We begin at the beginning - FQ Book I

Rev. W. W. Skeat tells us: "To prick is to spur, to ride....The expression princeps huius mundi is from St. John xvi. II; Vulgate version. Mr. Wright remarks that 'until the fifteenth century there appears to have been a strong prejudice among the lower orders against horses and horsemen; their name was connected with oppressors and foreigners.'" (The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman In Three Parallel Texts Together With Richard the Redeless by William Langland, edited from numerous manuscripts with preface, notes and glossary by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, Volume II [Introduction, Notes and Glossary], page 139 {First Edition, 1886, repr. Oxford U P 1979}). Volume II is an extraordinary medieval chrestomathy.

PP, B. Passus XVIII

"Cam prykye, came riding; lit. came to ride." (249) Rev. Skeat writes that "This is, upon the whole, at once the best written and the most interesting Passus in the whole poem," (247) and indeed his three full pages of notes just on the above passage makes this clear.