Lord is the portion of my inheritance,” a direct claim to heavenly heirship (and line 59 effectively translates it as if it were being spoken by a priest). This verse traditionally provided “benefit of clergy” and defined that status as essentially Latin literacy; see further Imaginative’s discussion at 14.128–30. The verse achieved this status from its quotation during the ceremony of tonsuring new clerks (Alford 1992:80, s.v. B 12.189); cf. PLM 453–54, where Moses (representing episcopacy) tonsures aspiring clerics “seyinge hem þat God shulde be here part and here heritage.” In de Deguilleville’s account, Reason then describes the haircuts as comic, fools’ garb, but, paradoxically, in their bare pates, hiding true wisdom (457–502); cf. B 15.1–11, 9.105–39, 22.74–79, etc.
clemencia non constringit, given the preceding tag “And elsewhere (it is written),” presumably also cites a text, but one I have failed to identify; one should probably read constringitur. Pearsall aptly associates the statement “Clemency is not constrained” with Portia’s “The quality of mercy is not strained” (Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice 4.1.179). However, the valences of Portia’s claim and that here are not quite similar. One should compare two standard definitions of the virtue Clemency (a “part” of the cardinal virtue Temperance) widely cited in the Middle Ages, Cicero, De inventione 2.54.164; and Seneca, De clementia 2.3, the latter of which reads: “Clementia est … lenitas superioris adversus inferiorem in constituendis poenis” (Clemency is a superior’s lenience in inflicting punishment on an inferior). Clemency “is not constrained,” because it voluntarily avoids what is constrained, the proper penalty assigned to a criminous action. Equally, by its nature, it is the virtue of a noble man, a superior or eyre, who displays meekness, not a desire to impose punishment. See further Seneca’s discussion, De clementia 1.7.1–5. The remark is obviously double-edged: Will directs Reason’s attention to his potential lack of clemency, while claiming his own pure intentions.
61–69 Hit bycometh … to serue: If the preceding lines suggest the heedless nature of clerical aristocracy, these emphatically distinguish clerkes and knaues, the illiterate lower classes, committed to agrarian labor. The dreamer invokes canonical regulation to indicate, in yet another way, restrictions that prevent those born to manual labor from advancing to an improper degre, to a state where they might perform intellectual work. For such regulation, as it forms part of the 1388 Statute of Laborers, see 35–44n; Skeat (1886:2, xxxiv–xxxv) connects these lines with a parliamentary petition of 1391. Lines 67–68 reiterate, as two fundamental requirements for priesthood, that the candidate must be legitimate and that he must not be a slave or a beggar. The first such concern, as Middleton notes (1997:258–59), also piqued John Ball, who claimed no bastard “aptum regno Dei” (Walsingham 1:544).
The two criteria Will invokes are of different degrees of plausibility. On the one hand, Gratian is clear that slaves, unless freed by their lord from servitude, are debarred from ordination (Decretum 1.54; CJC 1:206–14). But the discussion of whether a priest’s child, and by extension any product of an unsanctified union, may be ordained (Decretum 1.56; CJC 1:219–23) offers a range of views. These include a series of attacks on the proposition that parental sin descends to the offspring, and the authors generally would allow ordination on a showing of the candidate’s virtuous merits (succinctly Jerome in c. 8). These discussions may come as some surprise to proponents of genetic predestinarianism elsewhere in the poem, notably Holychurch at 2.24–42 and Wit at 10.203–35. (The latter, in the form of B 9.121–57, as Justice 1994:105–11 points out, is a plausible source for John Ball’s views; note the subsequent 236–55, unique to C.)
For those excluded from intellectual work on these bases, carting (65) is an appropriate task. Although Reason does not mention this job in lines 13–21 above, 12 Rich. II, c. 5 (SR 2:57) uses the phrases “to labour at the Plough and Cart” as a general synecdoche for agricultural work. Carting evokes the hazards of such labor and was the equivalent of modern long-haul trucking. For the dangers of transport (which include falling asleep on the job, perhaps relevant to the dreamer’s objections), see Hanawalt 1986:126–27, 131–32; and cf. Ch, CT I.2022–23, more distantly PF 102, CT III.1537–70.
In contrast, Will outlines appropriately clerical jobs in lines 61–64. The list shows some self-serving shuffling in the dreamer’s claims. Although his highest pretension, to be an eyre of heuene, apparently involves serving Christ through prayer, Will opens the possibility of other clerical labors. Thus, clerks serve not simply God but good men (62) too, qualifying the universal condemnation of Prol.90–94. Further, clerks do not just pray but “sitten and wryten, | Redon and resceyuen”—perform exactly those acts associable with a reeve and his accounts (cf. Middleton 1997:251, 253, 309 n57). In this framing, the dreamer again appears a steward, here one who strives to ingratiate himself with Reason (cf. his role as defined by Holychurch at 1.50–53). Of course, the reeve rendering his account offers yet another forecast here of a character probably literally to be conceived a reeve, Piers Plowman (cf. 7.182–204n). But being such a reeve is also continuing as Will always has, “ma[kyng] of tho men as resoun me tauhte,” and a reprise of lines 22–25.
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
