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John Ball (d. 15 July 1381) was an English Lollard priest who took a prominent part in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Influenced 3 References 4 Furter reading 5 Footnotes

[edit] Biography

Little is known of his early years, but he lived probably at York and afterwards at Colchester. What is recorded about his adult life comes from hostile sources liable to emphasize and exaggerate the extent of his political and religious radicalism. He is said to have gained considerable fame as a roving preacher, a "hedge priest" without a parish or any cure that would link him to the established order, by expounding the doctrines of John Wycliffe, but especially by his insistence on the principle of social equality. These utterances brought him into collision with the archbishop of Canterbury, and on three occasions he was committed to prison. He appears also to have been excommunicated, and in 1366 all persons were forbidden to hear him preach.

His opinions, however, were not moderated, nor his popularity diminished by these measures, and his words had a considerable effect in stirring up the rising which broke out in June 1381. The chroniclers of the shaken establishment were convinced of widespread conspiracy implanted before the spontaneous uprising occurred, with a watchword "John the Miller grinds small, small, small" and a response "The King's son of heaven shall pay for all." Ball was in the archbishop's prison at Maidstone, Kent when the uprising began in Dartford as protests; he was quickly released by the Kentish rebels, to whom he preached at Blackheath—the insurgents' gathering place near Greenwich— an open-air sermon that incuded the following:

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?<ref name=delved> "When Adam delved and Eve span,/Who was then the gentleman" Sources

• 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• Webster's online Dictioary
• The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001
• The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996
• BBC: VOICES OF THE POWERLESS - READINGS FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES
• English Literature by William Joseph Long
• Other versions
  • "When Adam dalfe and Eve spane, / Where was than the pride of man?" Richard Rolle de Hampole. Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations online claims that this is the original source for Ball's version.
  • "When Adam dalf, and Eve span, / Who was thanne a gentilman?" from Thomas Walsingham's Historia Anglicana R B Dobson 'The Peasants revolt of 1381' Pitman, Bath, 1970, pp373-375
  • "When Adam dolve, and Eve span, / Who was then the gentleman?" John Bartlett, comp. (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919. Page 871 from Hume: History of England, vol. i. chap. xvii. note 8.
  • "When Adam dug and Eve span, / Who was then a noble man?" Literature of Richard II's Reign and the Peasants' Revolt. Edited by James M. Dean</ref> From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may ( if ye will ) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.<ref name=bbc> BBC: Voices of the powerless - readings from original sources
• R B Dobson 'The Peasants revolt of 1381' Pitman, Bath, 1970, pp373-375 quotes from Thomas Walsingham's Historia Anglicana: "When Adam dalf, and Eve span, who was thanne a gentilman? From the beginning all men were created equal by nature, and that servitude had been introduced by the unjust and evil oppression of men, against the will of God, who, if it had pleased Him to create serfs, surely in the beginning of the world would have appointed who should be a serf and who a lord" and Ball ended by recommending "uprooting the tares that are accustomed to destroy the grain; first killing the great lords of the realm, then slaying the lawyers, justices and jurors, and finally rooting out everyone whom they knew to be harmful to the community in future."</ref>

Some unsympathetic sources assert that he urged his hearers to kill the principal lords of the kingdom and the lawyers; and that he was afterwards among those who rushed into the Tower of London to seize Simon of Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury. But Ball does not appear in most accounts after his speech at Blackheath; he may have sensed that events were spinning into uncontrolled violence. When the rebels had dispersed, Ball was taken prisoner at Coventry, given a trial in which, unlike most, he was permitted to speak, and hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of Richard II on July 15 1381. Ball, who was called by Froissart "the mad priest of Kent," seems to have possessed the gift of rhyme. He voiced the feelings of a section of the discontented lower orders of society at that time, who chafed at villeinage and the lords' rights of unpaid labour, or corvée.

Ball and perhaps many of the rebels who followed him found some resonance between their ideas and goals and those of Piers Plowman, a key figure in a contemporary poem putatively by one William Langland. Ball put Piers and other characters from Langland's poem into his cryptically allegorical writings which may be prophecies, motivating messages, and/or coded instructions to his cohorts. This may have enhanced Langland's real or perceived radical and Lollard affinities as well as Ball's.

[edit] Influenced

• Possibly William Langland and the C-text version of his poem, Piers Plowman, which certainly influenced Ball.
• Gerrard Winstanley (1609 - 1676) a religious reformer and political activist during the 1650s who was aligned with the True Levellers (the Diggers).
• William Morris (1834-1896) who wrote " A Dream of John Ball",<ref name="dream">Project Gutenberg: Dream of John Ball, A: a king's lesson</ref> a poetical socialist fantasy that puts nineteenth-century enlightened ideals of social equality into John Ball's mouth:

"What else shall ye lack when ye lack masters? Ye shall not lack for the fields ye have tilled, nor the houses ye have built, nor the cloth ye have woven; all these shall be yours, and whatso ye will of all that the earth beareth; then shall no man mow the deep grass for another... and he that soweth shall reap, and the reaper shall eat in fellowship the harvest that in fellowship he hath won."

• Avi "Crispin: The Cross of Lead"; Pub: Hyperion; Reprint edition (2004), ISBN 0-7868-1658-9. A children's historical novel (ages 9-12), which includes a character called John Ball based on the historical person.

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] Furter reading

These sources are taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition:

• Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, edited by H. T. Riley (London, 1863-1864);
• Henry Knighton, the Chronicon, edited by Joseph Rawson Lumby (London, 1889-1895);
• Jean Froissart, Chroniques, edited by S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869-1897);
  • More modern version published by Penguin Classics, 1978 ISBN 0-14-044200-6
• Charles Edmund Maurice, Lives of English Popular Leaders in the Middle Ages (London, 1875);
• Charles Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381 (Oxford, 1906).
  • Republished Oxford University Press, 1969.

[edit] Footnotes

<references/>de:John Ball (Priester) fr:John Ball (prêtre) ja:ジョン・ボール pt:John Ball uk:Болл Джон