It is well known that whoever wrote Piers the Plowman felt bitterly against the administration of the law in his day and never tired of railing against lawyers, but what has not been pointed out is that the references to the law which occur in the three texts of this poem reveal a significant increase in legal knowledge from the A-text to the later texts. Throughout the three texts William scorns the attendants of the courts as a class and arraigns the legal system for its cruelty, its injustice, and its gross favoritism towards the rich. Meed and False use as horses for their trip to Westminster a sheriff and a juryman; jurors, sumners, sheriffs, pleaders of the court of arches, over which the archbishop of Canterbury presided, all run about Meed when she arrives at Westminster; and William warns judges and others to consider what they do, for the Day of Doom will find them out. But William is perhaps most severe when he declares of the sergeants of the law:
pow mihtest beter meten pe myst Ŀ on Maluerne hulles,
pen geten a Mom of heore moup Ŀ til moneye weore schewed.