sacred all the gentlefolk they could lay hands on, till the English, Gascon and German knights went to help the French nobles and put down the Jacquerie, as it was called, from Jacques Bonhomme [James Goodman], the nickname of the French serf. The English meanwhile beset Rheims

and Paris, 1359 and 1360, to force the Regent to submit to their terms. At last, in 1360, at Bretigny a final peace was signed, by which John was to be ransomed at 3,000,000 gold crowns and to give up all rights upon Calais and Guienne, while the English king was to let drop his claims on the crown of France.

10. So the main war ended, but there was no perfect peace in Edward's days. After Bretigny the Free Companies, bands of hired soldiers who had served the The French and French and English kings in the last campaigns, Spanish wars, became a terror to France, till they were got rid 1360-1377. of in divers ways. Ingelram of Coucy brought one band of them, the Guglers, through Burgundy into Switzerland, where they were beaten by the men of Bern. Sir John Hawkwood

took the White Company into Italy and served the city of Florence with them till his death. The Great Company went to Avignon and made the Pope pay them a large sum before Bertrand du Glesquin, the famous Breton captain, led them across the Pyrenees to help Henry of Trastamar against his half-brother, Peter the Cruel, King of Castile. Peter thereupon went to Bordeaux, espoused his two daughters Constance and Isabel to John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley, and got the Black Prince to bring an army to aid him to win back his throne. In the decisive battle of 3rd April 1367, when the river Najara ran red for a mile, the English overthrew Henry and took Bertrand prisoner; but Peter would not fulfil his promises of pay, and fever-stricken and disappointed, the Prince came back to Bordeaux. Peter, left to himself, was soon taken and slain by his brother Henry, and John of Gaunt forthwith claimed the crown of Castile, in pursuit of which he was engaged ever and anon till 1388. The end of the Black Prince's career abroad was not happy; his harshness to the Gascons caused their appeal to John's son King Charles V. in 1369, and led to breach of the treaty of Bretigny and French invasions in 1370. This was repelled, and Limoges, which had gladly received the invaders, was retaken by the Prince himself, who ordered a massacre of the townsfolk as traitors, and saw it carried out. But the Spaniards balanced his successful defence of Gascony by the defeat and capture of the Earl of Pembroke off the port of Rochelle, which he was about to relieve from a French attack, June 23, 1372; and Bertrand du Glesquin (who had been ransomed by the Pope) drove John of Montfort the younger from the duchy he had held ever since Charles of Blois was slain at Auray in 1364. In 1373, being broken in health and unfit for war, Prince Edward gave up his duchy of Aquitaine and came home, John of Gaunt taking his place for a while as Captain-General. But though the French let the young Duke of Lancaster march through France from Calais to Bordeaux without giving him battle, they managed bit by bit to win castle after castle and town after town on the Gascon marches, and to drive Montfort out of Brittany a second time in 1375. The English were fast finding out that it was easier to win battles than to hold what they already had, and that the expense of keeping up garrisons and feeding armies soon ate up all the profits of the most successful raids and the largest ransoms.

11. Struggles against misrule in Church and State fill the last years of Edward's reign. The growing feeling of laymen with regard to the former has been noticed, but

1378.

there were not lacking churchmen who saw the evils in their midst. Richard, Archbishop of Armagh, had spent his life in preaching against the sins into which the orders of the friars had fallen. Ockham and others had taken their stand against the greed and abuses of the Pope and his court, and Thomas of Bradwardine, King Edward's chaplain, the "deep doctor," Archbishop of Canterbury, had written against what he thought the mistakes of theologians. "The gospel doctor," John Wycliff, was now to take up these men's John Wycliff, work and carry it into a wider field; for he was his views and not content with teaching in the Oxford schools career, 1374or preaching at the Church of S. Mary's, but continually appealed to the Government and to Parliament, and laid the points at issue before laymen in their own tongue by his pamphlets and his new order of "wayfaring preachers." Born about 1320, he won fame as a teacher and thinker at Oxford by his good life, fine lectures, and bold philosophical views. He was Fellow of Balliol College about 1345, Master of Balliol 1361, and Doctor of Theology about 1370. His ability and learning led to his being named one of the commissioners who were sent to Bruges in 1374 to try and make a Concordat [agreement] with the Pope as to his rights over the English Church. On his return he began to write against the abuses of the Church, laying great stress upon the need of a holy life in all priests and bishops, setting forth his idea of what a true Church should be, and calling upon laymen to put the Church in order since it was clearly turning aside from its duties in the pursuit of wealth and honours. The friars were pleased with his praise of the poverty of the early Church, and John of Gaunt, who had known him at Bruges, wished to use him against William of Wyckham and the other bishops who were withstanding his plans of government. So when in February 1377 Wycliff was called before Convocation for his teaching, the Duke of Lancaster and the Earl Marshal spoke so threateningly to the Bishop of London that the enraged Londoners rose in riot, sacked the Savoy Palace, sought to slay the duke, and caused such confusion that the matter was obliged to be dropped, though the city was punished by having its rights taken away for a time. However the bishops got Bulls from Pope Gregory XI. to examine Wycliff; but they were not put into force till February 1378, after King Edward's death, when he appeared in London and explained away the accusations against him. As the Princess of Wales forbade the Court to judge him, and the Londoners, with whom he was at this

time very popular, broke into the room and took his part with warmth, he again escaped his foes.

ment.

