Lady Meed and the Power of Money

Abstract

When Langland first describes Lady Meed, in Passus II of Piers Plowman, he portrays her as a modern version of the Scarlet Woman, set in opposition to Holy Church, that other lady from the Book of Revelation. Clearly, no good is to be expected of her; but what particular evil does she represent? Critics have differed somewhat in their answers, proposing the sin of covetousness, or else bribery and corruption, or else 'the power of money'. This latest and most specific interpretation owes its currency largely to a book-length study published in 1963, The Lineage oflMdyMeedbyJohn A. Yunck.1 Yunck saw in the Meed story 'a vivid allegorical dramatization of the power of money' (p. 6) and identified Meed herself with those other personifications in Roman and medieval satire whose names speak more clearly of that power: Regina Pecunia, Dea Moneta, and Nummus in Latin, Dan Denier in French, and Sir Penny in English. Meed is 'the true descendent of the august Queen Pecunia' (p. 289), and 'she reflects perfectly the economic amorality of the money economy which Langland so detested' (p. 295). So Yunck ranks Langland with those other 'conservative money-satirists' who, since the twelfth century, had been setting their faces against the increasing power of cash in western societies. This reading has been quite widely adopted by later commentators, who agree with Yunck in singling out the rise of the money economy as the chief object of Langland's concern in the Meed episode. Thus, Anna Baldwin sees the poet as concerned with 'the way that the power and influence which money can bring were beginning to harm society'; David Aers observes that Meed represents 'developments whereby money, economy and market relations were becoming powerful enough to dissolve traditional personal and ethical ties'; and Carl Schmidt singles out 'the power and allure of money'.2 Derek Pearsall, again, describes the vision of Lady Meed as 'a brilliant allegorical portrayal of the corruption of every estate and activity of society through the influence of money'.3Money, of course, has always suited the purposes of those who wish to influence others improperly. The amount of a bribe can be adjusted flexibly to the needs of the occasion, money can be carried and given unobtrusively, and a bribe-taker can always find a use for it. So from very early times money has figured quite prominently in reports of such behaviour. The evidence for this may be found in John T. Noonan's book Bribes, an extraordinary history of the subject which extends from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to modem America.4 Yet, especially in pre-modern societies, as Noonan's book also shows, bribes took many non-monetary forms as well: cups, rings, carpets, robes, wine, livestock, and the like.5 Things of this kind figure, along with money, in Langland's poem, as we shall see; but those who understand the poet as a 'money-satirist' must argue that he is chiefly concerned, not with such commodities, but specifically with the evils of cash, 'the power and allure of money.Before looking at the evidence for this, it is as well to be clear about what the term 'money' denotes in this context. To bribe a person with money meant, for Langland, to give them coins of precious metal, either silver or gold. The most common English coin was the silver penny piece, also known as a sterling. Other silver coins were the halfpenny, the farthing, and the groat. This last, worth four pence, was the highest-value piece of silver currency the shilling being a unit of account only, unrepresented by a coin. Higher denominations were represented by the gold coinage only recently introduced by Edward III: the noble (one third of a pound, 6s. 8^/.), the half noble ($s. 4^/.), and the quarter noble (is. 8i/.).6 There were no native coins of a value higher than the noble, for the mark (two nobles) and the pound, like the shilling, existed only as units of account. The noble had, however, a foreign rival, the gold florin of Florence, a coin of international currency to which English authors often refer. …