A note on citations
In citing Middle English and Latin, I standardize i/j and u/v and sometimes silently depart from editorial punctuation. For sixteenth-century texts, I alter “ye” (i.e., thorn and e) to “the” silently, but for eighteenth-century texts I leave it as is. Quotations from editions of Piers Plowman are presented in what seems most likely to be its poet’s language: those from C are from George Russell and George Kane, eds., Piers Plowman: The C Version (London: Athlone Press, 1997); those from A and B adopt the substantive readings and follow the line numbering of George Kane, ed., Piers Plowman: The A Version, rev. edn. (London: Athlone Press, 1988), and George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, eds., Piers Plowman: The B Version, rev. edn. (London: Athlone Press, 1988), but present the language in the form of the text of the C edition. I do not reproduce editorial brackets. See my discussion in The Lost History of Piers Plowman: The Earliest Transmission of Langland’s Work (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), xv–xvii.