Good people, things cannot go right in England and never
will, until goods are held in common and there are no more villeins and gentlefolk, but we
all are one and the same. In what way are those whom we call lords greater masters
than ourselves? How have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in
bondage? If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can
they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow
wealth which they spend?
Jean Froissart, Chronicles, the translation of Geoffrey Brereton (Penguin 1968) p. 212