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John Ball's speech - ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’
In 1381, a radical priest called John Ball travelled the length of the country, stirring up the peasant class in a revolt against their feudal landowners. On 7 June that year, he delivered a famous open-air sermon at Blackheath to a band of rebels ready to march on London, asking ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’
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