a truce at least was signed at Bruges (Jan. 1375) which
endured till a few weeks before his death.
These two last years of Edward’s reign were filled with an episode of domestic strife, which had considerable constitutional importance. The nation ascribed the series of disasters which had filled the space from 1369 to 1375 entirely to the maladministration of Lancaster and the king’s Domestic strife. favourites, failing to see that it was largely due to the mere fact that England was not strong enough to hold down Aquitaine, when France was administered by a capable king and served by a great general. Hence there arose, both in and out of parliament, a violent agitation for the removal of Lancaster from power, and the punishment of the favourites, who were believed, with complete justification, to be misusing the royal name for their own private profit. Among the leaders of this agitation were the clerical ministers whom John of Gaunt had expelled from office in 1371, and chiefly William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, the late chancellor; they were helped by Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, a personal enemy of Lancaster, and could count on the assistance of the prince of Wales when he was well enough to take a part in politics. The greater part of the House of Commons was on their side, and on the whole they may be regarded as the party of constitutional protest against maladministration. But there was another movement on foot at the same time, which cut across this political agitation in the most bewildering fashion. Protests against the corruption of the Agitation against the Church. Church and the interference of the papacy in national affairs had always been rife in England. At this moment they were more prevalent than ever, largely in consequence of the way in which the popes at Avignon had made themselves the allies and tools of the kings of France. The Statutes of Praemunire and Provisors had been passed a few years before (1351–1365) to check papal pretensions. There was a strong anti-clerical party, whose practical aim was to fill the coffers of the state by large measures of disendowment and confiscations of Church property. The intellectual head of this party at the time was John Wycliffe, a famous Oxford Wycliffe. teacher, and for some time master of Balliol College. In his lectures and sermons he was always laying stress on the unsatisfactory state of the national church and the infamous corruption of the papacy. The doctrine which first made him famous, and commended him to all members of the anti-clerical faction, was that unworthy holders of spiritual endowments ought to be dispossessed of them, because “dominion” should depend on “grace.” Churchmen, small and great, as he held, had been corrupted, because they had fallen away from the early Christian idea of apostolic poverty. Instead of discharging their proper functions, bishops and abbots had become statesmen or wealthy barons, and took no interest in anything save politics. The monasteries, with their vast possessions, had become corporations of landlords, instead of associations for prayer and good works. The papacy, with its secular ambitions, and its insatiable greed for money, was the worst abuse of all. A bad pope, and most popes were bad, was the true Antichrist, since he was always overruling the divine law of the scriptures by his human ordinances. Every man, as Wycliffe taught—using the feudal analogies of contemporary society—is God’s tenant-in-chief, directly responsible for his acts to his overlord; the pope is always thrusting himself in between, like a mesne-tenant, and destroying the touch between God and man by his interference. Sometimes his commands are merely presumptuous; sometimes—as when, for example, he preaches crusades against Christians for purely secular reasons—they are the most horrible form of blasphemy. Wycliffe at a later period of his life developed views on doctrinal matters, not connected with his original thesis about the relations between Church and State, and foreshadowed most of the leading tenets of the reformers of the 16th century. But in 1376–1377 he was known merely as the outspoken critic of the “Caesarean clergy” and the papacy. He had a following of enthusiastic disciples at Oxford, and scattered adherents both among the burghers and the knighthood, the nucleus of the party that afterwards became famous as the Lollards. But they had not yet differentiated themselves from the body of those who were merely anti-clerical, without being committed to any theories of religious reform.
Since Wycliffe was, above all things, the enemy of the political clergy of high estate, and since those clergy were precisely the leaders of the attack upon John of Gaunt, it came to pass that hatred of a common foe drew the duke and John of Gaunt and Wycliffe. the doctor together for a space. There was a strange alliance between the advocate of clerical reform, and the practical exponent of secular misgovernment. The only point on which they were agreed was that it would be highly desirable to strip the Church of most of her endowments, in order to fill the exchequer of the state. Lancaster hoped to use Wycliffe as his mouthpiece against his enemies; Wycliffe hoped to see Lancaster disendowing bishops and monasteries and defying the pope. Hence the attempt of the political bishops to get Wycliffe condemned as a heretic became inextricably mixed with the attempt of the constitutional party, to which the bishops belonged, to evict the duke from his position of first councillor to the king and director of the policy of the realm.
The struggle began in the parliament of 1376, called by the
anti-Lancastrian party the “Good Parliament.” Headed by the
earl of March, William Courtenay, bishop of London,
and Sir Peter de la Mare, the daring speaker of the
The “Good Parliament.”
Overthrow
of the king’s favourites.
Constitutio-nal reforms.
House of Commons, the duke’s enemies began their
campaign by accusing the king’s ministers and
favourites of corruption. Here they were on safe ground, for
the misdeeds of Lord Latimer—the king’s chamberlain,
Lord Neville—his steward, Richard Lyons—his financial
agent, and Alice Perrers—his greedy and shameless mistress,
had been so flagrant that it was hard for Lancaster to
defend them. In face of the evidence brought forward
the old king and his son had to abandon their friends
to the angry parliament. Latimer and Lyons were
condemned to imprisonment and forfeiture of their goods, Alice
Perrers was banished from court. Encouraged by this victory,
the parliament passed on to constitutional reforms, forced on
the king a council of twelve peers nominated by themselves,
who were to exercise over him much the same control
that the lords ordainers had held over his father, and
compelled him to assent to a long list of petitions
which, if properly carried out, would have removed
most of the practical grievances of the nation. Having so done
they dispersed, not guessing that Lancaster had yielded so
easily because he was set on undoing their work the moment
that they were gone.
This, however, was the case; after the shortest of intervals
the duke executed something like a coup d’état. In his father’s
name he released Latimer and Lyons, dismissed the
council of twelve, imprisoned Peter de la Mare,
John of Gaunt re-establishes the royal power.
Death of the Black Prince.
sequestrated the temporalities of Bishop Wykeham,
and sent the earl of March out of the realm. Alice
Perrers took possession again of the king, and all his
corrupt courtiers came back to him. A royal edict declared
the statutes of the “Good Parliament” null and void. Lancaster
would never have dared to defy public opinion and
challenge the constitutional party to a life-and-death struggle
in this fashion, had it not been that his brother the prince of
Wales had died while the “Good Parliament” was
sitting; thus the opposition had been deprived of
their strongest support. The prince’s heir was a mere
child, Richard of Bordeaux, aged only nine. It was
feared by some that Duke John might carry his ambitions so far
as to aim at the throne—he could do what he pleased with his
doting father, and flaws might have been picked in the marriage
of the Black Prince and his wife Joan of Kent, who were cousins,
and therefore within the “prohibited degrees.” As a matter
of fact Lancaster was a more honest man than his enemies suspected;
he hastened to acknowledge his little nephew’s rights,
acknowledged him as prince of Wales, and introduced him as
his grandfather’s heir before the parliament of January 1377.
The character of this body was a proof of the great strength
