including William de la Pole of Hull. A special commission,
like that of 1289, scrutinised the acts of the royal officials
throughout the kingdom, and exacted heavy fines from the many who were
found wanting. Nothing but fear of provoking the wrath of the Church
prevented Edward from consigning to prison the dismissed chancellor,
Robert Stratford, Bishop of Chichester, and the late treasurer, Roger
Northburgh, Bishop of Coventry. Their successors were lay knights, the
new chancellor, Sir Robert Bourchier, being the first keeper of the
great seal who was not a clerk.

Earlier in the year the king had quarrelled with Archbishop Stratford,
who resigned the chancellorship. But before Edward sailed from Orwell
in June there had been a partial reconciliation, and the king left
Stratford president of the council during his absence. When his brother
and colleagues were dismissed, the archbishop was at Charing. Conscious
that he was the chief object of Edward's vengeance, he at once took
sanctuary with the monks of his cathedral. Every effort was made to
drag him from his refuge. Some Louvain merchants, to whom he had bound
himself for the king's debts, demanded that he should be surrendered to
their custody until the money was paid. He was summoned to court and
afterwards to parliament. But he prudently remained safe within the
walls of Christ Church, and preached a course of sermons to the monks,
in which he compared himself to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and hinted at
the danger of his incurring his prototype's fate. Edward replied to
this challenge by a lengthy pamphlet, called the _libellus famosus_.
The violence and unmeasured terms of the tractate suggest the hand of
Bishop Orleton, Stratford's lifelong foe, who had by Burghersh's recent
death become the most prominent of the courtly prelates. The archbishop
was declared to be the sole cause of the king's failures. He had left
Edward without funds, and in trusting to him the king had leant on a
broken reed. Stratford justified himself in another sermon in which he
invited inquiry and demanded trial by his peers.

Edward so far relented as to issue letters of safe-conduct enabling the
archbishop to attend the parliament summoned for April 23, 1341. But
when Stratford took his place, the king refused to meet him, and
ordered him to answer in the exchequer the complaints brought against
him. The lords upheld the primate's cause, and declared that in no
circumstances could a