f recent legislation that Edward
III. allowed him to plead his cause before the _curia_. By 1358 the
friars gained the day, but their efforts to get Fitzralph's opinions
condemned were frustrated by his death in 1360. Fitzralph had the
sympathy not only of the seculars, but of the "possessioners," or
property-holding monks.

[1] See his _De Pauperie Salvatoris_, lib. i.-iv., printed by
R.L. Poole, as appendix to Wycliffe, _De Dominio Divino_.

The period of experiments in economic and anti-clerical legislation was
also marked by other important new laws, such as the ordinance of the
staple of 1354, providing that wool, leather, and other commodities
were only to be sold at certain _staple_ towns, a measure soon to be
modified by the law of 1362, which settled the staple at Calais; the
ordinance of 1357 for the government of Ireland, to which later
reference will be made; the statute making English the language of the
law courts in 1362, and a drastic act against purveyance in 1365. The
statute of treasons of 1352, which laid down seven several offences as
alone henceforth to be regarded as treason, also demands attention. Its
classification is rude and unsystematic. While the slaying of the
king's ministers or judges, and the counterfeiting of the great seal or
the king's coin, are joined with the compassing the death of the king
or his wife or heir, adherence to the king's enemies, the violation of
the queen or the king's eldest daughter, as definite acts of treason,
its omission to brand other notable indications of disloyally as
traitorous, inspired the judges of later generations to elaborate the
doctrine of constructive treason in order to extend in practice the
scope of the act. It was, however, an advance for nobles and commons to
have set any limitations whatever to the wide power claimed by the
courts of defining treason.

Partial respite from war did not diminish the martial ardour of the
king and his nobles. The period of the Black Death was precisely the
time when Edward completed a plan which he had begun by the erection of
his Round Table at Windsor in 1344. By 1348 he instituted a chapel at
Windsor, dedicated to St. George, served by a secular chapter, and
closely connected with a foundation for the support of poor knights.
Within a year this foundation also included the famous Order of the
Garter, the type and model of all later orders of chivalry. On St.
George's day the king celebrated the n