1371. The old king was a mere pawn in the game. His health had been

broken by the debauchery and frivolity to which he had abandoned himself after the death of Queen Philippa. He was now entirely under the influence of Alice Perrers, a Hertfordshire squire's daughter, whose venality, greed, and shamelessness made her the fit tool for the self-seeking ring of courtiers. John of Gaunt sought her support as the best means of withdrawing the old king from the influence of the Prince of Wales, and the lay ministers were glad to maintain themselves in their tottering power by means of such powerful allies. Prominent among their party were courtier nobles--such as the chamberlain, Lord Latimer, and the steward of the household, Lord Neville of Raby,--and rich London financiers, chief among whom was Richard Lyons, men who made exorbitant profits out of the necessities of the administration. Faction sought to appear more respectable by professions of zeal for reform. The cry against papal encroachments was extended to a denunciation of the wealth and power of the clergy. John Wycliffe was called from his Oxford classrooms to expound the close connexion between dominion and grace, and to teach from London pulpits that the ungodly bishop or priest has no right to the temporal possessions given him on trust for the discharge of his high mission.[1] [1] Until recently all historians have dated the beginning of Wycliffe's political career from 1366, but J. Loserth has proved that 1374, the date of the last demand for the Roman tribute, to be the right year. See his _Studien zur Kirchen-politik Englands im 14ten Jahrhundert_, in _Sitzungsberichte der Académie der Wissenschaften in Wien_, philos. histor. classe, cxxxvi., 1897, and, more briefly, in _Engl. Hist. Review, xi._ (1896), 319-328. A vigorous opposition to the dominant faction was formed. At its head was the Black Prince. Hardly less important and much more active than the dying hero of Poitiers was Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, the husband of Philippa of Clarence, and the father of the little Roger Mortimer whom nothing but the uncertain lives of the Prince of Wales and the sickly Richard of Bordeaux separated from the English throne. Hereditary antagonism accentuated incompatibility of personal interests. The ancient feuds of the houses of Mortimer and Lancaster still lived on in the hostility of their representatives. The understanding between the Prince of Wales and the Earl of March seems to have been complete. They had as their most powerful supporters the outraged dignitaries of the Church, who saw themselves kept out of office and threatened in their temporalities by the dominant faction. William of Wykeham, who had been the guardian of the Earl of March during his long minority, was the most experienced and wary of the clerical opposition to the lawyers and courtiers of the Lancaster faction. He had an eager and enthusiastic backer in the young and high-born Bishop of London, William Courtenay, the son of the Earl of Devon, and through his mother, Margaret Bohun, a great-grandson of Edward I. Office and descent combined to make Bishop Courtenay the custodian of the constitutional tradition, which was equally strong among the great baronial houses of ancient descent and such highly placed ecclesiastics as were zealous for the nation as well as for their order. His support was the more necessary since Simon of Sudbury, who in 1375 succeeded Whittlesea on the throne of St. Augustine, was a weak and time-serving politician. The storm, which had long been brewing, burst at last in the parliament of April, 1376. Of the acts of this memorable assembly, famous as the Good Parliament, and of the other concluding troubles of the reign we are fortunate in possessing not only copious official records, but a minute and highly dramatic account from the pen of a St. Alban's monk, who, alone of the monastic chroniclers of his age, represented the spirit which, in the days of Matthew Paris, made the great Hertfordshire abbey so famous a school of historiography.