The legislation of the years of peace, from 1360 to 1369, is largely anti-papal and economic, and is so intimately connected with the laws of the preceding period that it has been dealt with in an earlier chapter.  But however anti-papal, and therefore anti-clerical, some of Edward’s laws were, his government was still mainly controlled by great ecclesiastical statesmen.  Simon Langham, though a Benedictine monk, had as chancellor demanded in 1366 the opinion of the estates as to the unlawfulness of the Roman tribute, and the clerical estate, if it did not help forward the anti-Roman legislation, was content to stand aside, and let it take effect without protest.  Shortly after taking part in the movement against papal tribute, Langham was removed from the see of Ely to that of Canterbury in succession to Islip.  His conversion into a purely monastic college of his predecessor’s mixed foundation for seculars and regulars in Canterbury Hall, Oxford, showed a bias which might have been expected in a former abbot of Westminster, while his willingness to follow in the footsteps of Kilwardby, and exchange his archbishopric for the dignity of a cardinal and residence at Avignon showed that he was a papalist as well as an English patriot.  His successor as primate, appointed in 1369 by papal provision, was William Whittlesea, a nephew of Archbishop Islip, whose weak health and colourless character made of little account his five years’ tenure of the metropolitical dignity.  With Canterbury in such feeble hands, the leadership in the Church and primacy in the councils of the crown passed to stronger men:  such as John Thoresby, Archbishop of York till 1373; Thomas Brantingham, treasurer from 1369 to 1371, and Bishop of Exeter from 1370 to 1394; and above all to Edward’s old servant, William of Wykeham, chancellor from 1367 to 1371, and Bishop of Winchester, in succession to Edington, from 1367 until 1404.  Wykeham was a strenuous and hard-working servant of the crown, a vigorous and careful ruler of his diocese, a mighty pluralist, a magnificent builder, and the most bountiful and original of all the pious founders of his age.  “Everything,” says Froissart, “was done through him and without him nothing was done."[1]

    [1] Froissart, Chroniques, ed.  Luce, viii., 101.

The year of the breach of the treaty of Calais was also marked by the third great visitation of the Black Death, and the death of Queen Philippa.  Parliament cordially welcomed the resumption by Edward of the title of King of France, and made liberal subsidies for the prosecution of the campaign.  Disappointment was all the more bitter when each campaign ended in disaster, and in the parliament of February, 1371, the storm burst.  The circumstances of the ministerial crisis of 1341 were almost exactly renewed.  As on the previous occasion, the state was in the hands of great ecclesiastics, whose conservative methods were thought inadequate for circumstances so perilous.