If John Ball was aware of strangers in the crowd who listened he gave no sign. He did not care who heard him. What he said was truth.
He would go on saying it because he believed it. No matter what befell him, he would go on telling the truth, before the King, before the Pope, before God.
But this could no longer be called the ranting of a mad priest. It was the rumblings of revolt.
John Ball was becoming a menace to security.
It wasn’t long before he received a command to appear before the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Simon of Sudbury – so called because he had been born in the town of that name in Suffolk – had become Archbishop of Canterbury some four years previously. He was a staunch adherent of John of Gaunt and there could not have been a man less like the priest, John Ball. Simon was not one to allow himself to become involved in doctrines; he had been originally disturbed by the rise of John Wycliffe but preferred to forget about him particularly as John of Gaunt was inclined to favour the preacher. But Courtenay, the Bishop of London, was of a very different mettle. There was a man who was going to stand by what he believed in even if he lost his post in so doing.
Simon of Sudbury could well be without these uncomfortable men and such a one was John Ball.
The man stood before him and had the temerity to repeat what he had been saying in market squares. The Archbishop could sense the fiery fanaticism of the man and knew at once that he was dangerous. Such as John Ball should not be allowed to roam the countryside inciting people to revolution.
The Archbishop realised that it was no use admonishing him. He had already been in trouble before. People had been forbidden to attend his meetings – but that had not stopped them. He had been excommunicated, but no one – least of all John Ball – had cared very much about that.
There was only one thing to do with such a man and that was put him away where he could not preach, so the Archbishop sentenced him to a term in Maidstone prison.
Let him stay there where he could do no harm. The people would soon forget him and his dangerous doctrines.
But people did not forget John Ball. His words were remembered. When men laboured in the fields for a pittance, when they wondered where their next meal was coming from and the children were hungry, they remembered John Ball. Why should it be? they asked. They watched the rich ride by on their fine horses with their fine clothes and their attendants. Why? asked the people. How did it happen? Hadn’t they all begun with Adam and Eve? Who was then the gentleman?
Resentment grew when the collectors came round for the tax. Collecting had come to be a somewhat dangerous occupation and only those would enter into it who were promised big rewards.
There was one baker of Fobbing in Essex – a man of great strength who refused to pay the tax and who so terrified the collector that he did not insist.
This baker was talked of throughout Essex and the people of Fobbing made a hero of their baker and would have followed him if he would have led them. But the baker of Fobbing had no desire but to carry on baking his bread and this he did; but he had given them an indication that resistance was not impossible.
One May day the collector called at the house of a tyler in the town of Dartford and demanded payment of the tax.
The man of the house, Walter, was close by at his work tyling a house, and two women, his wife and daughter, were alone.
The collector demanded the tax not only of the mother but of the girl, at which the woman said: ‘My daughter is not yet fifteen years of age and therefore pays no tax.’
‘What?’ said the collector casting a lascivious eye on the girl. ‘That one not fifteen!’
He approached the girl and took her chin in his hand. He forced her to look at him. She was trembling with fear. Her mother looked on with horror, for she had heard tales of how these collectors could behave and that there was no redress against them because they were working for the government and it was not easy to get men to take on the disagreeable task of collecting.
‘Not fifteen! Why, she’s a fine big girl. I can see that. Not fifteen. Come.’ He had pulled at her gown, tearing at it so that the top part of her body was exposed.
The girl screamed. Her mother ran out of the house calling for help.
The collector laughed and seized the girl.
Within a few moments the girl’s father was in the doorway. In his hand he carried the lathing hammer with which he had been working.
‘Take your hands off my girl, you devil,’ he cried.
The collector turned on him. He carried a knife, for collectors came well armed.
‘How dare you touch my daughter,’ went on the tyler.
‘She’s a ripe wench,’ said the collector licking his lips. ‘Leave us, Tyler. We’ll be pleasant together and who knows I might not demand the tax off her.’
The tyler’s answer was to raise his hammer and bring it down on the collector’s head. In a few seconds the collector was lying on the floor, blood spurting from his body.
‘He’s dead,’ said the girl and threw herself sobbing into her mother’s arms.
The sound of the affray had spread throughout the neighbourhood and people were coming to see what had happened.
The tyler knelt beside the collector. He could see that his daughter had spoken the truth.
The man was dead.
‘What’ll you do?’ they asked. ‘You know what this means.’
‘You must get away,’ said his wife. ‘Wat, they’ll be after you. They’ll refuse to believe what sort of man he was. You’ll be in the wrong, they’ll say. Oh, Wat, you must go away.’
Walter looked blankly ahead of him. ‘What shall I do?’ he said. ‘Shall I run? Leave my wife, leave my family … run for the rest of my life.’
‘You did right, Wat,’ said the one man. ‘I’d have done the same.’
‘And I. And I.’
‘A curse on the tax. A curse on the collectors. What’s it for, eh?’
‘To buy jewels for the rich.’
‘Why should they have what we work for? Why, why, why …? Didn’t we all come from Adam and Eve?’
‘They’ll never give us what we should have,’ said Walter. ‘I reckon the only way we’d get it is to take it.’
‘Let’s take it. Let’s march. Let’s march on London.’
Something had happened to Walter the Tyler. He had been a peaceful citizen until now. But he had killed a man for attempting to deflower his daughter and he felt no remorse. He felt only anger.
He had heard John Ball when the priest had come this way and he had agreed with what the man had said but he had never believed the words of a priest could change anything.
But why should the world go on in one way just because it had for so many years? There was much in what John Ball had said. And no one ever got anything they didn’t fight for.
Here he was at a turning-point in his life – forced to it by a tax collector.