[1] [1] _Chron. Angliæ_, 1328-88, ed. E.M. Thompson (Rolls Ser.). Compare Mr. S. Armitage-Smith's _John of Gaunt_ for an unfavourable estimate of its value. The Good Parliament showed from the beginning a strong animosity against the courtiers. The time was not yet come when the commons could take the initiative, or supply leaders from its own ranks, and even among the commons capacity was unequally divided. Authority and influence were exclusively with the knights of the shire, and the citizens and burgesses were content to allow the country gentry to speak and act in their name. The knights of the shire demanded that, in accordance with the precedent of 1373, a committee of magnates should be associated with them in determining the policy to be adopted. The lords spiritual and temporal were as eager as the knights to attack the government, and a committee, of which the leading spirits included the Earl of March and the Bishop of London, supplied the element of direction and initiation in which the commons were lacking. The resolution which prevailed was shown by the estates agreeing to make no grant until grievances had been redressed, and by the choice of Sir Peter de la Mare as spokesman of the commons before the king. Sir Peter was elected, we are told, because he possessed abundant wisdom and eloquence, and enough boldness to say what was in his mind, regardless of the good-will of the great. Perhaps a further and more weighty reason was that he was steward of the Earl of March. He was the first person to hold an office indistinguishable in all essentials from that of the later Speaker. Under his guidance the commons worked out an elaborate policy of revenge and reform. The contempt with which John of Gaunt and the courtiers had at first regarded their action, gave place to fear. The duke found it prudent to stand aside, while a clean sweep of the administration was made. Charges were brought against the leading ministers of state, after a fashion in which the constitutional historian sees the beginnings of the process of the removal of great offenders by impeachment. Lord Latimer was the first victim. He had appropriated the king's money to his own uses; he had shown remissness and treachery during the last campaign in Brittany; he had taken bribes; he was, in a word, "useless to king and kingdom". His fate was promptly shared by Lyons, the London merchant, the accomplice of his frauds, who had availed himself of his court influence to make a "corner" in nearly all imported articles, to the impoverishment of the common people and the disorganisation of trade. Lord Neville, whose eager partisanship of Latimer had led him to insult Sir Peter de la Mare, was threatened with similar proceedings. Even Alice Perrers was attacked, though, says the chronicler, the natural affection of Englishmen for their king was so great that they were slow to molest the lady whom the king loved. However, Alice's unblushing interference with the course of justice, her appearance in the courts at Westminster, sitting on the judges' bench, clamouring for the condemnation of her enemies and the acquittal of her friends, roused the knights of the shire to action. An ordinance against women being allowed to practise in the law courts was made the pretext for her removal from court, and Alice, fearful that worse might happen, took oath that she would have no further dealings with the king. Meantime Latimer and Lyons were condemned to forfeiture and imprisonment. In the midst of these proceedings the knights lost their strongest support by the death of the Black Prince on June 8. John of Gaunt at once went down to the house of commons, and boldly suggested that the English should follow the example of the French and allow no woman to become heiress of the kingdom. This was a direct assertion of his own claims to stand next to the throne after Richard of Bordeaux, and before Roger Mortimer. Alarmed at the blow thus levelled against their chief remaining champion, the knights courageously held to their position. "The king," said they, "though old is still healthy, and may outlive us all. Moreover he has an heir in the ten-year-old prince Richard. While these are alive there is no need to discuss the question of the succession." They completed the drawing up of the long list of petitions, whose grudging and partial acceptance by the crown made the roll of the parliament of 1376 memorable as asserting principles, if not as vindicating practical ends. They forced Lancaster to agree to a council of twelve peers nominated in parliament to act as a standing committee of advisers, without which the king might do nothing of any importance. After this revival of the methods of the Mad Parliament and the lords ordainers, the Good Parliament separated on July 6. It had sat longer than any previous parliament of which there is record. It had persevered to the end in the teeth of discouragements of all kinds, and, even after his brother's death, Duke John dared not lift up his hand against it so long as the session continued. When the estates separated Lancaster threw off the mask. The king, sunk in extreme dotage, was entirely in the hands of his unscrupulous son. The old man