Philip the Fair; and, in order to prepare for the French expedition, he summoned another parliament to meet at Bury St. Edmunds on the morrow of All Souls’ day, November 3.  At Bury the barons, knights, and burgesses made liberal offerings for the war.  But a new difficulty arose in the absolute refusal of the clergy to vote any supplies.  Once more the cup of hope was dashed from Edward’s lips, and he found himself forced to enter into another weary conflict, this time with his English liegemen.

    [1] It is printed by the Bannatyne Club, and summarised in
    Cal.  Doc.  Scot., ii., 193-214.

So long as Peckham had lived, there had always been a danger of a conflict between Church and State.  Friar John had ended his restless career in 1292, and Edward showed natural anxiety to secure as his successor a prelate more amenable to the secular authority and more national in his sentiments.  The papacy remained vacant after the death of Nicholas IV. in 1292, so that there was no danger of Rome taking the appointment into its own hands, and the happy accident, which had given the monks of Christchurch a statesmanlike prior in Henry of Eastry, minimised the chances of a futile conflict between the king and the canonical electors.  Eastry took care that the archbishop-elect should be a person acceptable to the sovereign.  Robert Winchelsea, the new primate, was an Englishman and a secular clerk, who had taught with distinction at Paris and Oxford, but had received no higher ecclesiastical promotion than the archdeaconry of Essex and a canonry of St. Paul’s, and was mainly conspicuous for the sanctity of his life, his ability as a preacher, and his zeal for making the cathedral of London a centre of theological instruction.  The vacancy in, the papacy forced upon the archbishop-elect a wearisome delay of eighteen months in Italy; but at last in September, 1294, he received consecration and the pallium from the newly elected hermit-pope, Celestine V. Winchelsea on his return strove to show that a secular archbishop could be as austere in life, and as zealous for the rights of Holy Church, as his mendicant predecessors.  His desire to walk in the steps of Peckham soon brought him into conflict with the king, and in this conflict he showed an appreciation of the political situation, and a power of interpreting English opinion, which made him the most formidable of Edward’s domestic opponents.  He gained his first victory in the parliament of 1295 by preventing the clergy from making a larger grant than a tenth.  But this triumph sank into insignificance as compared with the refusal of all aid by the parliament of Bury.