as a vagrant.  The abbey towns were struggling for freedom against the abbeys.  The craftsmen within boroughs were carrying on the same strife against employer and craft-gild.  And all this mass of discontent was being heightened and organized by agencies with which the Government could not cope.  The poorer villeins and the free labourers had long since banded together in secret conspiracies which the wealthier villeins supported with money.  The return of soldiers from the war threw over the land a host of broken men, skilled in arms, and ready to take part in any rising.  The begging friars, wandering and gossiping from village to village and street to street, shared the passions of the class from which they sprang.  Priests like Ball openly preached the doctrines of communism.  And to these had been recently added a fresh agency, which could hardly fail to stir a new excitement.  With the practical ability which marked his character, Wyclif set on foot about this time a body of poor preachers to supply, as he held, the place of those wealthier clergy who had lost their hold on the land.  The coarse sermons, bare feet, and russet dress of these “Simple Priests” moved the laughter of rector and canon, but they proved a rapid and effective means of diffusing Wyclif’s protests against the wealth and sluggishness of the clergy, and we can hardly doubt that in the general turmoil their denunciation of ecclesiastical wealth passed often into more general denunciations of the proprietary classes.

[Sidenote:  John Ball]

As the spring went by quaint rimes passed through the country, and served as a summons to revolt.  “John Ball,” ran one, “greeteth you all, and doth for to understand he hath rung your bell.  Now right and might, will and skill, God speed every dele.”  “Help truth,” ran another, “and truth shall help you!  Now reigneth pride in price, and covetise is counted wise, and lechery withouten shame, and gluttony withouten blame.  Envy reigneth with treason, and sloth is take in great season.  God do bote, for now is tyme!” We recognize Ball’s hand in the yet more stirring missives of “Jack the Miller” and “Jack the Carter.”  “Jack Miller asketh help to turn his mill aright.  He hath grounden small, small:  the King’s Son of Heaven he shall pay for all.  Look thy mill go aright with the four sailes, and the post stand with steadfastness.  With right and with might, with skill and with will; let might help right, and skill go before will, and right before might, so goeth our mill aright.”  “Jack Carter,” ran the companion missive, “prays you all that ye make a good end of that ye have begun, and do well, and aye better and better:  for at the even men heareth the day.”  “Falseness and guile,” sang Jack Trewman, “have reigned too long, and truth hath been set under a lock, and falseness and guile reigneth in every stock.  No man may come truth to, but if he sing ‘si dedero.’  True love is away that was so good, and clerks for