This tale is actually an orthodox Roman Catholic, possibly anti-Lollard version of a Marian miracle story written by Thomas Hoccleve called Item de Beata Virgine.
Sometimes titled The Complaynte of the Plowman, it is 1380 lines long, composed of eight-line stanzas (rhyme scheme ABABBCBC with some variations suggesting interpolation) like Chaucer's "Monk's Tale".
Most of the lines are the Pelican's, who attacks the typical offences in an evangelical manner, discusses Antichrist, and appeals to the secular government to humble the church.
The tale ends with a disclaimer wherein the author distinguishes his own views from those of the Pelican, stating that he will accept what the church requires.
However, Francis Thynne's views are often discounted, largely because he was only an infant when his father was working on his Chaucer editions.
In the mildest interpretation, "The Plowman's Tale" makes a bid for the necessity and appropriateness of heeding the concerns of the commons.
Corroborating Francis Thynne, Leland's remarks on The Plowman's Tale are as follows: "But the tale of Piers Plowman, which by the common consent of the learned is attributed to Chaucer as its true author, has been suppressed in each edition, because it vigorously inveighed against the bad morals of the priests" (Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis ed.
John Foxe praised "The Plowman's Tale" in his first (1563) and second (1570) editions of the immensely influential Acts and Monuments.
Written by Sir Geffrey Chaucer, Knight, amongst his Canterburie tales: and now set out apart from the rest, with a short exposition of the words and matters, for the capacitie and understanding of the simpler sort of Readers."
Gabriel Harvey's copy of the Speght 1598 edition of Chaucer's Works (BL Additional 42518) summarises The Plowman's Tale with the note "Ecclesiastical abuses."
Famous historical figures, including Chaucer and Scotus, are brought to the court of Apollo to discuss English society.
Other seventeenth-century citations of The Plowman's Tale are: Anthony Wotton's A Defense of Mr. Perkins Booke, Called a Reformed Catholike (1606), Simon Birkbeck's The Protestant's Evidence Taken Ovt of Good Records (1635), John Favour's Antiquitie Trivmphing Over Noveltie (1619), and John Milton's Of Reformation (1641) and An Apology Against a Pamphlet (1642).
somewhat of which appears in the Tale of Piers Plowman [an interesting conflation of Langland and pseudo-Chaucer]: Yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the Vices of the Clergy of his Age: Their Pride, their Ambition, their Pomp, their Avarice, their Worldly Interest, deserv'd the lashes which he gave them, both in that, and in most of his Canterbury Tales."
against the clergy" is possibly derived from Leland; similar synopses appear in the editions of Chaucer's Works starting with Thynne.