the rise of the great wool industry and the increased prosperity of the merchant class led to the introduction of taxes calculated, not on land, but on movable property-such as tenths, twelfths, fifteenths, of its value. Moreover, at the close of the century, the growth of foreign commerce attracted attention to the customs as an important source of revenue; and duties on various articles of export and import began to form a large item in the national accounts. Accordingly, the ancient impost of scutage became exceedingly exceptional after the reign of Edward I. On the other hand, the customs duty on wool was first formally granted in 1275, and a general customs duty, under the title of tonnage and poundage, calculated at 2s. on the tun of wine, and 6d. on the pound of merchandise, was first formally granted for two years in 1373, as a commutation of the king's ancient right to a 'prise' or share of all goods passing out of the country. From this time forward the customs duty on wool and tonnage and poundage became one of the most important items of the parliamentary grants. The three feudal aids, or rather two, 'pur fille marrier,' and for the knighting of the king's eldest son, continued to be collected as before. Besides these important statutes, parliament gave a great deal of attention to the regulation of trade, particularly the staples of wool, lead, and tin; frequently altering the regulations under which the General sales of these articles were to be permitted. Their chief Legislation. objects were to render taxation easy by concentrating trade in a few places, and also to prevent gold and silver from leaving the country, a feeling which appears in the anti-papal legislation of the time, and which was based on the idea long held that the amount of coin in a country is the true test of its wealth. Ecclesiastical Affairs. During the middle ages ecclesiastical affairs had always two aspects— (1) the connection between the church of England and the papacy; (2) the internal condition of the English church. During the reign of Edward III. both require attention. For some time a very serious feeling of discontent with the clergy had been growing up in the country and shown itself in various ways. One cause of the unpopularity of the ecclesiastics was the way in which, since the Norman Conquest, they had engrossed the offices of state. With the exception of the lay chancellor and treasurer, named by Edward 111. in 1341, these offices had invariably been held by ecclesiastics; and the minor offices of what we should now call the civil services were almost exclusively in the hands of ecclesiastics. For many years this had been almost an unavoidable necessity, in consequence of the almost exclusive possession by ecclesiastics of the Bishops. knowledge of business, account-keeping, and of the civil law; but of recent years the universities had been turning out students well skilled in such matters, and in particular the practice of the law was falling into the hands of laymen. To these, and to the baronage, the position of the official clergy seemed an injustice, and those who held this feeling were naturally ready to make common cause for the moment with the baronial party, which always (see page 228) regarded with hostility the official advisers of the sovereign. Parish Against the parish priests the chief grievance was their non-residence, which arose partly from one clergyman holding several livings, and only residing at most in one; and partly from the practice of beneficed clergymen deserting their cures and residing in London or other towns, where they gained an easy livelihood as chantrypriests, while their livings were served by ill-paid curates. The 'regulars' were beginning to be unpopular on account of their wealth, which had turned even the Cistercians into little better than The Regular communities of rich sheep-farmers, while the Friars, though Orders. the most recently created of the orders, had found the temptations of their vagabond existence too powerful to be resisted when the first ardour of their enthusiasm had passed away. Ecclesi astical Officials. More unpopular, however, than any one order were the officials of the ecclesiastical courts, who had long converted what was intended to be an engine for the suppression of vice into a machine for collecting blackmail from sinners, and whose perpetual meddling and prying made them universally detested. Two contemporary and easily accessible pictures of the ecclesiastical life of the day should be examined in this connection: the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in which he gives a kindly and not exaggerated sketch of the various ecclesiastics of his day, and the Vision of Piers Ploughman, in which the vices and avarice of the clergy are denounced in a sterner tone. To reform these abuses one party appeared who wished to drive the clergy from all secular offices, and another who wished to purge the church of abuses and restore it to the purity of primitive times. Of these sections the leaders were John of Gaunt and John Wyclif. John of Gaunt was only the third son of Edward, who had grown to manhood; but the death of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, in 1368, and the John of long absence of the Prince of Wales in Gascony, made him Gaunt. the most prominent man about the court. He had been born at Ghent in 1340, and was created earl of Richmond. In 1359 he married Blanche, the daughter and heiress of Duke Henry of Lancaster, on whose death, in 1362, he had become duke of Lancaster, earl of Leicester, Lincoln, and Derby, and as such the natural leader of the old Lancastrian party. By his first wife, Blanche, he had one son, afterwards Henry IV., and two daughters. After her death he married Constance of Castile, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Pedro the Cruel, and when she died in 1394 he married Katharine Swynford, the governess of his children, and sister-in-law of Chaucer the poet, by whom he already had several illegitimate children, afterwards well known as the Beauforts. His abilities were fair, but his personal character was bad, and he appears to have had little skill in winning popularity. In consequence, he never acquired any real hold over the people at large, and his chief influence was exerted as the leader of the nobility. If the court was the headquarters of the hostility to the clergy, represented by the duke of Lancaster, Oxford was the headquarters of the hostility to clerical abuses, represented by John Wyclif. University Since Robert Pullein lectured on the Scriptures in 1133, and of Oxford. Vacarius on Roman law in 1149, the schools of Oxford had steadily increased in importance; and at some date unknown the body of teachers and scholars had come to be recognised as a university or corporation, presided over by a chancellor, named by the bishop of Lincoln as head of the diocese, and capable of conferring the degrees of doctor and master So