t in the way of popular appeal,
he manifestly endeavoured to force it as a social reform on the
peasantry, who were suffering under the intolerable grievance of the
Statutes of Labourers. But though he roused the countryside to his
following, and made the people for the first time a thing of dread to
nobles and King, it does not appear that his ideas spread much beyond
his immediate lieutenants. Just as in their petitions the rebels made no
doctrinal statements against Church teaching, nor any capital out of
heretical attacks (except, singularly enough, to accuse the Primate,
whom they subsequently put to death, of overmuch leniency to Lollards),
so, too, they made no reference to the central idea of Ball's social
theories. In fact, little abstract matter could well have appealed to
them. Concrete oppression was all they knew, and were this done away
with, it is evident that they would have been well content.

The case of the friars is curious. For though their superiors made many
attempts to prove their hostility to the rebels, it is evident that
their actual teaching was suspected by those in high places. It is the
exact reversal of the case of Wycliff. His views, which sounded so
favourable to communism, are found on examination to be really nothing
but a plea to leave things alone, "for the saints have now all they
would have"; while on the other hand the theories of the friars, in
themselves so logical and consistent, and in appearance obviously
conservative to the fullest extent, turn out to contain the germ of
revolution.

Said Lord Acton with his sober wit: "Not the devil, but St. Thomas
Aquinas, was the first Whig."

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This rhyme is of course much older than John Ball; _cf._ Richard
Rolle (1300-1349), i. 73, London, 1895.

CHAPTER IV

THE SCHOOLMEN

The schoolmen in their adventurous quest after a complete harmony of all
philosophic learning could not neglect the great outstanding problems of
social and economic life. They flourished at the very period of European
history when commerce and manufacture were coming back to the West, and
their rise synchronises with the origin of the great houses of the
Italian and Jewish bankers. Yet there was very little in the past
learning of Christian teachers to guide them in these matters, for the
patristic theories, which we have already described, and a few isolated
passages cited in the Decretals of Gratian, formed as yet almost the
only co