Piers Plowman, cattle farmers, ploughmen, enclosure, land owners, city, country, debate, agrarians, rural, political authority

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country in his name, or “To serue the king, and pray for hym, and all his counsell ryght” (sig. Eiii^v), and he asks indignantly, “If Rex reigne not? who reigneth then?” (sig. Fi^r). To prove his point he comes right out into the open “I trowe I haue a byll for cattall that I solde/ That saies howe Rex hath reigned vi. yeare almost” (sig. Fi^r). Possibly he means here that the king’s advisors embody his political authority, and therefore that the king actually rules to all intents and purposes. Most importantly, he states that his interests are with the cattle farmers (implicitly the rich landowners) rather than the agrarians (ploughmen such as Dycar represents). This shows that Camel, like Churchyard, is aware that this contest is both an actual flyting between supporters of rival court factions and, figuratively, a fictional amœbæan between representatives of opposed sections of the rural community. This is Camel’s final counterblast, although his enemies fire three more attacks at him before they tire of the game.

One of these picks up the nautical theme begun in ‘Westerne Wyll, vpon the Debate betuyxte Churchyarde and Camell’. In ‘Westerne Will to Camell and for Hym Selfe Alone’ one W. Watreman takes over the job of lampooning the unfortunate Camel. He informs his adversary that “My self to helme am comen” in order to steer the debate back upon the right course (sig. Fii^v). He asks Camell why, if he found Churchyard’s poem so subversive, did he not report him to the authorities rather than becoming embroiled in an unseemly dispute with him. (sig. Fiii^v). Watreman also takes up the case against enclosure:

A wicked ploughe it is, that forowes vp a fielde
To marre a pleasaunt patth and no goode fruite to yelde. [...]
And roteth vp good herbes to plante in stynkynge wiedes. (sig. Fii^v)

Watreman recognises that the lines of battle are drawn between the support of the commons on one side and of the landowners on the other and, although he hails from the city rather than the country and belongs to a very different occupational group to Piers or Dycar, there are good reasons why someone from such a background might be recruited to support the interests of the

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