12. In his latter days King Edward gave less and less heed to the ruling of the kingdom, especially after the death of his good queen Philippa in 1369, and left matters much in the hands of his favourites, chief of whom were the Earl of Pembroke and John of Gaunt, who were careful to trouble Home affairs, him as little as possible; for he shrunk from 1360-1377. The the task of helping his ministers, William of Good Parlia- Wyckham the Chancellor and Brantingham the Treasurer (Bishops of Winchester and Exeter), in their thankless toil of getting money to carry on a war which was growing more costly and less glorious every day. He simply let matters take their course. In 1360 he had agreed to a law fixing the number and duties' of the justices of the peace, who were now taking the place and doing the work of the old hundred courts touching all offences against the king's peace. In 1362, willing to please his people, he ordered that English, not French, should be used in the courts of law, and that all records should be kept in Latin, and promised that he would lay on no tax whatever without the consent of Parliament: for hitherto he, like his father, had often got the merchants to agree to taxes on their goods so as to avoid being obliged to ask money of the Three Estates, whom they could not cajole so easily. In 1371 the Earl of Pembroke got the Parliament to beg of the king to dismiss his clerical ministers and take laymen in their stead, and he did so; and in 1372 an Act was passed forbidding lawyers or sheriffs to sit in Parliament. But the government by John of Gaunt and his friends was growing unpopular-they spent as much and did no more than their foregoers-and in 1376 the former ministers, headed by the princes of Wales and William of Wyckham, regained power in the Good Parliament. Peter de la Mare, a follower of John of Gaunt's rival, the Earl of March, was chosen Speaker, and he headed the Commons in impeaching [accusing before the Lords] Richard Lyon and Barons Latimer and Neville for embezzling the government moneys, for buying the king's debts at low prices, and getting full and instant payment to the hurt of the king's credit, for lending the king money at thirty-three per cent. interest, and for making a profit out of the customs. They were all found guilty, sent to prison, and fined. The Commons then prayed the king to issue a decree against women meddling in the law courts, by which means they were able to have Alice Perrers, his favourite, banished from court, for she had abused her power over the king to cause

the judges to give unjust sentences on behalf of those who bribed her to speak for them. In the midst of this Parliament the Black Prince died, June 8, 1376, to the great grief of his party, whereon the Commons, fearing lest John of Gaunt should try to seize the crown when the old king died, got Edward to name Richard, the Prince's little son, his heir, and to add nine lords named by them to his Standing Council. But directly the Parliament broke up John of Gaunt overthrew all it had done, turned the Earl of March out of the Marshalcy, had William of Wyckham tried and banished for misuse of public moneys, imprisoned Peter de la Mare without trial, recalled Alice Perrers and the impeached lords. Moreover, he managed to get the greater number of the Commons in the Parliament of 1377 chosen from among his friends, and so ensured their approval of his acts. He was able to do this because, besides those who feared or loved him, there were still many, such as Wycliff and the friars, who upheld him as the enemy of the bishops.

13. On June 2, 1377, the old king died. Alice Perrers was with hin all through his illness, for she was Edward III.'s afraid of any one else winning influence over character and him. But when she saw that he was at the death. point of death, she pulled the rings off his cold hands and fled, while the servants were busy plundering the palace; and had it not been for a priest who came in and stayed with him till the last, the helpless sufferer would have been left to die unheeded and alone.

Edward was a man of a wonderfully fair face and noble bearing, as his effigies witness to this day; of exceeding grace of manner and much good-nature, as his name of the "kindly king" testifies. He did not lack book-learning, and could speak five languages. That he was a brave knight and a prudent commander even his enemies allowed. He was singularly even-tempered, not easily cast down by trouble or roused to anger by opposition or puffed up by success. But, on the other hand, he was selfish, and so preferred to be generous to his enemies rather than pay his debts to his friends, would rather be popular at other men's cost than take the blame of his own mistakes, and was ready to sacrifice his faithful servants if he could save himself the trouble of taking an active and toilsome part in the work of keeping down his expenses. His passion for pleasure stained his latter days, and his thirst for fame led to much useless and wicked bloodshed both in England and France, and brought no small disasters upon those of his race whom his great deeds dazzled and example misled.