Note 35 — Chapter III
Reading edition
From village to village went John Ball in the years that preceded the rising, organising the peasants into clubs, and stirring the people with revolutionary talk. It was the way of this vagrant priest to preach to the people on village greens, and his discourses were all on the same text—"In the beginning of the world there were no bondmen, all men were created equal."[35] Inequalities of wealth and social position were to be ended: