on
the morning of his murder by Lord Mayor Walworth; but the evidence is
once more entirely one-sided, contributed by those who were only too
anxious to produce information which should blacken the rebels in the
minds of the educated classes. As a matter of fact, the purely official
documents, in which we can probably put much more reliance (such as the
petitions that poured in from all parts of the country on behalf of the
peasants, and the proclamations issued by Richard II, in which all their
demands were granted on condition of their immediate withdrawal from the
capital), do not leave the impression that the people really advocated
any communistic doctrines; oppression is complained of, the lawyers
execrated, the labour laws are denounced, and that is practically all.

It may be, indeed, that the traditional view of Ball and his followers,
which makes them one with the contemporaneous revolts of the Jacquerie
in France, the Ciompi in Florence, &c., has some basis in fact. But at
present we have no means of gauging the precise amount of truth it
contains.

But even better known than John Ball is one who is commonly connected
with the Peasant Revolt, and whose social opinions are often grouped
under the same heading as that of the "Mad Priest of Kent,"--John
Wycliff, Master of Balliol, and parson of Lutterworth. This Oxford
professor has left us a number of works from which to quarry materials
to build up afresh the edifice he intended to erect. His chief
contribution is contained in his _De Civili Dominio_, but its
composition extended over a long period of years, during which time his
views were evidently changing; so that the precise meaning of his famous
theory on the Dominion of Grace is therefore difficult to ascertain.

But in the opening of his treatise he lays down the two main "truths"
upon which his whole system rests:

I. No one in mortal sin has any right to the gifts of God;

II. Whoever is in a state of grace has a right, not indeed to
possess the good things of God, but to use them.

He seems to look upon the whole question from a feudal point of view.
Sin is treason, involving therefore the forfeiture of all that is held
of God. Grace, on the other hand, makes us the liegemen of God, and
gives us the only possible right to all His good gifts. But, he would
seem to argue, it is incontestable that property and power are from God,
for so Scripture plainly assures us. Therefore,