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ably purchase twenty or thirty times as much as the same amount in our own country at present. It is also true that the shilling of the reign of Edward III contained at least twice as much silver in weight as the English shilling of our own time. The army was raised by the contract system: the king arranged with different lords of prestige and influence that they Classes of were to raise bodies of men and to see to their wages, provisions, and equipment. Three classes of soldiers made up the forces: the men-at-arms (knights), the archers, and the knife men, whose chief duty seems to have been to kill the enemy's horses and to slaughter wounded Frenchmen.

soldiers.

Trouble came

146. The Growth of Parliamentary Power.1 when the king was called on to pay the lords who had recruited the forces, for the war proved more expensive than had been anticipated. It was held in the middle ages that the king

The king's customary revenues.

should "live of his own," which meant that the customary revenues that came to him from his demesne lands, from his feudal tenants, from fines, and from tariff dues and the like were really all that the king had a right to collect and with these he was supposed to carry on the government as best he could. But foreign warfare soon brought the royal treasury to the verge of bankruptcy. There was nothing for Edward to do but to summon parliament; and this body was called year after year to provide funds for the war chest. The result was that in this way parliamentary control over finance came to be established for all time. In 1340 (the year of the victory of Sluys) Edward was forced to grant as a new principle of government that no taxes should be imposed without parliamentary consent. This was followed by the demand that parliament should also be allowed to appropriate the funds for definite purposes to which alone they could be applied. The king also agreed to this (1353). During the same period parliament also began

1340.

Parliamentary control of taxation.

1353.

1 Masterman, 69-77.

2 Cheyney, No. 164.

ENGLAND AND THE PAPACY

165

Money bills to originate

in the house

of commons.

to examine the accounts of the government to determine how the money was spent and whether it had been used as parliament had directed. The commons, as the chief contributors to the royal treasury, also claimed that all money bills should originate in their house; but this principle was not formally accepted by the king before the next century (1407). These four principles that parliament should control taxation, 1407. examine the accounts, and make definite appropriations, and that all financial legislation should originate in the house that is most nearly representative of the people have passed into practically all the constitutional systems of the world, including the American. Their origin lies in the financial needs of the English king during the Hundred Years' War. At one time this need was so great that Edward III had to mortgage his own person to the Dutch bankers; but at the first opportunity the king broke faith by mounting his horse and galloping away from his insistent creditors.

147. England and the Papacy. The Hundred Years' War was also to some extent responsible for a growing hostility toward the papacy during the fourteenth century. In 1305 the cardinals elected a Gascon archbishop as pope; The "Babyand for seventy years the church was governed by lonian captivity." French popes and cardinals. During this period of the "Babylonian Captivity" of the church, the capital of the Catholic world was at Avignon in the Rhone valley. The Avignonese popes were suspected of being favorable to the French cause and consequently could not be popular in England. Three specific questions helped to intensify feeling against the court at Avignon and led to a series of antipapal acts on the part of parliament. These were the subjects of the papal tribute, provisors, and appeals to the papal

court.

A few years before the war began (1333), England had sent her last installment of the tribute that John had promised the

1 Innes, Industrial Development, 83-84.

The tribute of 1213.

1

pope in 1213. The pope made repeated efforts to collect the tribute in arrears but failed. After thirty-three years of failure to pay, the English parliament repudiated the tribute entirely, declaring that John had no right to bind the nation to any such payment (1366). The repudiation was doubtless in part due to the financial difficulties of the crown and in part to a reluctance to pay tribute to a foreign power, which, to make matters worse, was French. In 1351

1366.

Provisors.

148. The Statutes of Provisors and Præmunire. the Statute of Provisors 2 was passed to correct an evil that Statute of had become acute a century earlier in the days of Henry III and Grosseteste. In this act parliament forbade the practice entirely and provided severe penalties for all who should accept offices in the church as papal provisors. The act was no doubt dictated by hostility to a French pope; but the English might fairly plead the impossibility of accepting French church officials from Avignon while the war with France was still in progress.

Appeals to
Rome forbid

den. 1353.

Two years later parliament passed the Statute of Præmunire, which forbade the king's subjects to take appeals to any foreign court. The act was general, but it was clearly aimed at the papacy. It would seem that disputes could be settled more equitably in the country where they had arisen and where their merits were known than in distant Rome or Avignon. But the act did not grow out of any such consideration: its purpose was to reduce papal authority, and this it would have done very effectively, had enforcement been practicable. Both these statutes were reënacted and strengthened at later times, but neither was strictly enforced. The crown could not do without papal assistance when vacancies had to be filled in the church. As a rule the government continued to dictate the choice of bishops to the chapters, but the bishop-elect had to have his election confirmed at the papal curia before he could be consecrated;

1 Review sec. 86.

2 Cheyney, No. 145.

3 Review sec. IOI.

167

THE VILLEIN AS A WARRIOR: THE LONG BOW and the king could not afford to risk failure of confirmation by a too determined stand on the matters of provisors and appeals. 149. The Disappearance of Villeinage. The most significant fact in the social history of the period is the disappearance of the condition known as villeinage or serfdom.2 For at least three centuries the mass of the rural population had been chained to the soil, each successive generation inheriting the duty of tilling the earth on the estate where it was born. But in the fourteenth century the villeins were develop- Weakening of ing an interest in the world beyond the boundaries serfdom. of the manor, and it became increasingly difficult to hold them to their inherited duties.

There were several causes that led to the disappearance of villeinage. Of first importance were the great wars of the age. The vast military undertakings of Edward I and Edward III demanded more men than could be collected from the nobility and its force of retainers: consequently it became The villeins necessary to draw soldiers from the unprivileged employed in classes. The common farmer was found to be a capable warrior, and, as a result, he came to have a value in the eyes of the state that he did not earlier possess.

warfare.

150. The Villein as a Warrior: the Long Bow. As the typical weapon of the knight was the sword, that of the peasant was the bow. The long bow, which was the most effective weapon of the age, was very much like the kind The long of bow that the American Indian used with so bow. much skill it was a piece of tough yew carefully strung with a strong cord, a weapon so well made, it is said, that a strongarmed archer could drive an arrow through an oaken plank three fingers thick. Ordinarily the arrow was drawn to the breast without much attempt at taking aim; but the shaft sped to the mark with wonderful accuracy. At Crécy the French army was four times as large as the English and at

1 Cheyney, Nos. 123-124; Innes, Industrial Development, 85-87.

2 Review sec. 47.

3 Cheyney, No. 141; see also Scott, Ivanhoe, c. 13 (archery contest).

Poitiers six times as numerous; but the English archers secured the victory.

The long bow seems to have come to England from the Welsh border. On the Continent the crossbow was a favorite

CROSSBOW USED AT CRÉCY

The crossbow shot a winged bolt called a quarrel.

weapon, and it had certain advantages, especially when careful aim was a consideration; but the man with the long bow could shoot six arrows to every bolt that the crossbowman

The cross bow.

could discharge, as his weapon was ready at all times no matter how damp the weather might be. At Crécy many of the Genoese mercenaries in the French host

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new forms of civilized life. But the most important fact was

that he began to realize his new importance in the state; and

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