The peasantry and the mechanics of the towns resisted. The poor found
their mouth-piece in John Ball, "a mad priest of Kent," as Froissart
calls him. Mad his words must have seemed to the nobles of the land.
"Good people," he declared, "things will never go well in England so
long as goods be not in common, and so long as there be villains and
gentlemen. By what right are they whom we call lords greater folk than
we? On what grounds have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in
serfage? If we all came of the same father and mother, of Adam and Eve,
how can they say or prove that they are better than we, if it be not
that they make us gain for them by our toil what they spend in their
pride? They are clothed in velvet, and warm in their furs and their
ermines, while we are covered with rags. They have wine and spices and
fair bread; and we have oat-cake and straw, and water to drink. They
have leisure and fine houses; we have pain and labor, the rain and the
wind in the fields. And yet it is of us and of our toil that these men
hold their state."
So spoke this early socialist. So spoke his hearers in the popular rhyme
of the day:
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
So things went on for years, growing worse year by year, the fire of
discontent smouldering, ready at a moment to burst into flame.
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