[1] The sentiment, or its equivalent in Ball’s famous distich,
    was not new; it was employed for mystical purposes in Richard
    Rolle’s

      “When Adam delf and Eue span, spir, if thou wil spede,
      Whare was then the pride of man, that now merres his mede?”

    Library of Early English Writers.  Richard Rolle of Hampole and
    his followers, ed.  Horstman, i., 73 (1895).

    [2] Cal. Papal Registers, Letters, iii., 565.

The Flagellants were denounced as heretics by Clement VI.; the Archbishop of York proceeded against the northern heretics, and in 1366 the Archbishop of Canterbury forbade John Ball’s preaching.  But there were more insidious, because more measured, enemies of the Church than a handful of fanatics.  The English were long convinced that the Avignon popes were playing the game of the French adversary, and Clement VI.’s efforts for peace never had a fair hearing.  Since the beginning of the war, the king laid his hand on the alien priories, and, though in his scrupulous regard for clerical rights he had allowed the monks to remain in possession, he diverted the stream of tribute from the French mother houses to his own treasury.  Bolder measures against papal provisions were taken in the years which immediately followed the pestilence.  Finding remonstrances futile, the parliament of 1351, which passed the statute of labourers, enacted also the first statute of provisors.  It recited that the anti-papal statute of Carlisle of 1307 was still law, and that the king had sworn to observe it.  It claimed for all electing bodies and patrons the right to elect or to present freely to the benefices in their gift.  It declared invalid all appointments brought about by way of papal provision.  Provisors who had accepted appointments from Avignon were to be arrested.  If convicted, they were to be detained in prison, until they had made their peace with the king, and found surely not to accept provisions in the future, and also not to seek their reinstatement by any process in the Roman curia.  Two years later this measure was supplemented by the first statute of praemunire, which enacted that those who brought matters cognisable in the king’s courts before foreign courts should be liable to forfeiture and outlawry.  Though the papal court is not specially mentioned, it is clear that this measure was aimed against it.

General measures proving insufficient, more specific legislation soon followed.  In 1365 a fresh statute of praemunire was drawn up on the initiative of the crown, enacting that all who obtained citations, offices, or benefices from the Roman court should incur the penalties prescribed by the act of 1353.  The prelates dissociated themselves from so stringent a law, but did not actively oppose it.  When in 1366, Edward requested the guidance of the estates as to how he was to deal with the demand of Urban