a borrower. The financial difficulties, which had stayed his career in
the Netherlands five years before, had reached their culmination.
Stratford was avenged for the outrages of 1340, for Edward was in worse
embarrassments than on that winter night when the glare of torches
illuminated the sovereign's sudden return to the Tower. The king's
Netherlandish, Rhenish, and Italian creditors would trust him no longer
and vainly clamoured for the repayment of their advances. "We grieve,"
he was forced to reply to the Cologne magistrates, "nay, we blush, that
we are unable to meet our obligations at the due time." Edward's
anxiety to prepare for fresh campaigns made him careless as to his
former obligations. His wholesale neglect to repay his debts drove the
great banking houses of the Bardi and the Peruzzi into bankruptcy, and
the failure of the English king's creditors plunged all Florence into
deep distress. One good result came from the king's dishonour. The
foreign sources of supply having dried up, Edward was forced to lean
more exclusively upon his English subjects. A wealthy family of Hull
merchants, recently transferred to London, became very flourishing. Its
head, William de la Pole, who had financed every government scheme
since the days of Mortimer, became a knight, a judge, a territorial
magnate, and the first English merchant to found a baronial house. And
as the credit of the English merchants was limited, Edward was forced
more and more to rely upon parliamentary grants. The memory of the
king's want of faith to the estates of 1341 had died away, and a
parliament, which met in 1344, once more made Edward liberal
contributions. Secure of his subjects' support, the frivolous king
largely employed his resources in the chivalrous pageantry which
stirred up the martial ardour of his barons and made the war popular.
It was then that he resolved to set up a "round table" at Windsor after
the fabled fashion of King Arthur. From this came the foundation of the
Round Tower which Edward was to erect in his favourite abode, and the
organised chivalry that was soon to culminate in the Order of the
Garter. In the summer of 1345 Edward made that journey to Sluys, which
has already been noted, and he held on ship-board his last interview
with James van Artevelde. His immediate return to England showed that
he had no mind to renew his Flemish alliances. In the same year the
death of the queen's brother, William of Avesnes, establ