It is true, there was another side to this question; the priest might be almost as needy as the peasant. Sometimes we get glimpses, in the Middle Ages, of that community of feeling between the peasant and the poor parson (as distinct from the numerous clerical capitalists) which was noticeable also in prerevolutionary France. A cleric in 1394, recording the jubilee which emperor and pope concerted that year at Prag, writes “and they fleeced the innocent priests and the poor peasants and all men without exception”. John Ball, “the mad priest of Kent,” is another example; more than once we find a village priest in the van of some revolt. But, to the ordinary peasant, such men certainly did not represent the Church; the peasant saw more squire-parsons than John Balls; and even when the parson was poor he might be obliged, by the very necessities of existence, to curse as heartily for his tithes as the richer incumbent cursed. The hunting parson (to take one species only of the genus squire) has certainly left more traces in medieval records than the parson-ringleader of revolts. And, where writers speak of the poverty of the lower priesthood, they do not represent these men as fraternizing with the peasant, but as helpless parasites upon the rich.