remnant of the Anglo-imperial alliance.  Even Flanders and England became estranged.  Artevelde, who found it a hard matter to govern Flanders after the truce, would willingly have supported Edward.  But Edward had henceforth less need of Artevelde than Artevelde had of him.  In 1345 Edward again appeared at Sluys and had an interview with him, and then returned to his own country without setting foot on Flemish soil.  Artevelde soon afterwards met his death in a popular tumult.  His family fled to England, where they lived on a pension from Edward.  This was the end of the Anglo-Flemish alliance.

After the treaty of Esplechin, Edward returned to Ghent.  The conclusion of military operations was a signal to all his creditors to clamour for immediate settlement of their debts.  Neither subsidies nor wool came from England, though the king wrote in piteous terms to his council.  Edward was convinced that the real cause of his failure was the remissness of the home government, and resolved to wreak his vengeance on his ministers.  He was encouraged to this effect by Bishop Burghersh, who still remembered his old feuds with Archbishop Stratford, and may well have believed that the archbishop, who had a financier’s dread of war, had wilfully ruined his rival’s diplomacy.  But Edward dared not openly return to England, for his Flemish creditors regarded his personal presence as the best security for his debts.  He was therefore reduced to the pitiful expedient of running away from them.  One day he rode out of Ghent on the pretext of taking exercise, and hurried secretly and without escort to Sluys.  Thence he took ship for England, and, after a tempestuous voyage of three days and nights, sailed up the Thames, and landed at the Tower on November 30, 1340, after nightfall.  At cockcrow next morning, he summoned his ministers before him, denounced them as false traitors and drove them all from office.  The judges were thrown into prison, and with them some of the leading merchants, including William de la Pole of Hull.  A special commission, like that of 1289, scrutinised the acts of the royal officials throughout the kingdom, and exacted heavy fines from the many who were found wanting.  Nothing but fear of provoking the wrath of the Church prevented Edward from consigning to prison the dismissed chancellor, Robert Stratford, Bishop of Chichester, and the late treasurer, Roger Northburgh, Bishop of Coventry.  Their successors were lay knights, the new chancellor, Sir Robert Bourchier, being the first keeper of the great seal who was not a clerk.

Earlier in the year the king had quarrelled with Archbishop Stratford, who resigned the chancellorship.  But before Edward sailed from Orwell in June there had been a partial reconciliation, and the king left Stratford president of the council during his absence.  When his brother and colleagues were dismissed, the archbishop was at Charing.  Conscious that he was the chief object of Edward’s vengeance, he at once took