Page:The English Peasant.djvu/22

 to expose the corruptions which were destroying the State, and he sought its reform by trying to arouse in its various members a determination to do their duty in that station of life to which God had called them. But there was only one upon whom he could look with satisfaction: the hardworking husbandman; the others, and above all those whose office it was to guide the people into the highest truth, being given over to selfishness and hypocrisy.

To the labouring class he pointed, not only as an example of life, but as the only one which at that difficult crisis had light enough to guide the rest, and accordingly Piers the Plowman is represented as occupying in relation to England very much the position of one of the Prophets in the old Hebrew Commonwealth. In the midst of a world in which all manner of men are working and wandering with no other reward for their pains but that of finding themselves prisoners in the Castle of Care, Piers the Plowman is ready and willing to lead them into the Truth. Saturated through and through with the thoughts that gave rise to Lollardism, social and religious, he is no mere leveller. He accepts the constitution of things into which he has been born; the king is to rule, the bishop to guide, the knight to defend, while he is to labour for the common weal. But this constitution of things he looks upon as implying a mutual covenant. When a knight tells him that he will try to do as he has been taught, Piers replies,—

This idea of a mutual covenant was as revolutionary as Wiclif's theory of Dominion. As the latter relieved the Christian conscience from the necessity of obedience to rulers who were traitors to the Suzerain of the Universe, so the former destroyed the right of an undutiful lord over his serfs. In either case the appeal lay to the Individual Conscience and the Common Sense; thus it is that at the very outset Langland shows Conscience resisting the King and supported by Reason.

But the Plowman's theory is thorough; all classes are parties to this covenant, the labourer as well as the knight. Therefore, he