ions upon them: he had
sometimes granted this power to the sovereign:[**] the king himself had
in the preceding year exacted, by menaces and violence, a very grievous
tax of half the revenues of the clergy: but as this precedent was
dangerous, and could not easily be repeated in a government which
required the consent of the subject to any extraordinary resolution,
Edward found it more prudent to assemble a lower house of convocation,
to lay before them his necessities, and to ask some supply. But on
this occasion he met with difficulties. Whether that the clergy thought
themselves the most independent body in the kingdom, or were disgusted
by the former exorbitant impositions, they absolutely refused their
assent to the king's demand of a fifth of their movables; and it was not
till a second meeting that, on their persisting in this refusal, he
was willing to accept of a tenth. The barons and knights granted him,
without hesitation, an eleventh; the burgesses, a seventh. But the
clergy still scrupled to meet on the king's writ, lest by such an
instance of obedience they should seem to acknowledge the authority of
the temporal power: and this compromise was at last fallen upon,
that the king should issue his writ to the archbishop; and that the
archbishop should, in consequence of it, summon the clergy, who, as they
then appeared to obey their spiritual superior, no longer hesitated
to meet in convocation. This expedient, however, was the cause why the
ecclesiastics were separated into two houses of convocation, under their
several archbishops, and formed not one estate, as in other countries of
Europe; which was at first the king's intention.[***] We now return to
the course of our narration.

* Archbishop Wake's State of the Church of England, p. 235
Brady of Burroughs, p. 34. Gilbert's Hist, of the Buch. p
46.

** Ann. Waverl. p. 227, 228. T. Wykes, p. 99, 120.

*** Gilbert's Hist, of the Buch. p 51, 54.

Edward, conscious of the reasons of disgust which he had given to
the king of Scots, informed of thu dispositions of that people, and
expecting the most violent effects of their resentment, which he knew he
had so well merited, employed the supplies granted him by his people in
making preparations against the hostilities of his northern neighbor.
When in this situation, he received intelligence of the treaty secretly
concluded between John and Philip; and though uneasy at this concurrenc