was kept quiet by the return of Alice Perrers to court. She had sworn on the rood never to see the king again, but the prelates were "like dumb dogs unable to bark" against her; and no effort was made to prosecute her for perjury. Latimer and Lyons returned from their luxurious imprisonment in the Tower to their places at court. The duke roundly declared that the late parliament was no parliament at all. No statute was based upon its petitions, the council of twelve was rudely dissolved, and Sir Peter de la Mare was imprisoned in Nottingham castle. William of Wykeham was deprived of his temporalities, and the rumour spread that his disgrace was due to his possession of a state secret, revealed to him by the dying queen Philippa, that John of Gaunt was no true son of the royal pair but a changeling. So timid was the disgraced bishop that he vied with the weak primate in his subserviency to Alice. The Earl of March, who was marshal of England, was ordered to inspect the fortresses beyond sea, whereupon, fearing a plot to assassinate him, he resigned his office, "preferring," says a friend, "to lose his marshal's staff rather than his life". The powerful north-country lord, Henry Percy, who had hitherto acted with the opposition, was bribed by the office of marshal to join the Lancastrian party. Grave difficulties still beset the government, and in January, 1377, John of Gaunt had to face another parliament. Every precaution was taken to pack the commons with his partisans. Of the knights of the shire of the Good Parliament only eight were members of its successor,[1] while in the place of the imprisoned De la Mare, Sir Thomas Hungerford, steward of the Duke of Lancaster, was chosen Speaker, on this occasion by that very name. A packed committee of lords was assigned to advise the commons. In these circumstances it was not difficult to procure the reversal of the acts against Alice Perrers and Latimer, and the grant of a poll tax of a groat a head. The only measure of conciliation was a general pardon, a pretext for which was found in the jubilee of the king's accession. From this William of Wykeham was expressly excepted. [1] _Return of Members of Parliament_, pt. i., 193-97; _Chron. Angliæ_, p. 112, understates the case. The convocation of Canterbury proved less accommodating than the parliament. Under the able leadership of Bishop Courtenay, it took up the cause of the Bishop of Winchester, refused to join in a grant of money until he had taken his place in convocation, and, triumphing at last over the time-serving of Sudbury and the hesitation of Wykeham himself, persuaded the bishop to join their deliberations. Lancaster met the opposition of convocation by calling to his aid the Oxford doctor whom the clergy had already begun to look upon as the enemy of the privileges of their order. Wycliffe was not as yet under suspicion of direct dogmatic heresy. He had not yet clothed himself in the armour of his Balliol predecessor, Fitzralph, to wage war against the mendicant orders. But he had already formulated his theory that dominion was founded on grace, had declared that the pope had no right to excommunicate any one, or if he had that any simple priest could absolve the culprit from his sentence, and he had shown a hatred so bitter of clerical worldliness and clerical property that he was looked upon as the special enemy of the great land-holding prelates and of the "possessioner" monks, whose lands, he maintained, could be resumed by the representatives of the donors at their will. The strenuous advocate for reducing the clergy to apostolic poverty was not likely to find favour among the prelates. Wycliffe's only clerical supporters at this stage were the mendicant friars, from whose characteristic opinions as regards "evangelical poverty" he never at any time swerved.[1] He was, however, eloquent and zealous, and he had a following. Fear either of Wycliffe or of his mendicant allies forced the bishops to take decisive action. Even Sudbury awoke, "as from deep sleep".