But he is chiefly valuable in that he carries the chronicle forward to the end of the reign of Henry III.

Written in West-country English, it not only contains a strong infusion of French, but distinctly states the prevailing influence of that language in his own day: Vor bote a man couthe French, me tolth of him well lute Ac lowe men holdeth to Englyss, and to her kunde speche zute.
For unless a man know French, one talketh of him little; But _low_ men hold to English, and to their natural speech yet.
The chronicle of Robert is written in Alexandrines, and, except for the French words incongruously interspersed, is almost as "barbarous" Saxon as the Brut of Layamon.
LANGLAND--PIERS PLOWMAN .-- The greatest of the immediate heralds of Chaucer, whether we regard it as a work of literary art, or as an historic reflector of the age, is "The Vision of Piers Plowman," by Robert Langland, which appeared between 1360 and 1370.

It stands between the Semi-Saxon and the old English, in point of language, retaining the alliterative feature of the former; and, as a teacher of history, it displays very clearly the newly awakened spirit of religious inquiry, and the desire for religious reform among the English people: it certainly was among the means which aided in establishing a freedom of religious thought in England, while as yet the continent was bound in the fetters of a rigorous and oppressive authority.
Peter, the ploughboy, intended as a representative of the common people, drops asleep on Malvern Hills, between Wales and England, and sees in his dream an array of virtues and vices pass before him--such as Mercy, Truth, Religion, Covetousness, Avarice, etc.

The allegory is not unlike that of Bunyan.

By using these as the personages, in the manner of the early dramas called the Moralities, he is enabled to attack and severely scourge the evil lives and practices of the clergy, and the abuses which had sprung up in the Church, and to foretell the punishment, which afterward fell upon the monasteries in the time of Henry VIII., one hundred and fifty years later: And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon, and all his issue forever, _Have a knock of a king, and incurable the wound_.
His attack is not against the Church itself, but against the clergy.