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Original from 1350 to 1377, a work of first-rate importance, where, if truth is altered, it is altered deliberately from political motives. Further details can be found in Molinier's bibliography.

The full title of the poem is The Vision of Piers Plowman. Three distinct versions of it exist, the first c. 1362, the second c. 1377, and the third 1393 or 1398. It has been described as "a vision of Christ seen through the clouds of humanity." It is divided into nine dreams, and is in the unrhymed, alliterative, first English manner.

Nor were the English settlers ignorant of his promise. In the Parliament held at Castledermot in 1377, they granted to him the customary annual tribute paid to his house, the nature of which calls for a word of explanation.

But this church has suffered heavily both at the hands of wilful destroyers and of the restorer. Matthew of Arras was the architect. I wonder whether he would recognize his work to-day, so much has happened to it since he completed it. Consecrated in 1377 and given over to the monks of the Augustine Order, church and monastery were thoroughly destroyed by the Hussites less than a century later.

The death of the Black Prince consummated his grief and distraction, and the heroic king gave himself up in his old age to a disgraceful profligacy, and died in the arms of Alice Pierce, in the year 1377. Fifty years pass by, and Henry V. is king of England, and renews his claim to the French throne.

His successors took up their residence in the town of Avignon, just outside the French frontier of those days. There they built a sumptuous palace in which successive popes lived in great splendor for sixty years. The prolonged exile of the popes from Rome, lasting from 1305 to 1377, is commonly called the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, on account of the woes attributed to it.

Truth, finding no guide to direct them save Piers the Plowman, who stands for the simple, pious laboring man, the sound heart of the English common folk. The poem was originally in eight divisions or "passus," to which was added a continuation in three parts, Vita Do Wel, Do Bet, and Do Best. About 1377 the whole was greatly enlarged by the author.

Nowadays it may take some time and a little patience before we can cast ourselves back to the year 1377 and look at the picture with the eyes of the person who painted it. Let us begin with a search for his purpose and meaning at least. The picture is a diptych that is to say, it is a painting done upon two wings or shutters hinged, so as to allow of their being closed together.

This account of Machin's adventures is doubted by many, but at all events it must be said that it is very much in accordance with the style of doing things in those days. Richard the Second began to reign A.D. 1377. Although probably no improvement took place in shipbuilding during his reign, it is not altogether destitute of nautical exploits.

These informal little notes were written probably in the autumn of 1377 while Catherine was making a visit to the feudal stronghold of the Salimbeni family, about twenty-three miles from Siena, among the foothills of Monte Amiata.