case of John Ball is especially pressing. For one, his letters inciting the Rising of 1381 refer directly to “Peres Plouȝman” (“Heu”’s “Pers” is the closest analogue above). More important, it is almost universally accepted that this appropriation of his poem was a primary instigator of the C revisions.57 Ball’s letter to the commons of Essex, as recorded by Thomas Walsingham, is the most fruitful of the Langlandian letters:
Johon Schep … biddeþ Peres Plouȝman go to his werk, and chastise wel Hobbe þe Robbere, and taketh wiþ ȝow Johan Trewman, and alle hiis felawes, and no mo, and loke schappe ȝou to on heved, and no mo.
Johan þe Mullere haþ ygrounde smal, smal, smal;
Þe Kynges sone of hevene schal paye for al.
Be war or ȝe be wo;
Knoweth ȝour freende fro ȝour foo;
Haveth ynow, & seith “Hoo”;
And do wel and bettre, and fleth synne,
And sekeþ pees, and hold ȝou þerinne;
and so biddeth Johan Trewaman and alle his felawes.58
Attempts to identify the version known to Ball, whether directly or via oral transmission, falter on the fact that all three of the relevant phrases (four, if one counts “John Sheep” as a reference to A Prol.2/B Prol.2) appear in both A and B: not just Peres Plouȝman, but also Hobbe the Robbere (A 5.233, B 5.461) and do wel and bettre (Dobet: A passus 9–11, B passus 8–14).
Yet most recent commentators simply accept as a given that Ball knew the B rather than the A version.59 Some of those who cite the lateness of A manuscripts, such as Steven Justice, Ralph Hanna, and A. V. C. Schmidt, are also advocates of Ball’s knowledge of B (as they must be), but as we have seen the textual indications in fact point toward the opposite conclusion. The case for B, if it is to stand, must thus rely entirely on much more impressionistic responses to the letters. þe Kynges sone of hevene, maintains Schmidt, “is a characteristic group-genitive phrase little instanced outside the poem (B 18.320 //), and its conjunction here with the idea of ‘paying for all’ will recall the argument of B 18.340–41.”60 So it might in the minds of readers predisposed to believe Ball knew B, but others might take more convincing. The concept of Christ as son of the king of heaven is pervasive, and its expression via this grammatical construct is not as rare as Schmidt suggests; Richard Rolle, too, refers to “Criste, the keyng sonn of heven.”61 Whatever affinities the phrase schal paye for al has with the argument of lines 340–41, “Ergo soule shal soule quyte and synne to synne wende / And al þat man haþ mysdo, y man wole amende,” seem to me very general as well. In this phrase George Kane finds a different echo, of “Ac for þe pore y shal paye, and puyr wel quyte here travaile” (B 11.195), which is even more distant.62
Kane cites another parallel, between sekeþ pees, and hold ȝou þerinne and
Quod Consience to alle cristene tho, “my consayl is to wende
Hastiliche into unite and holde we us there.
Preye we þat a pees were in Peres berne þe Plouhman” (B 19.355–57)
which seems more promising.63 The appearance of Ball’s injunction immediately after the dowel tag seems to offer support—but, again, all this is also in Psalm 33:15, “recede a malo et fac bonum, quaere pacem et persequere eam” (“turn away from evil and do good: seek after peace and pursue it”).64 Such phrases are everywhere in medieval devotional writings.
The same problem attends Steven Justice’s extraordinarily influential assertion that Ball knew a particular passage of the B version. Attempting to understand Walsingham’s claim that Ball taught “that no one was fit for the kingdom of God who was born out of wedlock,” Justice cites Wit’s invective against those born out of wedlock: “Aзen dowel they do yvele and þe devel plese” (B 9.199): “Here are Ball’s bastards.”65 Yet the teaching that those born out of wedlock are unfit for the kingdom of God is biblical: “A mamzer [KJV: bastard], that is to say, one born of a prostitute, shall not enter into the church of the Lord, until the tenth generation” (Deut. 23:2).66 In any case, this line appears in A as well (10.213),67 so the reasons for Justice’s nomination of B as Ball’s source cannot be found here. But the assumption that the line’s B rather than A appearance incited Ball prompts Justice to claim that “Ball found the epithet that dictated” the execution of Simon Sudbury, the archbishop of Canterbury, in Wit’s claim that “Proditor est prelatus cum Juda qui patrimonium christi minus distribuit” (“He is a traitor like Judas, that prelate who too scantily distributes the patrimony of Christ” [B 9.94α]). And on the basis of this second assumption he indulges in a third, claiming that the rebel letters revise Langland’s portrayal of the poem as inquiry, as an endless quest, in passus 8, 12, and 20.68
As Justice grants, however, anyone looking to connect bastardy, disendowment, and capital punishment, as does Ball, would find little in Langland.69 What he does not acknowledge is that great riches, of the highest authority, await discovery in the chapters leading up to Moses’ invective against bastards:
Thou shalt bring forth the man or the woman, who have committed that most wicked thing [i.e., idolatry], to the gates of thy city, and they shall be stoned…. Thou mayst not make a man of another nation king, that is not thy brother. And when he is made king, he shall not multiply horses to himself…. He shall not have many wives, that may allure his mind, nor immense sums of silver and gold…. But the prophet, who being corrupted with pride, shall speak in my name things that I did not command him to say, or in the name of strange gods, shall be slain. (Deut. 17:5,15–17; 18:20)
St. Paul strikes a very similar chord in warning that “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind … shall possess the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9–10; cf. Eph. 5:5). Langland’s own interest in this is suggested by his citation, just before the passage Justice quotes, of 1 Corinthians 7:1–2, “Bonum est ut unusquisqui uxorem suam habeat propter fornicacionem” (194α). Isabel Davis nominates this letter as a likely source for Wit’s discussion of marriage.70 And Bromyard’s citation of both the Deuteronomic and Pauline materials in the entry on luxuria in his Summa Praedicantium is especially suggestive.71
Ball is not speaking Langland, then; rather, both Ball and Langland are speaking St. Paul, most likely via a conduit such as Bromyard. Invectives against sexual misconduct pervaded medieval religious and ethical thought. A parallel debate about the relationship between Ball’s letters and Piers Plowman will bring my objection into focus. At least three commentators have argued that the absence of wrath from the lists of the deadly sins in both Ball’s first letter and Piers Plowman A, but not B, “points towards the A version as that known to the participants in the rebellion.”72 To this Jill Mann objects, “given the familiarity of the sevenfold scheme, it is difficult to see why Ball would have shown so slavish an adherence to the A text, especially since the six-line poem on the sins does not show any verbal influence from Piers Plowman.”73 Just so—and given the familiarity of Deuteronomy, Paul’s letters, and sermonic materials, it is difficult to see why Ball would have shown so slavish an adherence to the B text, especially since the sermon on bastards does not show any verbal influence from Piers Plowman.
John Ball’s writings have turned into a hothouse of allusions, in which evidence keeps sprouting without having established roots in an explanation of why Ball, who had long been preaching and
