No common knight may go so gay;
Change of clothing every day,
With golden girdles great and small;
As boisterous as is beare at bay."
But now John Ball was seen making his way through the throng. As the people pressed together to let him pass, benedictions and glances of true affection followed him; and he, catching sight here and there of some known face, nodded cheerily, first on one side and the other. For the people loved him, and called him "Saviour"; it was only the Churchmen that spoke of him as "the mad priest of Kent."
In the centre of the square stood a great tall cross of stone with the head very beautifully carved with a crucifix in the middle of leafage work, and with wide stone steps, octagonal in shape, leading to it. When Ball reached these steps, he mounted to the very top and stood there looking down with a quiet smile upon the upturned faces before him. He stood there, a powerfully built, tall, big-boned figure in the well-known, reddish brown, coarse garb of his order, a veritable tower of strength physical as well as spiritual, and looking as if he knew his own strength and gloried in it. A ring of dark hair surrounded his priest's tonsure; his nose was big, but clean-cut and with wide nostrils; his shaven face showed a longish upper lip and a big but blunt chin; his mouth was big and the lips closed firmly. A face not very noteworthy but for the gray eyes, well opened and wide apart, at times lighting up his whole face with a kindly smile, at times set and stern, or now and then resting in that look as if they were gazing at something a long way off, as do the eyes of the poet or enthusiast.
Shout after shout broke from the throng as he stood there calmly looking down upon them. When at last there was silence, he was not suffered to speak, for of a sudden a man standing immediately next to the cross unfurled a banner which swung out in the breeze. Only a smallish banner with a peculiar device upon it: merely a picture of a man and a woman rudely clad and with bare legs and feet seen against a background of green trees, the man holding a spade, the woman a distaff and spindle, rudely enough drawn, yet with great spirit and meaning. Underneath were the written words:—
"When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?"
A tremulous murmur arose that soon swelled into a great huzza. The thrill of enthusiasm ran like threads of fire from man to man. Again and again, Huzza! Huzza!