Beware ere ye be woe,
Know your friend from your foe,
Take enough and cry ‘Ho!’
And do well and better and flee from sin,
And seek out peace and dwell therein,
So biddeth John Trueman and all his fellows.
In other letters he greets John Nameless, John the Miller, and John Carter, and bids them stand together in God’s name; and bids Piers Plowman “go to his work and chastise well Hob the Robber (Sir Robert Hales, the king’s treasurer); and take with you John Trueman and all his fellows, and look that you choose one head and no more.”
These letters and the preaching did their work; the peasants were organised; men of marked courage and ability were found in various counties; and “the one head and no more” was ready in Kent to lead the army of revolt to the king when the signal should be given. Litster, Grindcobbe, and Wraw were at their posts. In every county from Somerset to York the peasants flocked together, “some armed with clubs, rusty swords, axes, with old bows reddened by the smoke of the chimney corner, and odd arrows with only one feather.”
John Ball had rung his bell, and at Whitsuntide, at the end of May, 1381, came the great uprising, the “Hurling-Time of the Peasants.” The fire was all ready to be kindled, and a poll-tax, badly ordered, set the country ablaze.
The poll-tax was first levied, in 1377, on all over fourteen years of age. Two years later it was graduated, from 4d. on every man and woman of the working class to £6 13s. 4d. on a duke or archbishop. Even this with a further tax on wool was found insufficient.