hird 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]

But for the moment the strife with the Papacy was set aside in the efforts
which were needed for a new struggle with France. The campaign of 1339 had
not only ended in failure, it had dispelled the trust of Edward in an
Imperial alliance. But as this hope faded away a fresh hope dawned on the
king from another quarter. Flanders, still bleeding from the defeat of its
burghers by the French knighthood, was his natural ally. England was the
great wool-producing country of the west, but few woollen fabrics were
woven in England. The number of weavers' gilds shows that the trade was
gradually extending, and at the very outset of his reign Edward had taken
steps for its encouragement. He invited Flemish weavers to settle in his
country, and took the new immigrants, who chose the eastern counties for
the seat of their trade, under his royal protection. But English
manufactures were still in their inf