Sunday, August 02, 2020

1381 The Peasants' Revolt, John Ball's Speech

Ah ye good people, the matters goeth not well to pass in England, shall do till everything be common, and that there be no villains nor gentlemen, but that we may be all united together  and that the lords be no greater masters than we be. 

What have we deserved, or why should we be kept thus in sewage? We be all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve 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 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 comp or try lain, what will ye hear us nor do us right. 

Let us go to the king, he what servage we be in, and shew him how we will is young, and shew him  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 maid free; and when the king seeth us, we shall have some remedy, either by fairness or otherwise.  

Thus John Ball said on Sundays, churches in the villages; wherefore when the people issued out of the and such as intended to no goodness said how, he said truth; and so they would murmur one with another in the many of the mean people loved him, together, affirming how John Ball said truth.  and in the way he went  in no costly Eastern fabric: such as the affirming how he told the truth 

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