ers. The prerogative of "purveyance" by which the king
in his progresses through the country had the right of first purchase of
all that he needed at fair market price became a galling oppression in the
hands of a bankrupt king who was always moving from place to place. "When
men hear of your coming," Archbishop Islip wrote to Edward, "everybody at
once for sheer fear sets about hiding or eating or getting rid of their
geese and chickens or other possessions that they may not utterly lose them
through your arrival. The purveyors and servants of your court seize on men
and horses in the midst of their field work. They seize on the very
bullocks that are at plough or at sowing, and force them to work for two or
three days at a time without a penny of payment. It is no wonder that men
make dole and murmur at your approach, for, as the truth is in God, I
myself, whenever I hear a rumour of it, be I at home or in chapter or in
church or at study, nay if I am saying mass, even I in my own person
tremble in every limb." But these irregular exactions were little beside
the steady pressure of taxation. Even in the years of peace fifteenths and
tenths, subsidies on wool and subsidies on leather, were demanded and
obtained from Parliament; and with the outbreak of war the royal demands
became heavier and more frequent. As failure followed failure the expenses
of each campaign increased an ineffectual attempt to relieve Rochelle cost
nearly a million; the march of John of Gaunt through France utterly drained
the royal treasury. Nor were these legal supplies all that the king drew
from the nation. He had repudiated his pledge to abstain from arbitrary
taxation of imports and exports. He sold monopolies to the merchants in
exchange for increased customs. He wrested supplies from the clergy by
arrangements with the bishops or the Pope. There were signs that Edward was
longing to rid himself of the control of Parliament altogether. The power
of the Houses seemed indeed as high as ever; great statutes were passed.
Those of Provisors and Praemunire settled the relations of England to the
Roman Court. That of Treason in 1352 defined that crime and its penalties.
That of the Staples in 1353 regulated the conditions of foreign trade and
the privileges of the merchant gilds which conducted it. But side by side
with these exertions of influence we note a series of steady encroachments
by the Crown on the power of the Houses. If their petitions we