[2] The duke's dangerous supporter was summoned to answer before the bishops at St. Paul's. [1] Shirley (preface to _Fasciculi Zizaniorum,_ Rolls Ser., p. xxvi.) thought that Wycliffe was "the sworn foe of the mendicants" in 1377, and E.M. Thompson's emphatic words repudiating the contrary statement of the St. Alban's writer, _Chron. Anglice,_ p. liii., illustrate the view prevalent in England in 1874. Lechler's _Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der Reformation,_ published in 1873 proves that it was not until Wycliffe denied the doctrine of transubstantiation in 1379 or 1380 that the friars deserted him. [2] _Chron. Anglice_, p. 117. On February 19, Wycliffe appeared in Courtenay's cathedral. Four mendicant doctors of divinity, chosen by Lancaster, came with him to defend him against the "possessioners," while the Duke of Lancaster himself, and Henry Percy, the new marshal, also accompanied him to overawe the bishops by their authority. The court was to be held in the lady chapel at the east end of the cathedral, and Wycliffe and his friends found some difficulty in making their way through the dense crowd that filled the spacious nave and aisles. Percy, irritated at the pressure of the throng, began to force it back in virtue of his office. Courtenay ordered that the marshal should exercise no authority in his cathedral. Thereupon Percy in a rage declared that he would act as marshal in the church, whether the bishop liked it or not. When the lady chapel was reached, there was further disputing as to whether Wycliffe should sit or stand, and Lancaster taunted Courtenay for trusting overmuch to the greatness of his family. When the bishop replied with equal spirit, John muttered: "I would liefer drag him out of his church by the hair of his head than put up with such insolence". The words were overheard, and the Londoners, who hated the duke, broke into open riot at this insult to their bishop. It was rumoured that the duke had come to St. Paul's, hot from an attack on the liberties of the city that very morning in parliament. The court broke up in wild confusion, and the riot spread from church to city. Next day Percy's house was pillaged, and John's palace of the Savoy attacked. The duke and the marshal were forced to seek the protection of their opponent, the Princess of Wales, at Kennington. The followers of Lancaster could only escape rough treatment by hiding away their lord's badges. The citizens cried that the Bishop of Winchester and Peter de la Mare should have a fair trial. At last the personal authority of Bishop Courtenay restored his unruly flock to order. The old king performed his last public act by soothing the spokesmen of the citizens with the pleasant words and easy grace of which he still was master. The Princess of Wales used her influence for peace, and matters were smoothed over. At some risk of personal humiliation, Lancaster secured a substantial triumph. Convocation followed the lead of parliament and gave an ample subsidy. William of Wykeham purchased the restoration of his temporalities by an unworthy deference to Alice Perrers. Wycliffe remained powerful, flattered, and consulted, though his enemies had already drawn up secret articles against him, which they had forwarded to the papal _curia_. Perhaps in the rapidly declining health of the king all parties saw that their real interest lay in the postponement of a crisis. In June Edward lay on his deathbed at Sheen. To the last his talk was all of hawking and hunting, and his mistress carefully kept from him all knowledge of his desperate condition. When he sank into his last lethargy, his courtiers deserted him, and Alice Perrers took to flight after robbing him of the very rings on his fingers. A simple priest, brought to the bedside by pity, performed for the half-conscious king the last offices of religion. Edward was just able to kiss the cross and murmur "Jesus have mercy". On June 21, 1377, he breathed his last. With Edward's death we break off a narrative whose course is but half run. John of Gaunt's rule was not over; Wycliffe was advancing from discontent to revolt; Chaucer was yet to rise for a higher flight; Langland had not yet put his complaint into its permanent form; the French war was renewed almost on the day of Edward's death; popular irritation against bad government, and social and economic repression were still preparing for the revolt of 1381. With all its defects the age of Edward is preeminently a strong age. Greedy, self-seeking, rough, and violent it may be; its passions and rivalries combined to make futile the exercise of its strength; it sounded the revolutionary note of all abrupt ages of transition, and it ends in disaster and demoralisation at home and abroad. But government is not everything, and least of all in the Middle Ages when what was then thought vigorous government appears miserably weak to modern notions. The strong rule decayed with the failure of the king's personal vigour. The ministers of Edward's dotage could not hold France nor even keep England quiet. England had grown impatient of the rule of a despot, though she was not yet able to govern herself after a constitutional fashion. It is in the incompatibility of the political ideals of royal authority