Parallel Lives: William Rokele and the Satirical Literacies of Piers Plowman

This essay extends, corrects, and reassesses the archive of documents charting the life and career of William Rokele, corroborating his status as the likeliest candidate for the author of Piers Plowman and delineating at least broad new parallels to the poem's ethics, satire, and ranges of occupational expertise. The essay presents a new picture of William's life to 1369, when the records of him under that name vanish; by reexamining land law in this region and further excavating Will's familial and social ties, the essay removes and reinterprets one artifact previously identified as William's, but adds, or more fully presents and interprets, ten other life records to those discussed by Robert Adams and others. Building on Adams's evidence and observations, the essay demonstrates the central importance to William's life and early career of John Rokele, lawyer and king's sergeant, now identified as William's second cousin once removed. John's demonstrable contact with popular complaints against lawyers and legal bureaucracy, and his death in 1369, help frame a new understanding of William's clerical and managerial career and its frequent relocations, as well as a new hypothesis for the genesis of the poem's legal satire and a new understanding of the principle and figure "Leaute" ("Good Faith"). The results provide clearer guidance to, if not a definitively proven basis for, the ethics and satire of Piers Plowman.