ve: whereby can
they say or shew that they be greater lords than we be, saving by that
they cause us to win and labour for that they dispend? They are
clothed in velvet and camlet furred with grise, and we be vestured
with poor cloth: they have their wines, spices and good bread, and we
have the drawing out of the chaff[2] and drink water; they dwell in
fair houses, and we have the pain and travail, rain and wind in the
fields; and by that that cometh of our labours they keep and maintain
their estates: we be called their bondmen, and without we do readily
them service, we be beaten; and we have no sovereign to whom we may
complain, nor that will hear us nor do us right. Let us go to the
king, he is young, and shew him what servage we be in, and shew him
how we will have it otherwise, or else we will provide us of some
remedy; and if we go together, all manner of people that be now in any
bondage will follow us to the intent to be made free; and when the
king seeth us, we shall have some remedy, either by fairness or
otherwise.' Thus John Ball said on Sundays, when the people issued out
of the churches in the villages; wherefore many of the mean people
loved him, and such as intended to no goodness said how he said truth;
and so they would murmur one with another in the fields and in the
ways as they went together, affirming how John Ball said truth.

[1] The true text is, 'Mais ils n'avoient pas cette taille,'
'but they were not of that nature.' The translator found the
corruption 'bataille' for 'taille.'

[2] Froissart says 'le seigle, le retrait et la paille,' 'the
rye, the bran and the straw.' The translator's French text had
'le seigle, le retraict de la paille.'

The archbishop of Canterbury, who was informed of the saying of this
John Ball, caused him to be taken and put in prison a two or three
months to chastise him: howbeit, it had been much better at the
beginning that he had been condemned to perpetual prison or else to
have died, rather than to have suffered him to have been again
delivered out of prison; but the bishop had conscience to let him die.
And when this John Ball was out of prison, he returned again to his
error, as he did before.

Of his words and deeds there were much people in London informed, such
as had great envy at them that were rich and such as were noble; and
then they began to speak among them and said how the realm of England
was right evil gov