stewards were so little able to enforce them, that the lords' corn was left uncut. Later on the lords complained that their villeins were flying to the towns, and that those who remained behaved insolently, knowing that the masters were afraid to exercise their powers lest they should lose the serfs irrecoverably.
For now town and country were one. In the former the system of forced labour being applied even more vigorously than in the country, the lower craftsmen were in alliance with the agricultural serfs.
This discontent began to make itself felt, and came to a height during the exhaustion that followed after the Peace of Bretigny. The Black Prince died, the King was falling into dotage, John of Gaunt was unpopular in London and with the Church: all things rendered the Government feeble. A universal upheaving commenced: while the serf was striving to obtain liberty and a fair wage, the classes immediately above him thought it a good opportunity each to push its way a grade higher. Meanwhile there were some few who only sought the reign of Justice on earth, who had no personal ends in view, but who for that very reason were gibbeted in their own day and stoned and pelted with ugly names ever since. Such an one was John Ball, the so-called "crazy priest of Kent." Which, however, was most crazy, the Parliaments which made laws such as the Statute of Labourers, or the Servant of Christ who preached the Kingdom of Justice?
John Ball had half England at his back. A thousand voices sent his messages over the land with as much precision and almost as quickly as the nineteenth century telegram, "John Ball greeteth you all, and doth for to understand he hath rung your bell, now right and might, will and skill, God speed every dele." And again:—
"Johan the Miller heth y grownde smal, smal, smal,
The Kynge's sone of heavene shalle paye for alle;
Be ware or ye be wo;
Knoweth your frende from youre foo,
Haveth ynowe and seythe 'Hoo,'
And do welle and bettre, and fleth synne
And seketh pees, and holde therynne;
And so biddeth Johan Trewman and alle his felawes."
