Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/370

 in the counties, they could be dealt with in detail by the royal forces. It must have been patent to everybody that the strength of the rebellion was broken; and no man would see this more plainly than John Ball, who knew his countrymen so thoroughly. Even if he had faith to believe that the serfs had not struck their blow for freedom utterly in vain, he must have felt that he and his immediate friends had nothing to expect from the clemency of their enemies. He fled without delay to his native town of Coventry, and after a few days, probably recognised and betrayed by some one who knew him, the "mad priest" was captured in an old ruin—so Froissart tells us—and taken before the King at St. Albans. The unfortunate man had a short shrift; he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, and the sentence was carried out in Richard's presence on the 15th of July.