d the courtly prioress with her love-motto on her brooch.
The older religious orders in fact had sunk into mere landowners, while the
enthusiasm of the friars had in great part died away and left a crowd of
impudent mendicants behind it. Wyclif could soon with general applause
denounce them as sturdy beggars, and declare that "the man who gives alms
to a begging friar is _ipso facto_ excommunicate."

[Sidenote: Advance of the Commons]

It was this weakness of the Baronage and the Church, and the consequent
withdrawal of both as represented in the temporal and spiritual Estates of
the Upper House from the active part which they had taken till now in
checking the Crown that brought the Lower House to the front. The Knight of
the Shire was now finally joined with the Burgess of the Town to form the
Third Estate of the realm: and this union of the trader and the country
gentleman gave a vigour and weight to the action of the Commons which their
House could never have acquired had it remained as elsewhere a mere
gathering of burgesses. But it was only slowly and under the pressure of
one necessity after another that the Commons took a growing part in public
affairs. Their primary business was with taxation, and here they stood firm
against the evasions by which the king still managed to baffle their
exclusive right of granting supplies by voluntary agreements with the
merchants of the Staple. Their steady pressure at last obtained in 1362 an
enactment that no subsidy should henceforth be set upon wool without assent
of Parliament, while Purveyance was restricted by a provision that payments
should be made for all things taken for the king's use in ready money. A
hardly less important advance was made by the change of Ordinances into
Statutes. Till this time, even when a petition of the Houses was granted,
the royal Council had reserved to itself the right of modifying its form in
the Ordinance which professed to embody it. It was under colour of this
right that so many of the provisions made in Parliament had hitherto been
evaded or set aside. But the Commons now met this abuse by a demand that on
the royal assent being given their petitions should be turned without
change into Statutes of the Realm and derive force of law from their entry
on the Rolls of Parliament. The same practical sense was seen in their
dealings with Edward's attempt to introduce occasional smaller councils
with parliamentary powers. Such an assembly