and constitutional control, not less than in the want of purpose of her ruler and in the factions of her nobles that the explanation of the period must be sought. The age of Edward III. has been alternatively decried and exalted. Both verdicts are true, but neither contains the whole truth. The explanation of both is to be found in the annals of a later age. APPENDIX. ON AUTHORITIES. (1216-1377.) Our two main sources of knowledge for medieval history are records and chronicles. Chronicles are more accessible, easier to study, more continuous, readable, and coloured than records can generally be. Yet the record far excels the chronicle in scope, authority, and objectivity, and a prime characteristic of modern research is the increasing reliance on the record rather than the chronicle as the sounder basis of historical investigation. The medieval archives of England, now mainly collected in the Public Record Office, are unrivalled by those of any other country. From the accession of Henry III. several of the more important classes of records have become copious and continuous, while in the course of the reign nearly all the chief groups of documents have made a beginning. The whole of the period 1216 to 1377 can therefore be well studied in them. A large proportion of our archives is taken up with common forms, technicalities, and petty detail. It will never be either possible or desirable to print the mass of them _in extenso_, and most of the efforts made to render them accessible have taken the form of calendars, catalogues, and inventories. Such attempts began with the costly and unsatisfactory labours of the Record Commission (dissolved in 1836); and in recent years the work has again been taken up and pursued on better lines. The folio volumes of the Record Commission only remain so far of value as they have not been superseded by the more scholarly octavo calendars which are now being issued under the direction of the deputy-keeper of the records. These latter are all accompanied by copious indices which, though not always to be trusted implicitly, immensely facilitate the use of them. The records were preserved by the various royal courts. Of special importance for the political historian are the records of the Chancery and Exchequer. Prominent among the Chancery records are the PATENT ROLLS, strips of parchment sewn together continuously for each regnal year, whereon are inscribed copies of the letters patent of the sovereign, so called because they were sent out open, with the great seal pendent. Beginning in 1200, they present a continuous series throughout all our period, except for 23 and 24 Henry III. The publication of the complete Latin text of the _Patent Rolls of Henry III._ is now in progress, and two volumes have been issued, including respectively the years 1216-1225 and 1225-1232. From the accession of Edward I. onwards the bulk of the rolls renders the method of a calendar in English more desirable. The _Calendars of the Patent Rolls_ are now complete from 1272 to 1324 and from 1327 to 1348 (Edward I., 4 vols.; Edward II., 4 vols.; Edward III., 7 vols.). For the years not thus yet dealt with the unsatisfactory _Calendarium Rotulorum Patentium_ (1802, fol.) may still sometimes be of service. The letters close, or sealed letters addressed to individuals, usually of inferior public interest to the letters patent are preserved in the CLOSE ROLLS, compiled in the same fashion as the Patent Rolls. The whole extant rolls from 1204 to 1227 are printed in _Rotuli Literarum Clausarum_ (2 vols. fol., 1833 and 1844, Rec. corn.), and it is proposed to continue the integral publication of the text for the rest of Henry III.'s reign on the same plan as that of the Patent Rolls. One volume of this continuation, 1227-1231 (8vo, 1902), has been issued. For the subsequent periods a calendar in English is being prepared similar in type to the _Calendar of Patent Rolls_. The periods at present covered by the _Calendar of Close Rolls_ (1892-1905) are, Edward I., 1272-1296 (3 vols.): Edward II., the whole of the reign (4 vols.), and Edward III., 1327-1349 (8 vols.). A third series of records preserved by the Chancery officials is the ROLLS OF PARLIAMENT, including the petitions, pleas, and other parliamentary proceedings. None of these are extant before 1278, and the series for the succeeding century is often interrupted. Many of them are printed in the first two folios (vol. i., Edward I. and II.; vol. ii., Edward III.) of _Rotuli Parliamentorum_ (1767-1777). A copious index volume was issued in 1832. A specimen of what may still be looked for is to be found in Professor Maitland's