ft." But
it was not till Lammas-tide that high wages and the new corn bade "Hunger
go to sleep," and during the long spring and summer the free labourer and
the "waster that will not work but wander about, that will eat no bread but
the finest wheat, nor drink but of the best and brownest ale," was a source
of social and political danger. "He grieveth him against God and grudgeth
against Reason, and then curseth he the King and all his council after such
law to allow labourers to grieve." Such a smouldering mass of discontent as
this needed but a spark to burst into flame; and the spark was found in the
imposition of fresh taxation.

[Sidenote: The Poll-Tax]

If John of Gaunt was fallen from his old power he was still the leading
noble in the realm, and it is possible that dread of the encroachments of
the last Parliament on the executive power drew after a time even the new
advisers of the Crown closer to him. Whatever was the cause, he again came
to the front. But the supplies voted in the past year were wasted in his
hands. A fresh expedition against France under the Duke himself ended in
failure before the walls of St. Malo, while at home his brutal household
was outraging public order by the murder of a knight who had incurred
John's anger in the precincts of Westminster. So great was the resentment
of the Londoners at this act that it became needful to summon Parliament
elsewhere than to the capital; and in 1378 the Houses met at Gloucester.
The Duke succeeded in bringing the Lords to refuse those conferences with
the Commons which had given unity to the action of the late Parliament, but
he was foiled in an attack on the clerical privilege of sanctuary and in
the threats which his party still directed against Church property, while
the Commons forced the royal Council to lay before them the accounts of the
last subsidy and to appoint a commission to examine into the revenue of the
Crown. Unhappily the financial policy of the preceding year was persisted
in. The check before St. Malo had been somewhat redeemed by treaties with
Charles of Evreux and the Duke of Britanny which secured to England the
right of holding Cherbourg and Brest; but the cost of these treaties only
swelled the expenses of the war. The fresh supplies voted at Gloucester
proved insufficient for their purpose, and a Parliament in the spring of
1379 renewed the Poll-tax in a graduated form. But the proceeds of the tax
proved miserably inadequat