[Sidenote:  Protest of the Parliament]

But the greed of the Popes was no new grievance, though the increase of these exactions since the removal to Avignon gave it a new force.  What alienated England most was their connexion with and dependence on France.  From the first outset of the troubles in the North their attitude had been one of hostility to the English projects.  France was too useful a supporter of the Papal court to find much difficulty in inducing it to aid in hampering the growth of English greatness.  Boniface the Eighth released Balliol from his oath of fealty, and forbade Edward to attack Scotland on the ground that it was a fief of the Roman See.  His intervention was met by a solemn and emphatic protest from the English Parliament; but it none the less formed a terrible obstacle in Edward’s way.  The obstacle was at last removed by the quarrel of Boniface with Philip the Fair; but the end of this quarrel only threw the Papacy more completely into the hands of France.  Though Avignon remained imperial soil, the removal of the Popes to this city on the verge of their dominions made them mere tools of the French kings.  Much no doubt of the endless negotiation which the Papal court carried on with Edward the Third in his strife with Philip of Valois was an honest struggle for peace.  But to England it seemed the mere interference of a dependant on behalf of “our enemy of France.”  The people scorned a “French Pope,” and threatened Papal legates with stoning when they landed on English shores.  The alliance of Edward with an excommunicated Emperor, the bold defiance with which English priests said mass in Flanders when an interdict reduced the Flemish priests to silence, were significant tokens of the new attitude which England was taking up in the face of Popes who were leagued with its enemy.  The old quarrel over ecclesiastical wrongs was renewed in a formal and decisive way.  In 1343 the Commons petitioned for the redress of the grievance of Papal appointments to vacant livings in despite of the rights of patrons or the Crown; and Edward formally complained to the Pope of his appointing “foreigners, most of them suspicious persons, who do not reside on their benefices, who do not know the faces of the flocks entrusted to them, who do not understand their language, but, neglecting the cure of souls, seek as hirelings only their worldly hire.”  In yet sharper words the king rebuked the Papal greed.  “The successor of the Apostles was set over the Lord’s sheep to feed and not to shear them.”  The Parliament declared “that they neither could nor would tolerate such things any longer”; and the general irritation moved slowly towards those statutes of Provisors and Praemunire which heralded the policy of Henry the Eighth.

[Sidenote:  Flanders]