important were these schools, that in 1186, when Gerald the Welshman wished to make known his work on the Topography of Wales, he could devise no better way than to go to Oxford and read it on three successive days to the students. Another proof of their importance is shown by the efforts made by the various religious orders to get a hold over the teaching. In 1221 the Dominicans, on first landing, made their way to Oxford, and in 1224 were followed by the Franciscans, and afterwards by the Carmelites and Augustinians. Many of the older monastic orders, especially the Benedictines, sent scholars from their convent schools to reside at the university, and established for them special halls of residence. So successful were their efforts that the mendicant orders soon became a very important and almost a dominant eiement in the life of the place; and Roger Bacon, himself a Franciscan, complains that they withstood the progress of true learning no less than the clergy. Against this predominance of the orders a stand was made by Walter de Merton, chancellor of Henry III. Hitherto with the exception of those who lived in one of the hostels of the orders, or had united for economy to hire a house under the leadership of a 'principal,' the Foundation students had lived in lodgings about the town. Walter's of Merton plan was to incorporate his students as an independent society, enjoying the advantage of the lectures of the 'schools,' but living College. together under proper discipline. Such corporate life was calculated to promote in his scholars a feeling of esprit de corps, and in his statutes Walter de Merton set before them an ideal different from that preached by the orders. No 'religious person'—that is, no monk or friar-was to be a member of the body, and the scholars were to set before themselves as their aim, not the narrow vision of obedience to the petty interests of an 'order,' but to go out and to do good service in the great world. It was in 1264 that Walter de Merton obtained his charter, and in 1274 he settled his small body of Fellows and Scholars at Oxford. The foundation of Merton forms an epoch in the history of Oxford, for the example of Walter was soon copied by others. The first ordinance of Balliol dates from 1282. Exeter College was founded in 1314, Oriel College in 1326, Queen's College in 1340. A similar change occurred in the life of the younger university of Cambridge, and in 1280 the statutes of Peterhouse, the first Cambridge college, were copied from those of Merton. The 'orders,' however, were not willing to lose their hold on the universities without a struggle, and it was as a leader in this rivalry between the 'seculars' and the 'regulars' that Wyclif appears to have first established a reputation. John Wyclif is believed to have been born in 1324 at the village of Hipswell, near Richmond in Yorkshire, some ten miles from Wycliffeon-Tees, the home of his family. Of his boyhood nothing is John Wyclif. known, but that he found his way to Oxford; and the first definite fact known of his later career is that in 1361 he became master of Balliol College. As a head of a college Wyclif was by position a leader among the 'seculars,' and his character well fitted him for controversy. To a temperament naturally witty, humorous, and acute, he had added an admirable training in the methods of scholastic philosophy which turned upon acute definitions and distinctions. His personal character was so good that his opponents could never find in it the slightest handle for personal attack; while his genial temperament appears to have won him the love and co-operation of others. Such a man made an admirable leader of the movement against the 'regulars.' In 1366 Wyclif brought himself into further prominence by defending, before the university of Oxford, the decision to withhold from the pope the tribute of 1000 marks; and in 1375 he was selected as one of a deputation who were to meet the pope's representatives at Bruges, and argue the whole question of the relations between England and the papacy. Meanwhile, in 1372, the court party had taken vigorous action against the ecclesiastical officials. Taking up the policy of 1341, they had demanded and secured their dismissal, and a heavy tax had been levied on lands taken into mortmain since 1282 for the purpose of raising a fleet. A parable of the time illustrates the attitude of the courtiers. The owl (the church) had borrowed its feathers (endowments) Hostility to from the other birds (the laity); but when the birds were the Clergy. in danger from the hawk (the French), then the birds rightly demanded to have their feathers restored for their own defence. Il luck, however, attended the application of the story, for the fleet so provided perished off La Rochelle (see p. 267); the expedition of John of Gaunt was a failure, and the new lay officials showed themselves less competent to manage affairs than the more experienced ecclesiastics. William of Of these ecclesiastics the most conspicuous was William of Wykeham. This celebrated man was born in 1324. He had long served the court in the capacity of surveyor of works, had built for Edward the castles of Windsor and Queenborough and many other Wykeham. buildings; and in reward had been made president of the king's council, bishop of Winchester, and chancellor. In 1386 he founded New College at Oxford, and the college of Winchester, to which he gave for a motto the maxim Manners makyth man.' To John of Gaunt Wykeham appears to have been personally distasteful, and as Wykeham's cause was taken up by the clergy as a body, the controversy between the two assumed a national importance. Court. Meanwhile, the general condition of the country had become most unsatisfactory. Queen Philippa died in 1369; and after her death Edward III. allowed himself to be completely fascinated by Demoralisathe charms of one of her attendants, Alice Perrers or tion of the Pierce, whom he publicly exhibited in the streets of London as 'the Queen of Beauty.' Under her influence his character suffered a rapid deterioration. Alice acquired a greater influence than any king's mistress before or since; wheedled the king into granting her the late queen's jewels, made an open sale of her influence, and actually ventured to dictate the decisions of the courts of law. Under her influence, the extragavance of the court knew no bounds; the king was overwhelmed with debts; and courtiers, such as lord Latimer and lord Neville and Richard Lyons, made money by buying up the claims of the king's creditors and getting payment for themselves at the expense of others. Such a state of affairs at court caused widespread dissatisfaction; and in 1376 Edward the Black Prince, who, since his return to England, had been living the retired life of an invalid, roused himself to The Good exertion; and, putting himself at the head of the malcontents, demanded a change of ministers and the purification of the court. The Parliament. |