John Ball’s Letters: Literary History and Historical Literature.

Investigation of the social, historical, and literary context of the five letters ascribed to John Ball -two of which refer to PPl -suggests their profound debt to mendicant preaching manuals. Yet although popular preaching and conservative complaint literature inflamed resentments in 1381, the truly revolutionary spirit was to be found among the Lollards, not the friars; in this context PPCreed manifests a strain of genuine radicalism. While neither PPCreed nor PPl questions the exercise of secular power or champions the right to rise above one’s station, PPCreed “suggests a skepticism about the efficacy of traditional institutions that would serve ultimately to put the entire system in jeopardy.”