peer of parliament be brought to trial elsewhere
than in full parliament. Edward's fury abated when he saw that he would
get no grant unless he gave way. He restored Stratford to his favour,
and acceded to his request that he should answer in parliament and not
in the exchequer. The childish controversy ended with the personal
victory of the primate and the formal re-assertion of the important
principle of trial by peers. But not even then was Edward able to get a
subsidy. He was further forced to embody in the statute of the year the
doctrines that auditors of the accounts of the royal officers should be
elected in parliament, and that all ministers should be chosen by the
king, after consultation with his estates, and should resign their
offices at each meeting of parliament and be prepared to answer all
complaints before it.

Thus the fallen minister brought the estates the greatest triumph over
the prerogative won during Edward's reign. Before long Edward was
magnanimous enough to resume friendly relations with him, but he was
never suffered to take a prominent part in politics. He died in 1348,
after spending his later years in the business of his see. It was a
strange irony of fate that this worldly and politic ecclesiastic should
have perforce become the champion of the rights of the Church and the
liberties of the nation. His victory established a remarkable
solidarity between the high ecclesiastical party and the popular
opposition, which was to last nearly as long as the century. Disgust at
this alliance moved Edward to take up the anti-clerical attitude which
henceforth marks the policy of the crown until the accession of the
house of Lancaster.

The victory of the estates of 1341 was too complete to last. For a
medieval king to hand over the business of government to a nominated
ministry was in substance a return to the state of things in 1258 or
1312. Edward was not the sort of man to endure the thraldom that his
father and great-grandfather had both found intolerable. Even at the
moment of sealing the statute, he and his ministers protested that they
were not bound to observe laws contrary to the constitution of the
realm. Five months later, on October 1, 1341, the king issued letters,
revoking the laws of the previous session. "We have never," he
impudently declared, "really given our consent to the aforesaid
pretended statute. But inasmuch as our rejecting it would have
dissolved parliament in confusio