Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/127

Rh one accord the poor refused to live on "penny ale and bacon"; they demanded "fresh flesh or fish fried or baked." Measures were hastily taken against this insubordination on the part of the working classes. A Statute of Labourers recalled the survivors to a sense of their menial position, fixed a scale of wages at the same rates as they had been before the Black Death, and ordered punishment to be inflicted on those who demanded more. The result spelt friction between rich and poor, landowner and wage-earner. Up to this time the whole system of social inequality had passed "unquestioned as to the Divine order of the world." Now a smouldering discontent arose, which could not be smothered. John Ball voiced the general feeling. For the first time Englishmen listened to one who upheld natural equality and the rights of man—the words of the agitator sum up the social status of the people:—

"Things will never go well in England so long as goods be not in common and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what right are they whom we call lords greater folk than we are? On what grounds have they deserved it? If we all come of the same father and mother, of Adam and Eve, how can they say or prove that they are