When, on the verge of the Reformation, a German sympathizer with the land-toilers quoted Christ's words in John XV. I: “My Father is [a] husbandman”, he had been anticipated in the spirit of that theme, generations earlier, by our English Langland in his Piers Plowman.

This poem has come down to us in three versions, labelled by scholars as A, B and C. Each can be dated fairly exactly by its historical allusions. A was written not earlier than 1362 or 1363; B was continued, patched and padded out, not earlier than 1377; and C was patched and padded again, possibly as early as 1393, more probably about 1398 or 1399. The manuscripts give no hint of multiple authorship, and there is a strong similarity of style between all three versions. Thus the natural assumption is that all are by the same author; and this is strengthened by the fact that wherever the author speaks of himself these separate allusions are consistent with each other. Moreover, in one manuscript of the fifteenth century the authorship is definitely ascribed to one William Langland; and this manuscript contains the full, or “C” text. Therefore, although distinguished scholars have lately ascribed the poem, in the state in which we have it, to five different authors, the weight of authority is at present in favour of the conservative view; and, in any case, for the purpose of this present chapter it matters little whether we owe the poem to one single man or to such a like-minded group as, for instance, Carlyle, Emerson and Ruskin.