One of them, John Ball, whose preaching has been thought worthy of the historian, probably because he was considered to be so mischievous a person, taught a kind of rough socialism. “At the beginning we were all created equal: it is the tyranny of perverse men which has caused slavery to arise in spite of God’s Law: if God had willed that there should be slaves, He would have said at the beginning of the world who should be slave and who should be lord.” A poor argument, because, notoriously, we are not created equal, but unequal in every respect. Also, there is nothing to show that the Creator did not say at the beginning who should be slave and who should be lord. Froissart also speaks of John Ball:— “This preest vsed often tymes on the sondayes after masse whanne the people were goynge out of the mynster, to go into the cloyster and preche, and made the people to assemble about hym, and wolde say thus: A ye good people, the maters gothnot well to passe in Englande, nor shall not do tylle euery thyng be common, and that there be no villayns not gentylmen.... What haue we deserued or why shulde we be kept thus in seruage? we be all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve: wherby can they say or shewe that they be gretter lordes than we be, sauynge by that they cause vs to wyn and labour, for that they dispende ... they dwell in fayre houses, and we haue the payne and trauele, rayne and wynde in the feldes: and by that that cometh of our labours they kepe and mayteyne their estates.... Lette vs go to the kyng, he is yonge, and shewe hym what seruage we be in.... Thus Johan (Ball) sayd on sondayes whan the people issued out of the churches with another in the feldes and in the wayes as they want togyder, affermyng howe Johan Ball sayd trouthe.” That many of the friars held and preached similar doctrines is proved by the story of Jack Straw, who would have kept no other ecclesiastics upon earth except the Mendicants. Their popularity, of course, was advanced and preserved by the social doctrines they preached. But in London they seem to have lost their popularity very early. In the reign of Edward the Second the Preaching Friars had to fly before the rage of the people, “on account of their proud behaviour. And Richard the Second, in 1385, issued a proclamation against certain persons who, instigated by the Evil Spirit, “do openly and secretly stir up our people to destroy the houses of the said friars, tearing their habits from them, striking them, and ill-treating them against our peace.”