edition of one of the earliest rolls of parliament in _Memoranda de Parliamento_ (1305) (Rolls series, 1893) with an admirable introduction. For the reigns of Edward I. and II. the deficiencies of the published rolls are supplemented by SIR F. PALGRAVE'S _Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Service_ (vol. i., 1827, Edward I.; vol. ii., 1834, Edward II., fol., Rec. Corn.) with alphabetical digests and indices. Formal grants under the great seal called _Charters_, characterised by a "salutation" clause, the names of attesting witnesses, and, under Henry III. after 1227, by the final formula _data per manum nostram apud_, etc., and implying normally the presence of the king, are contained in the CHARTER ROLLS, extant from the reign of John onwards. They are roughly analysed in the _Calendarium Rotulorum Chartarum_ (1803, Rec. Com.); and the _Rotuli Chartarum_ (fol., 1837, Rec. Corn.) contains the rolls _in extenso_ up to 1216, Vol. i., 1226-1257, of an English _Calendar of Charter Rolls_, printing some of the documents in full, was published in 1903. The documents formerly known as ESCHEAT ROLLS, or INQUISITIONES POST MORTEM, are concerned with the inquiries made by the Crown on the death of every landholder as to the extent and character of his holding. Some of the information contained in these inquests was made accessible in the _Calendarium Inquisitionum sive Eschætarum_ (vol. i., Henry III., Edward I. and II., 1806; vol. ii., Edward III., 1808, fol., Rec. Corn.). The errors and omissions of these volumes were partially remedied for the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. by C. ROBERTS'S _Calendarium Genealogicum_ (2 vols. 8vo, 1865). A scholarly guide to all this class of documents has been begun in the new _Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and other Analogous Documents_, of which vol. i. (Henry III.) was issued in 1904. The first volume of a separate list of the analogous inquisitions _Ad pod damnum_ is also announced. Of the FINE ROLLS containing the records of fines[1] made with the Crown for licence to alienate, exemption from service, wardships, pardons, etc., those of Henry III. have been made accessible in C. ROBERTS'S _Excerpta e Rotulis Finium_, 1216-1272 (1835-36, 8vo). Other rolls such as the LIBERATE ROLLS have not yet been published for the reigns here treated. [1] A _fine_ in this technical sense is an agreement arrived at by a money transaction. Of special or local rolls, preserved in the Chancery, the most important for our period are the GASCON ROLLS. The earlier documents called by this name are not exclusively concerned with the affairs of Gascony; they are miscellaneous documents enrolled for convenience in common parchments by reason of the presence of the king in his Aquitanian dominions. Of these are F. MICHEL'S _Roles Gascons_, vol. i., published in the French government series of _Documents Inédits sur l'Histoire de France_ (1885), including a "fragmentum rotuli Vasconiæ," 1242-1243, and "patentes littere facte in Wasconia," 1253-1254, years in which Henry III. was actually in Gascony. This publication was resumed in 1896 by M. CHARLES BÉMONT'S _Supplément_ to Michel's imperfect volume, containing innumerable corrections, an index, introduction, and some additional rolls of 1254 and 1259-1260. The later of these, the roll of Edward's delegated administration, is the first exclusively devoted to the concerns of Gascony. "Gascon Rolls" in this later sense begin with Edward I.'s accession, and M. Bémont has undertaken their publication for the whole of Edward's reign from photographs of the records supplied by the English to the French government. In 1900 vol. ii. of the _Roles Gascons,_ containing the years 1273-1290, was issued. Other classes of Chancery Rolls accessible in print are _Rotuli Scotiæ,_ 1291-1516 (2 vols., 1814-1819, Rec. Corn.), and _Rotuli Walliæ_, 5-9 Edward I., privately printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps (1865). Among isolated Chancery records the _Rotuli Hundredorum_ (Rec. Corn., 2 vols. fol., 1812-1818), containing the very important inquests made by Edward I.'s commissioners into the franchises of the barons, may specially be noticed here. Of not less importance than the Chancery records are those handed down from the Court of Exchequer. The most famous of these, the PIPE ROLLS, which, unlike the Chancery Enrolments, were "filed" or sewn skin by skin, are decreasingly important from the thirteenth century onwards as compared with their value for the twelfth. For this reason the Pipe Roll Society, founded in 1883, only undertook their publication up to