creed, his ill-success with the friars and final success with the honest ploughman. First printed as Pierce the Ploughmans Crede, 1553 (repr. by T. D. Whitaker, 1814), and edited from Trinity College, Cambridge, MS. R. 3. 15, the only other copy, with collation of this MS. and the printed text, by W. W. Skeat, Early Engl. Text Soc., 1867. He then suggested that the author was the same as that of the Ploughman's tale printed in many editions of Chaucer, but this view is now abandoned (see Cambridge History of Engl. Litarature, 1908, ii, p. 39). Without title. Several missing lines have been inserted and numerous corrections made by a later (second half of 16th cent.) hand. f. 1. Beg.:-

'Crose and curteys Christ thys begynyng spede For the Fathers frendshipe that formyd hevin.' 2. Vision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman: the third or C recension made circ. 1393-1399, whether by the writer [William Langland ?] of the A recension or not is at present disputed (Camb. Hist. Engl. Lit. ii, ch. i). It consists of ten 'passus' of the vision proper, with colophon (f. 55) 'Explicit visio Willelmi de Petro plou[]man', followed by 'Visio eiusdem Willelmi de Dowell' in seven passus, 'Dobet' in four, and 'Dobest' in two. The MS. is described by Skeat in his Early Engl. Text Soc. ed. of the C text, 1873, p. xlviii, and in his two-volume edition, Oxford, 1886, ii, p. lxxii, but not collated. f. 14. Beg.:-

'In somer season . whan softe was the sonn I shope me into shrobbes . as I shepharde wer.' On f. i b are some memoranda for horticultural operations, in a late 16th cent. hand, headed 'Sesouns off seedes'. Vellum; ff. i + 123. 111/4 in. x 81/2 in. First quarter of XVI cent. Gatherings of 8 leaves (last⁴). Sec. fol. 'They weren'. On f. 123 are scribbled names including 'Rychard Wyckes constable', John Gylldon, and a longer erased inscription. Not in the old catalogues.