these, we owe greater obedience to our spiritual than to our
temporal lord." All that they could do was to entreat the pope's
permission to allow them to pay Caesar that which Caesar by himself had
no right to demand. Edward burst into a fury on hearing of this new
pretext for delay. He declared that the clergy must pay a fifth, under
penalty of his withdrawing his protection from a body which strove to
stand outside the commonwealth. The clergy remained firm, and separated
without making any grant. Thereupon, on January 30, the chief justice,
John of Metingham, sitting in Westminster Hall, pronounced the clergy
to be outlays. "Henceforth," he declared, "there shall be no justice
meted out to a clerk in the court of the lord king, however atrocious
be the injury from which he may have suffered. But sentence against a
clerk shall be given at the instance of all who have a complaint
against him." Winchelsea retaliated by publishing the sentence of
excommunication against violators of the papal bull. Two days later the
king ordered the sheriffs to take possession of the lay fees held by
clerks in the province of Canterbury. A few ecclesiastics, who
privately made an offering of a fifth, were alone exempted from this
command.

Edward's conflict with the Church was followed within a month by a
dispute of almost equal gravity with a section of the barons. He
summoned a baronial parliament to assemble on February 24 at Salisbury,
and went down in person to explain his plan of campaign. One force was
to help his new ally, Guy of Flanders, while another was to act in
Gascony. Edward himself was to accompany the army to Flanders. He
requested some of the earls, including Norfolk and Hereford, to fight
for him in Gascony. The deaths of Edmund of Lancaster, Gilbert of
Gloucester, and William of Pembroke had robbed the baronage of its
natural leaders. Earl Warenne was fully engaged in the north, and
Lincoln was devoted to the king's side. The removal of other possible
spokesmen made Norfolk and Hereford the champions of the party of
opposition. For years the friends of aristocratic authority had been
smarting under the growing influence of the crown. The time was ripe
for a revival of the baronial opposition which a generation earlier had
won the Provisions of Oxford. Moreover both the earls had personal
slights to avenge. Hereford bitterly resented the punishment meted out
to him for waging private war against Earl Gilbert in the