James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps suggests, in his preface to the poem, "conjecturing the John Ball of the following piece to be the priest who took so distinguished a part in the rebellion temp. Richard II." Kathleen Horning observes John Ball's "challenge to England's aristocracy," and she suggests, "It sounds like John Ball would have been right at home in the American political landscape of the 1960s, with the Woodstock generation trying to get itself 'back to the garden.'"