2. “When Adam delved and Eve span, / Who then was a
gentleman?”
Though this peasant refrain came during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381,
decades after Cecilia’s death, Bennett includes it in Chapter 3, “Lords,
Ladies, and Peasants,” in order to illustrate that peasants did in fact
question the status quo that placed them at the bottom of the social
hierarchy. By alluding to Adam and Eve, the peasants responsible for the
1381 rebellion challenged the biblical justification of the social order
that the clergy gave them. Their song captured the argument that just as
there was no pretense of aristocracy in God’s first incarnation of man, so
there should be no distinctions of class that left the many-numbered
peasantry at a disadvantage to the lords and ladies in the minority. Unlike
the grudging medieval peasants, Adam and Eve only for themselves, not for
others. Thus, this quotation highlights the hypocrisy of a ruling class that
exploited religion to keep the peasant class at bay.
This quotation also reveals that peasants were aware of the ruling
class’s strategy for controlling them and thus regarded themselves at odds
with their supposed social superiors. Many peasants probably believed that
the social order could be crudely divided into two, rather than three,
classes: the haves and the have-nots. Many peasants must have chaffed at
their perpetual suppression. Given the tenor of the peasants’ disgruntlement
only a few decades after Cecilia’s death, we may assume that Cecilia herself
felt at least some bitterness toward the landed elite.
