Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II, also known as The Simonie and Symonie and Couetise. By an anonymous English author, believed to date to 1321 (Thomas Wright, 1839) or possibly 1327 (John Aberth, 2000). It was a "social protest" poem that arose in the aftermath of the Great Famine of 1315-1317. It clearly targeted the negligences and vices of specific social groups, such as the clergy and nobility, within the context of the failures of the Great Famine and wars of the early 14th century. The tradition of social protest poems in England would later culminate with Piers Plowman, which generated or further popularized the plowman tradition of social complaint, particularly with Lollards and Protestants in the fifteenth and sixteenth-centuries.
References
- James M. Dean (1996), Medieval English Political Writings, "Poems Against Simony and the Abuse of Money", an Introduction.
- Thomas Wright, ed., The Political Songs of England, from the reign of John to That of Edward II, 1839. Reprint, New York, 1968. Edition.
- Ross, Thomas W. "On the Evil Times of Edward II." Anglia 75 (1957), 173-93. Edition with notes.
