Professor G. R. Owst has called attention to the fact that the fable of the rat parliament, which forms a striking addition to the B-version of Piers Plowman, was also employed with reference to contemporary political conditions in a sermon preached at just this time by Thomas Brunton, Bishop of Rochester. Bishop Brunton, in an unsparing denunciation of corruption in the English government, praised Parliament for its action in bringing the conditions to light, but warned that vigorous steps must be taken to punish the guilty. Otherwise, he continued, Parliament would be like the assembly of rats and mice in the fable which decreed that a bell be hung about the cat's neck yet provided no one to carry the plan into execution. Father F. A. Gasquet, who was the first to point out this passage in Brunton's sermons, conjectured that the parliament in question was the “Good” Parliament and consequently suggested that the sermon was preached sometime in 1376. The interest which the document holds for both the historian and the student of Piers Plowman gives the question of its origin a peculiar importance. Detailed study of the manuscript arrangement of Brunton's collected sermons makes it possible, I believe, to arrive at a clearer understanding of the circumstances which inspired the sermon and even to determine the very day on which it was delivered.