Editing Piers Plowman (section)

===14th–15th centuries===

[[John Ball (priest)|John Ball]], a priest involved as a leader in the [[Peasants' Revolt|Great Rising of 1381]] (also known as the Peasants' Revolt), included Piers and other characters in his writings. If ''Piers Plowman'' already had perceived associations with [[Lollardy]], Ball's appropriations from it (assuming he was not referring to a folk character also appropriated by Langland) enhanced his and its association with the Lollards as well. The real beliefs and sympathies at work in Langland's poem and the revolt remain, for this reason, mysterious and debatable. New evidence suggests that in Norfolk the rebels of 1381 had access to the B version of the text and that they used the author-persona's name - Will Long Will - as a pseudonym.<ref name="auto"/>

No doubt because of Ball's writings, the ''Dieulacres Abbey Chronicle'' account of the revolt refers to Piers, seemingly as a real person who was a leader with Ball in the revolt. Similarly, early in the history of the poem's dissemination in manuscript form, Piers is often treated as the author of the poem. Since it is hard to see how this is credible to those who read the poem, perhaps the idea was that Piers was a mask for the author. Or, as the ideal character of the poem, Piers might be seen as a kind of alter-ego for the poet that was more important to his early readers than the obviously authorial narrator and his apparent self-disclosures as Will. Ironically, Will's name and identity were substantially lost.

In some contemporary chronicles of the Rising, Ball and the Lollards were blamed for the revolt, and Piers began to be associated with [[heresy]] and rebellion. The earliest literary works of the Piers Plowman tradition follow in the wake of these events, although they and their sixteenth-century successors are not anti-monarchical or supportive of rebellion. Like William Langland, who may have written the C-text version of ''Piers Plowman'' to disassociate himself from the Rising, they look for the reform of the English church and society by the removal of abuses in what the authors deem a restorative rather than an innovative project.<ref>{{cite book |title=Piers Plowman and Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages |date=7 March 2019 |publisher=Arvind Thomas |isbn=978-1487502461}}</ref>

The first recorded owner of a copy of ''Piers Plowman'' was the  Irish judge [[Walter de Brugge]], who died in 1396.