Certain of the King's secretaries envying the Reverend Father in the Lord John de Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury ... roused the King to anger against him, imputing to him crimes and defects.... And the said Lord Archbishop, fearing the anger of the King, and the jealousy of his rivals, fled to safety to the priory church of Canterbury, and there remained for some time. Meanwhile he wrote to the King:
"Most gentle lord, please you to know that the most sovereign thing, that holdeth kings and princes in due and fitting estate, is good and wise counsel.... Sire, in your own time, you had certain counsellors by whom you did near lose the hearts of your people; from whom God delivered you as it pleased Him. And then, even till now, by good avisement of the prelates, peers, the great men and wise of the Council of the land, your affairs have been brought into such a state that you entirely have the hearts of your people, who, as well clerks as others, have given you aid, even as you shall have henceforth, or more, as never had King of England; so that by means of your good Council, the help of your people, and the grace which God hath given you, you have had the victory in presence of your enemies of Scotland, and of France, and of all parts; so that this day, honour be to God, you are held the most noble prince of Christendom. And now, by evil counsel, abetted by certain people of this land, which are not so wise as were needful, and by counsel of others, which seek rather their own profit than your honour or the safety of the land, you begin to seize divers clerks, peers and other folk of the land and to make suit, nothing fitting, against the law of the land ... the which things are done at the great peril of your soul and the minishing of your honour.... And forasmuch as certain, who are near to you, do falsely charge us with treason and falsehood, therefore they are excommunicate ... and also they say of some others that they have evilly and falsely served you, whereby you have lost the toun of Tournay and many other honours that you might have had there; be willing, Sire, if it please you, to make come the prelates, great men, and peers of the land, in fitting place, where we and others may securely come, and cause, if it please you, to see and enquire in whose hands, since the beginning of your war, wools moneys, and other things whatsoever, which have been granted to you in aid of your war even to this day, have come and have been expended, and by whose default you thus departed from Tournay; and those which shall be found guilty in any whit before you, as a good lord, make them to be chastised well according to law. And in whatsoever concerneth us, we will stand in all points at the judgment of our peers, saving always the estate of holy Church, of us, and of our order....
"Written at Canterbury the first day of January, by your chaplain, the Archbishop of Canterbury."
THE "LIBELLUS FAMOSUS" (February 10, 1340-1).
Source.—Wharton's Anglia Sacra, i. 23-27.
[The following is a passage from the libellus famosus put forth by Edward III. against Archbishop Stratford, and directed to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's.]
... Because we believed John, then Bishop of Winchester, now Archbishop of Canterbury, to be preeminent before all others, because of his faithfulness and discreetness, we followed his counsel in things spiritual and things temporal, above those which were advantageous to us for the safety of our own soul and for the increase and preservation of our kingdom. In such friendship was he held by us ... that he was named our father and was venerated by all as next after the King. And when the kingdom of France had devolved on us by right of succession, and was, according to report, occupied by Philip of Valois, the same Archbishop violently and earnestly persuaded us to enter into alliance with the German Princes and others against the said Philip of Valois, and to expose us and ours to the losses of wars, promising and affirming that it would be possible to meet abundantly the expenses attaching to such, from the fruits of our land and from some special subsidies, adding, moreover, that we should only make demands from persons experienced and active in wars, as he himself would procure sufficient for our necessities and their expenses. Whence we, having crossed the sea, put our hand to the task and made a great outlay, as was fitting, in warlike preparations, and bound our allies to us by large sums, trusting in the promised help. But, alas! we placed our faith, as it were, in the staff of a reed, on which, as the prophecy is [Isaiah xxxvi. 6], whosoever leans it shall enter into his hand and pierce it, and, driven by necessity, since the hoped-for subsidy had been withdrawn (would it had not been fraudulently), we contracted, under heavy usury, an almost insupportable burden of debts, and thus, any further expedition being prevented, we were forced magnanimously to desist for the time from our incomplete attacks on the enemy and to return to England. There, having laid our many calamities and never-to-be-forgotten misfortunes before our aforesaid Archbishop, and, a Parliament having been called, the prelates, nobles, and other faithful of our kingdom granted us such a subsidy (the ninth part of the tithes of sheep and wool, besides the tenth conceded by the clergy), that if it had been faithfully collected and acquired at a fitting time it would have provided payment for the debts accrued in the said expedition, and would have been of no small assistance towards the confusion of the enemy, nay, even, according to some, it might have sufficed altogether. The same Archbishop meanwhile promised faithfully to mediate with his parts [of the country] for the collection of the said subsidy and the administration of our necessities. Wherefore, trusting in his promises, men having been again collected, and a fleet having been gathered, we sailed towards Flanders, and engaged in a hard naval battle with the enemy, who had sworn our destruction and that of all the English people. By the compassion and mercy of Him who rules the wind and the sea, not by our own merit, we obtained a victory and triumph over the whole multitude of so many enemies. This being accomplished we set out thence with a powerful army for the recovery of our rights, and marked out a fort near the strong city of Tournay, in the siege of which we were perpetually occupied for some time, and, wearied out by continual expenses and labours, awaiting in silence, we were hoping day by day for the promised help; to be relieved, by the service of our Archbishop, from so many and so great necessities. At length, the conceived hope being frustrated, although by many messengers and many letters we fully signified to the aforesaid Archbishop, and to others of our Council who adhered to him, not only our poverty and the many perils to which we were exposed on account of the failure of the said subsidy, but also the advantage and the honour which, by the help of the money, we saw we could easily secure. Nevertheless we could not obtain emolument from them, because, caring for their own affairs rather than ours, and procuring their own welfare, they excused their sluggishness, (not to say their fraud, or their malice), by frivolous excuses and ornate rhetoric, like those mockers who, as says Isaiah, delight in deriding, saying: "Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little." [Isaiah xxviii. 13.]
Whence alas, it came about that even when the near hope of triumphing over our enemies gracefully smiled upon us, poverty prevailing, we were obliged, unwilling though we were, to make truce, to the shameful retarding of our expedition, and the no little exultation of our rivals.... Wherefore we, directing the force of our mind to the discipline and correction of such of our officials, caused certain of them whom we held suspect, for probable causes, of bad administration, of the subversion of justice, of the oppression of our subjects, of corruption by acceptance of gifts and other grave offences, to be removed from their offices as it seems well to us; while others of inferior rank were placed in custody.... We ordered him [the Archbishop], through our faithful servant Nicholas de Cantilupe, specially chosen for this purpose, to hasten and come to London early to our presence, since we desired to have a personal interview with him. But he, always haughty in prosperity and cowardly in adversity, fearing where no fear was, alleged untruly that the peril of death, threatened and directed against him by our partisans, hung over him if he should leave the Church of Canterbury, although this, by witness of God and a pure conscience, never had come into our mind, or, we believe, into that of any of our partisans, in spite of the fact that by his demerits he had made himself hated by the clergy and people of the kingdom. But we, desiring all to come to our presence, and that all summoned to us by our letters should enjoy full security, sent our faithful Ralph de Stafford, seneschal of our guest chamber, to him [the Archbishop] to offer and make him a safe conduct; and we gave him our letters patent, signed under our seal, to present, demanding, a second time, that he should come to us personally, and should, first of all, have a private interview with us concerning the affairs of the kingdom, over which he had so long laboured, as aforesaid. But he, treating the lenity of our prayers and our mandates with contempt, answered indignantly that he would in nowise confer with us, save in a full Parliament, which at this time, for reasonable causes, it would not be expedient to summon....
TRIAL BY PEERS.
Source.—Statute, 15 Edward III., cap. ii. (1341).