128 LAND REFORM 



their pride. Tliey are clothed in velvet, and warm in 

 their furs and their ermines, while we are covered with 

 rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread, and 

 we oat-cake and straw, and water to drink. They 

 have leisure and fine houses; we have pain and labour, 

 the rain and winds in the fields. And yet it is of us 

 and of our toil that these men hold their state." ^ 



If love for his fellow-men, intense sympathy with 

 their sufferings, self-sacrifice even unto death for ideas 

 of human freedom constitute heroism, then John Ball 

 stands out as a hero of the first rank, compared with 

 whom the spurious claims of the so-called order of 

 chivalry of that day are as dross to gold. 



The old chroniclers seem to have taken it as a 

 matter of course that the peasantry had brought the 

 severe punishment on themselves by rebelling against 

 the powerful classes of the day ; that they had, in fact, 

 merely paid the penalty for their misdeeds. But in 

 these pages events are treated from the point of view 

 of the peasantry and other cultivators of the soil who 

 were, in fact, the nation. 



No doubt unsuccessful rebellion carries with it 

 consequences that have to be borne, and the actors 

 in it must expect scant mercy. On the other hand, if 

 a few thousand persons, having unbridled power, 

 arrogate the right of keeping the great bulk of their 

 fellow-men in bondage and inflicting on them intoler- 

 able misery, they, too, must accept the dangers of 

 their position. All violence should be deplored, but 

 it is futile for writers to affect a maundering surprise, 

 and an unqualified indignation at events which, in the 

 course of things, are bound to happen if the victims of 



^ Froissart's " Chronicles." 



