only a limited and conditional grant, which was strictly appropriated to the payment of the expenses of the war.  The anti-clerical party was still strong enough to send up denunciations of papal assumptions, and the anxiety to adjust the relations between the papacy and the crown led to some abortive negotiations with the legates of Gregory XI at Bruges in 1374, which were mainly memorable for the appearance of John Wycliffe as one of the royal commissioners.  Disgust at the attitude of the commons may well have postponed the next parliament for nearly three years.  But the truce of Bruges made frequent parliaments less necessary.

The truce brought John of Gaunt back to England, and the rivalry between him and his elder brother, which had begun during their last joint campaigns in France, crystallised into definite parties the discordant tendencies that had been well marked since the crisis of 1371.  The old king was a mere pawn in the game.  His health had been broken by the debauchery and frivolity to which he had abandoned himself after the death of Queen Philippa.  He was now entirely under the influence of Alice Perrers, a Hertfordshire squire’s daughter, whose venality, greed, and shamelessness made her the fit tool for the self-seeking ring of courtiers.  John of Gaunt sought her support as the best means of withdrawing the old king from the influence of the Prince of Wales, and the lay ministers were glad to maintain themselves in their tottering power by means of such powerful allies.  Prominent among their party were courtier nobles—­such as the chamberlain, Lord Latimer, and the steward of the household, Lord Neville of Raby,—­and rich London financiers, chief among whom was Richard Lyons, men who made exorbitant profits out of the necessities of the administration.  Faction sought to appear more respectable by professions of zeal for reform.  The cry against papal encroachments was extended to a denunciation of the wealth and power of the clergy.  John Wycliffe was called from his Oxford classrooms to expound the close connexion between dominion and grace, and to teach from London pulpits that the ungodly bishop or priest has no right to the temporal possessions given him on trust for the discharge of his high mission.[1]

[1] Until recently all historians have dated the beginning of Wycliffe’s political career from 1366, but J. Loserth has proved that 1374, the date of the last demand for the Roman tribute, to be the right year.  See his Studien zur Kirchen-politik Englands im 14ten Jahrhundert, in Sitzungsberichte der Academie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philos. histor. classe, cxxxvi., 1897, and, more briefly, in Engl.  Hist.  Review, xi. (1896), 319-328.

A vigorous opposition to the dominant faction was formed.  At its head was the Black Prince.  Hardly less important and much more active than the dying hero of Poitiers was Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, the husband of Philippa of Clarence, and the