PEASANT REVOLTS 125 



returned to St. Albans. Here he was in the power 

 of his enemies, who offered to save his life on the 

 condition that he would persuade his followers to 

 surrender the documents in question. But he refused, 

 and, addressing the people, among whom were those 

 who had become his sureties, he besought them not 

 to be influenced by his personal peril. " Fellow 

 townsmen," he said, "you who have been now raised 

 from long-standing oppression by a scanty measure of 

 freedom, stand firm, I entreat you, so long as you 

 shall be able to do so and have no fear on the score 

 of my punishment ; for if it is now my fate to die, 

 I shall die in the cause of the liberty we have gained, 

 deeming myself happy to be able to end my life by 

 such a martyrdom. Act at this juncture just as you 

 would have been bound to act if I had been beheaded 

 yesterday at Hertford" (Walsingham, Vol. H, p. 27). 

 Grindcobbe was afterwards executed, drawn, and 

 quartered as a " malefactor." This obscure hero had 

 climbed to the heights of that self-sacrifice which, in 

 various forms and in different degrees, is the one 

 great mean for the betterment of humankind. Had 

 the incident happened in classic times, or farther back 

 into antiquity, it would now no doubt be a subject 

 treated by the professor in his class-room, but it is 

 not the less magnificent because it is one of humble 

 English life. 



But the most remarkable figure in the rebellion — the 

 most vilified, but the man to whom the great bodies of 

 English peasantry and yeomanry of later times owed 

 most — was John Ball, " the crazy profligate priest." In 

 previous struggles, as we have said, the peasantry had 

 striven only for improvement in their material condi- 

 tion, for some outlook and hope in their cruel lot. 



