Skip to content
1882
Volume 33, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0890-2917
  • E-ISSN: 2031-0242

Abstract

Abstract

In this essay, I detail new evidence for the clerical career of William Rokele, who has been suggested as the author of . By examining manorial court rolls from Redgrave, where Rokele was the priest, I offer new, more specific dates for his career. I conclude by putting this biography of Rokele, the rural priest, into dialogue with evidence of as a London poem, arguing that the dates of both Rokele’s life and the composition of leave open the possibility that Rokele was the author.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1484/J.YLS.5.119161
2019-01-01
2025-12-04

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Manuscripts
    Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Buxton Papers, 9/11
  2. Chicago, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, Sir Nicholas Bacon Collection of English Court and Manorial Documents, MS 22
  3. Chicago, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, Bacon Collection, MS 23
  4. Chicago, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, Bacon Collection, MS 346
  5. London, Metropolitan Archives (olim Guildhall Library), MS 09531/002 Norwich, Norfolk Record Office, DN/Reg 2/Book 5
  6. Primary Sources
    Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, xix: Edward III, 1367–1370 (London: HMSO, 1913)
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Chronicles of London, ed. by Charles Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905)
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Feet of Fines for Essex, iii: A.D. 1327–A.D. 1422 (Colchester: Essex Archaeological Society, 1929–49)
    [Google Scholar]
  9. The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. by James Gairdner, Camden Society n.s. 17 (Westminster: Camden Society, 1876)
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Langland, William, The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman, ed. by Walter W. Skeat, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1886)
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Langland, William, Piers Plowman: A Parallel Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions, ed. by A. V. C. Schmidt, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2011)
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Registrum Simonis de Sudbiria: Diocesis Londoniensis, A.D. 1362–1372, ii, ed. by R. C. Fowler, Canterbury and York Society, 38 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938)
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Registrum Simonis Langham, Cantuarensis Archiepiscopi, ed. by A. C. Wood, Canterbury and York Society, 53 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956)
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Sir Nicholas Bacon Collection of English Court and Manorial Documents’, University of Chicago Library <https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/findaid/bacon/> [accessed 8 April 2019]
  15. Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, with Historical Memoranda by John Stowe, the Antiquary, and Contemporary Notes of Occurences Written by Him in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. by James Gairdner, Camden Society n.s. 28 (Westminster: Camden Society, 1880)
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Secondary Sources
    Adams, Robert, Langland and the Rokele Family: The Gentry Background to ‘Piers Plowman’ (Dublin: Four Courts, 2013)
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Barron, Caroline, ‘William Langland: A London Poet’, in Chaucer’s England: Literature in Historical Context, ed. by Barbara Hanawalt, Medieval Cultures, 4 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), pp. 91109
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Brooks, E. St John, ‘The Piers Plowman Manuscripts in Trinity College Dublin’, The Library, 5th ser., 6 (1951), 14451
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Dyer, Christopher, ‘Piers Plowman and Plowmen: A Historical Perspective’, Yearbook of Langland Studies, 8 (1994), 15576
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Farrell, Jonathan, ‘Why Literature Professors Turned against Authors — Or Did They?Los Angeles Review of Books, 13 January 2019 <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-literature-professors-turned-against-authors-or-did-they/#!> [accessed 8 April 2019]
  21. Foggin, Jonathan, ‘Pastors and Pilgrims: Augustinian Reforms in the Late Medieval English Church’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Georgia, 2016)
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Galloway, Andrew, ‘Parallel Lives: William Rokele and the Satirical Literacies of Piers Plowman’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 40 (2018), 43111
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Godfrey, C. J., ‘Pluralists in the Province of Canterbury in 1366’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 11 (1960), 2340
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Hanna, Ralph, London Literature, 1300–1380 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Johnston, Michael, ‘William Langland and John Ball’, Yearbook of Langland Studies, 30 (2016), 2974
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Kane, George, ‘Piers Plowman’: The Evidence for Authorship (London: Athlone, 1965)
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Kane, George, ‘Langland, William’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/16021> [accessed 8 April 2019]
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, ‘Langland and the Bibliographic Ego’, in Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, ed. by Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 67143
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Latham, R. E., et al., eds, Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 17 vols (Oxford: British Academy, 1975–2013)
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Lawler, Traugott, The Penn Commentary on ‘Piers Plowman’, iv: C Passūs 15–19; B Passūs 13–17 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
    [Google Scholar]
  31. MacCulloch, Diarmaid, ed., Letters from Redgrave Hall: The Bacon Family, 1340–1744, Suffolk Record Society, l (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007)
    [Google Scholar]
  32. McLaren, Mary-Rose, ‘The Textual Transmission of the London Chronicles’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700, 3 (1992), 3872
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Middleton, Anne, ‘Acts of Vagrancy: The C Version “Autobiography” and the Statute of 1388’, in Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, ed. by Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 208317
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Palmer, Robert C., Selling the Church: The English Parish in Law, Commerce and Religion, 1350–1550 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Pearsall, Derek, ‘Langland’s London’, in Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, ed. by Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 185207
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Phillips, Chris, ‘A Short Introduction to Feet of Fines’, Foundations, 4 (2012), 4555
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Simpson, James, ‘“After Craftes Conseil clotheth yow and fede”: Langland and London City Politics’, in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1991 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by N. Rogers, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 3 (Stamford: Watkins, 1993), pp. 10927
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Smith, R. M., ‘Kin and Neighbors in a Thirteenth-Century Suffolk Community’, Journal of Family History, 4 (1979), 21956
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Smith, R. M., ‘Families and their Land in an Area of Partible Inheritance: Redgrave, Suffolk 1260–1320’, in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, ed. by R. M. Smith, Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time, 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 13596
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Sobecki, Sebastian, ‘Hares, Rabbits, Pheasants: Piers Plowman and William Longewille, a Norfolk Rebel in 1381’, Review of English Studies, 69.289 (2017), 21636
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Swanson, R. N., Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Warner, Lawrence, The Myth of ‘Piers Plowman’: Constructing a Medieval Literary Archive (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1484/J.YLS.5.119161
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field.
Please enter a valid email address.
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An error occurred.
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error:
Please enter a valid_number test
aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYnJlcG9sc29ubGluZS5uZXQv