“Cumque haec et plura alia deliramenta” (think of this old fool’s calling all the wise maxims of the French Academy deliramenta!) “praedicasset, commune vulgus cum tanto favore prosequitur, ut exclamarent eum archiepiscopum futurum, et regni cancellarium.”  Whether he would have taken these situations under these names, or would have changed the whole nomenclature of the State and Church, to be understood in the sense of the Revolution, is not so certain.  It is probable that he would have changed the names and kept the substance of power.

We find, too, that they had in those days their society for constitutional information, of which the Reverend John Ball was a conspicuous member, sometimes under his own name, sometimes under the feigned name of John Schep.  Besides him it consisted (as Knyghton tells us) of persons who went by the real or fictitious names of Jack Mylner, Tom Baker, Jack Straw, Jack Trewman, Jack Carter, and probably of many more.  Some of the choicest flowers of the publications charitably written and circulated by them gratis are upon record in Walsingham and Knyghton:  and I am inclined to prefer the pithy and sententious brevity of these bulletins of ancient rebellion before the loose and confused prolixity of the modern advertisements of constitutional information.  They contain more good morality and less bad politics, they had much more foundation in real oppression, and they have the recommendation of being much better adapted to the capacities of those for whose instruction they were intended.  Whatever laudable pains the teachers of the present day appear to take, I cannot compliment them so far as to allow that they have succeeded in writing down to the level of their pupils, the members of the sovereign, with half the ability of Jack Carter and the Reverend John Ball.  That my readers may judge for themselves, I shall give them, one or two specimens.

The first is an address from the Reverend John Ball, under his nom de guerre of John Schep.  I know not against what particular “guyle in borough” the writer means to caution the people; it may have been only a general cry against “rotten boroughs,” which it was thought convenient, then as now, to make the first pretext, and place at the head of the list of grievances.

JOHN SCHEP.

“Iohn Schep sometime seint Mary priest of Yorke, and now of Colchester, greeteth well Iohn Namelesse, and Iohn the Miller, and Iohn Carter, and biddeth them that they beware of guyle in borough, and stand together in Gods name, and biddeth Piers Ploweman goe to his werke, and chastise well Hob the robber, [probably the king,] and take with you Iohn Trewman, and all his fellows, and no moe.

“Iohn the Miller hath yground smal, small, small:  The kings sonne of heauen shal pay for all.  Beware or ye be woe, Know your frende fro your foe, Haue ynough, and say hoe:  And do wel and better, & flee sinne, And seeke peace and holde you therin,

& so biddeth Iohn Trewman & all his fellowes.”