John Ball (priest)

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John Ball (d. 15 July 1381) was an English Lollard priest who took a prominent part in the Peasants' Revolt in 1381.

Little is known of his early years, but he lived probably at York and afterwards at Colchester. What is recorded about his adult life comes from hostile sources liable to emphasize and exaggerate the extent of his political and religious radicalism. He is said to have gained considerable fame as a preacher by expounding the doctrines of John Wycliffe, but especially by his insistence on the principle of social equality. These utterances brought him into collision with the archbishop of Canterbury, and on three occasions he was committed to prison. He appears also to have been excommunicated, and in 1366 all persons were forbidden to hear him preach.

His opinions, however, were not moderated, nor his popularity diminished by these measures, and his words had a considerable effect in stirring up the rising which broke out in June 1381. Ball was then in prison at Maidstone; but he was quickly released by the Kentish rebels, to whom he preached at Blackheath which incuded the following:

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?Template:Ref From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may ( if ye will ) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.Template:Ref

He is said to have urged his hearers to kill the principal lords of the kingdom and the lawyers; and he was afterwards among those who rushed into the Tower of London to seize Simon of Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury. When the rebels dispersed, Ball fled to the midland counties but was taken prisoner at Coventry and executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of Richard II on July 15 1381. Ball, who was called by Froissart "the mad priest of Kent," seems to have possessed the gift of rhyme. He voiced the feelings of a section of the discontented lower orders of society at that time.

Ball and perhaps many of the rebels who followed him found some resonance between their ideas and goals and those of Piers Plowman, a key figure in a contemporary poem putatively by one William Langland. Ball put Piers and other characters from Langland's poem into his cryptically allegorical writings which may be prophecies, motivating messages, and/or coded instructions to his cohorts. This may have enhanced Langland's real or perceived radical and Lollard affinities as well as Ball's.

1 Influenced
2 Bibliography
3 Footnotes
4 External links

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Influenced

Possibly William Langland and the C-text version of his poem, Piers Plowman, which certainly influenced Ball.
Gerrard Winstanley (1609 - 1676) a religious reformer and political activist during the 1650s who was aligned with the True Levellers (the Diggers).
William Morris (1834-1896) who wrote "Dream of John Ball"Template:Ref

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Bibliography

Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, edited by H. T. Riley (London, 1863-1864);
Henry Knighton, the Chronicon, edited by Joseph Rawson Lumby (London, 1889-1895);
Jean Froissart, Chroniques, edited by S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869-1897);
- More modern version published by Penguin Classics, 1978 ISBN 0140442006
Charles Edmund Maurice, Lives of English Popular Leaders in the Middle Ages (London, 1875);
Charles Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381 (Oxford, 1906).
- Republished Oxford University Press, 1969.
Crispen the Cross of Lead