[Sidenote: Dangers surrounding the King.]
It seemed for the moment that Edward’s troubles were over. The baronial party was crushed, their intercourse with the Scotch had damaged their reputation; the assumption on their part of the sole power of legislation had produced some reaction. The truce with Scotland had secured Edward from danger from the North. There seemed no reason why he and his favourites should not rule almost as they wished. In fact, however, the crisis of his reign was approaching; dangers surrounded him on every side. That the baronial party was still alive and active was soon made evident by a plot to liberate all the political prisoners. The plot indeed miscarried, but Mortimer found means to make good his escape from the Tower, and, taking refuge in France, became a centre round which disaffection might gather. Want of money, too, was a constant source of danger; while the meagre grants made by Parliament showed how general was the national feeling against the government of the favourites. Nor was the Church in much better temper than the Barons and the Commons. On more than one occasion the King had quarrelled with the national Church, which found an active, able, and somewhat unscrupulous champion in Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford. This man had been deeply implicated in the baronial movements, had been deprived of his temporalities, and thus became a determined enemy of the King. While quarrelling with the national Church, Edward had shown no vigour in opposing Rome. On two occasions he failed in procuring the election to bishoprics of his nominees, and yielded without a struggle to the authority of the Pope. But submission to Rome had now become a sure way of gaining unpopularity both among clergy and laity. On the death of Boniface VIII., the grandeur and independence of the old Papal system had come to an end, but its constant demands upon the national churches were by no means lessened; and such exactions had become more intolerable now that the ill-gotten wealth which they supplied found its way into the hands of a Pope holding his court at Avignon, a mere creature of the French King: to the old dislike of Papal supremacy there was now added the national dislike of France.