When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.

John Ball (priest), in a sermon during the 1381 Peasant's Revolt. Like fubarobfusco says elsewhere in the thread, there were probably similar memes behind other similar revolts, that were suppressed and didn't survive into recorded history. (This one did because of the huge "memetic fitness" of the rhyming question at the start; I read it many years ago, and remembered it well enough to Google it and find the source now.)