fell.
By his marriage with the heiress of the house of Lancaster the Duke had
acquired lands and wealth, but he had no taste for the policy of the
Lancastrian house or for acting as leader of the barons in any
constitutional resistance to the Crown. His pride, already quickened by the
second match with Constance to which he owed his shadowy kingship of
Castille, drew him to the throne; and the fortune which placed the royal
power practically in his hands bound him only the more firmly to its cause.
Men held that his ambition looked to the Crown itself, for the approaching
death of Edward and the Prince of Wales left but a boy, Richard, the son of
the Black Prince, a child of but a few years old, and a girl, the daughter
of the Duke of Clarence, between John and the throne. But the Duke's
success fell short of his pride. In the campaign of 1373 he traversed
France without finding a foe and brought back nothing save a ruined army to
English shores. The peremptory tone in which money was demanded for the
cost of this fruitless march while the petitions of the Parliament were set
aside till it was granted roused the temper of the Commons. They
requested--it is the first instance of such a practice--a conference with
the lords, and while granting fresh subsidies prayed that the grant should
be spent only on the war. The resentment of the government at this advance
towards a control over the actual management of public affairs was seen in
the calling of no Parliament through the next two years. But the years were
disastrous both at home and abroad. The war went steadily against the
English arms. The long negotiations with the Pope which went on at Bruges
through 1375, and in which Wyclif took part as one of the royal
commissioners, ended in a compromise by which Rome yielded nothing. The
strife over the Statute of Labourers grew fiercer and fiercer, and a return
of the plague heightened the public distress. Edward was now wholly swayed
by Alice Perrers, and the Duke shared his power with the royal mistress.
But if we gather its tenor from the complaints of the succeeding Parliament
his administration was as weak as it was corrupt. The new lay ministers
lent themselves to gigantic frauds. The chamberlain, Lord Latimer, bought
up the royal debts and embezzled the public revenue. With Richard Lyons, a
merchant through whom the king negotiated with the gild of the Staple, he
reaped enormous profits by raising the price of imports an