improbable like a dream, yet it is full of interest.

But perhaps the chief interest and value of Piers Ploughman is
that it is history. It tells us much of what the people thought
and of how they lived in those days. It shows us the first
mutterings of the storm that was to rend the world. This was the
storm of the Reformation which was to divide the world into
Protestant and Catholic. But Langland himself was not a
Protestant. Although he speaks bitter words against the evil
deeds of priest and monk, he does not attack the Church. To him
she is still Holy Church, a radiant and lovely lady.

BOOKS TO READ

The Vision of Piers Ploughman, by W. Langland








Chapter XXI HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO THE PEOPLE

IN all the land there is perhaps no book so common as the Bible.
In homes where there are no other books we find at least a Bible,
and the Bible stories are almost the first that we learn to know.

But in the fourteenth century there were no English Bibles. The