THE GROWTH OF FREEDOM 51 



political life of the time. He vigorously attacked the 

 extravagance of the prelates and aristocratic rectors, 

 and urged that the Church should surrender its wealth 

 and temporal authority. At the same time he main- 

 tained that power and dominion in spiritual matters 

 rested with God alone, and that everyone had within 

 himself the spiritual inspiration necessary for his 

 guidance. In the latter years of his life, just before and 

 after the Peasant Revolt, he spread his views by his 

 books, speeches and pamphlets, whilst an order of 

 poor preachers, ' simple priests ' as they were called, 

 went through the towns and villages, preaching his 

 gospel of spiritual freedom ; they based their teaching 

 directly on the Bible, which Wycliffe himself translated 

 into English. His followers were called Lollards, or 

 babblers, and towards the end of the century they 

 abounded everywhere. Unlike Wycliffe, John Ball 

 seems to have been of the people, and to have addressed 

 himself in the main to social problems. He was a 

 priest, who, during the years that intervened between 

 the Black Death and the Peasant Revolt, spent much 

 of his time wandering through the South of England, 

 preaching in churchyards and by roadsides the 

 doctrines that five hundred years later were revived 

 under the title of Christian Socialism. The pith of his 

 teaching is comprised in an oft-quoted sentence, " They 

 (the lords) have pleasure and fine houses : we (the 

 peasants) have pain and labour, the wind and the rain 

 in the fields : and yet it is of us and our toil that 

 these men hold their state." He taught, in fact, that 

 the fruits of labour belonged to the labourer, and looked 

 to the blotting out of the manorial lords, and the 

 lawyers and other classes who depended upon them. 

 His views were certainly out of favour with the author!- 



