They have wine and spices and fair bread, and we oatcake and straw, and water to drink.

They have leisure and fine houses; we have pain and labour, the wind and rain in the fields.

And yet it is of us and of our toil that these men hold their state.
"We are called slaves; and if we do not perform our services, we are beaten, and we have not any sovereign to whom we can complain, or who wishes to hear us and do us justice." The poet, William Langland, in "Piers Plowman," dwelt on the social wrongs of the time; Ball was fond of quoting from Langland, and of harping on a familiar couplet: "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman ?" Besides the sermons, some of the rhymed letters that John Ball sent about the country have been preserved: "John Ball, Priest of St.Mary's, greets well all manner of men, and bids them in the name of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to stand together manfully in truth.

Help truth and truth shall help you.
"John Ball greeteth you all, And doth to understand he hath rung your bell.
Now with right and might, will and skill, God speed every dell.
John the Miller asketh help to turn his mill right: He hath ground small, small: The King's Son of Heaven will pay for it all.
Look thy mill go right, with its four sails dight.
With right and with might, with skill and with will, And let the post stand in steadfastness.
Let right help might, and skill go before will, Then shall our mill go aright; But if might go before right, and will go before skill, Then is our mill mis-a-dight." Sometimes it is under the signature of John Trueman that John Ball writes: "Beware ere ye be woe; Know your friend from your foe; Take enough and cry "Ho!" And do well and better and flee from sin, And seek out peace and dwell therein-- So biddeth John Trueman and all his fellows." A more definite note was struck when it seemed to Ball and his colleagues that the time was ripe for revolution, and the word was given that appeal must be made to the boy-king--Richard was only eleven years old when he came to the throne in 1377.
"Let us go to the King, and remonstrate with him, telling him we must have it otherwise, or we ourselves shall find the remedy.

He is young.