and also not to seek their reinstatement by any process in the Roman
_curia_. Two years later this measure was supplemented by the first
statute of _praemunire_, which enacted that those who brought matters
cognisable in the king's courts before foreign courts should be liable
to forfeiture and outlawry. Though the papal court is not specially
mentioned, it is clear that this measure _was_ aimed against it.

General measures proving insufficient, more specific legislation soon
followed. In 1365 a fresh statute of _praemunire_ was drawn up on the
initiative of the crown, enacting that all who obtained citations,
offices, or benefices from the Roman court should incur the penalties
prescribed by the act of 1353. The prelates dissociated themselves from
so stringent a law, but did not actively oppose it. When in 1366,
Edward requested the guidance of the estates as to how he was to deal
with the demand of Urban V. for the arrears of King John's tribute,
withheld altogether for more than thirty years, the prelates joined the
lay estates in answering that neither John nor any one else could put
the realm into subjection without their consent. Even the ancient
offering of Peter's pence ceased to be paid for the rest of Edward's
reign. If these laws had been strictly carried out, the papal authority
in England would have been gravely circumscribed. But medieval laws
were too often the mere enunciations of an ideal. The statutes of
provisors and _praemunire_ were as little executed as were the statutes
of labourers, or as some elaborate sumptuary legislation passed by the
parliament of 1363. The catalogue of acts of papal interference in
English ecclesiastical and temporal affairs is as long after the
passing of these laws as before. Litigants still carried their suits to
Avignon: provisions were still issued nominating to English benefices,
and Edward himself set the example of disregarding his own laws by
asking for the appointment of his ministers to bishoprics by way of
papal provision. Papal ascendency was too firmly rooted in the
fourteenth century to be eradicated by any enactment. To the average
clergyman or theologian of the day the pope was still the "universal
ordinary," the one divinely appointed source of ecclesiastical
authority, the shepherd to whom the Lord had given the commission to
feed His sheep. This theory could only be overcome by revolution; and
the parliaments and ministers of Edward III. were in no wise