I04 LAND REFORM 



poets, their champions, and their martyrs, whose action 

 and utterances can only be fully understood when 

 considered in connection with the evils with which 

 they dealt. Most of these utterances were quaint or 

 allegorical and are apt now to be looked upon as 

 mere literary curiosities. But they were well under- 

 stood by the masses of the people to whom they were 

 addressed, to whose dumb feelings of misery and despair 

 they gave a welcome voice. 



" The Vision of Piers the Plowman,"^ when inter- 

 preted, pictures the oppression, injustice, and selfish 

 arrogance which characterized the ruling classes. It 

 describes the "homely poor in their ill-fed, hardwork- 

 ing condition, battling against hunger, famine, injustice, 

 oppression, and all the stern realities and hardships that 

 tried them as grold is tried in the fire."^ The writer 

 of the " Vision " is constrained to speak out all the 

 bitter truth, and his cry is as earnest as that of "an 

 injured man who appeals to heaven for vengeance." 



But it was by the crude and figurative writings and 

 sermons of John Ball, the " crazy priest of Kent," for 

 which he was hung, drawn, and quartered, that the 

 rustic population had their eyes opened to the true 

 cause of their sufferings, and caught the first glimpse 

 of their natural rights as men. From that hour slavery, 



^ By William Langland, a poor priest, said to have been born at 

 Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire. His poem, written for the most part 

 on the Malvern Hills, was published in its more complete form in 1377, 

 some years after the " Black Death," and four years before Wat Tyler's 

 rebellion. Unlike John Ball, Langland had no intention of inciting the 

 people to resistance, but trusted to milder influences to secure reform, 



'^ "Piers the Plowman," edited by the Rev. W. W. Skeat, M.A. 

 (Clarendon Press), 1869. An edition published by the Early English 

 Text Society, also by Skeat, is perhaps the more interesting, as the 

 side-notes, being in modern English, allow the text to be read with 

 greater ease. 



