Angel of Death

in Scotland refused to subside. News had come south of a new Scottish war leader, a commoner, William the Wallace, who had fanned the flames of unrest by perpetrating secret night raids on isolated garrisons and columns, not missing any opportunity to harass and attack the English occupiers.
    The wars demanded good silver. Edward had taken loans from the Italian bankers, the Frescobaldi, but now they would give no more and so he had turned on the Church. The Church was wealthy, a fat milk cow, and Edward dearly wanted to separate some of its riches from it. He had seized the tax levied by the former pope, Nicholas IV, who had nurtured grand ideas of uniting all Christendom in a new offensive against the Turk. Edward had enthusiastically taken up the idea of a crusade but had seized the money raised. He then turned to the alien priories, those houses owned by religious orders abroad, seizing their revenue and temporalities. Corbett had played a significant role in the appropriation of this ecclesiastical wealth, going through memoranda rolls, documents and charters, searching out what the king's rights were in these matters. Time and again, Corbett with barons of the exchequer and other treasury officials, had met to study long lists of rents, dues and fee-farms owing to the king. The results had been meagre, certainly not enough to finance Edward's wars abroad, so the king had begun to cast envious eyes on the wealth of the rest of the English Church. In this he met two staunch opponents: Boniface VIII in Avignon, who was totally determined on the churches in Western Christendom resuming their regular payments to the coffers of St Peter, and Robert Winchelsea, consecrated archbishop four years earlier, who had a very clear idea about his own rights and those of the English Church.
    Edward had summoned both the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to meet their clergy in convocation to raise taxes. However, shortly after the sack of Berwick, matters had been complicated by Boniface VIII issuing his bull, 'Clericis Laicos,' which Winchelsea had used to insist that the king could only tax the Church with the Church's permission. Edward, hiding his terrible anger, had bitterly agreed. Matters were further worsened, Corbett thought, as he looked along the row of dignitaries in front of him, by plotters like Bigod and Bohun, who not only resented royal taxation but also Edward's demands to accompany him abroad to fight the French. Soon these diverse plotting groups would unite and form the same opposition Edward's father and grandfather had faced when trying to raise money for disastrous wars abroad.
    Corbett stared through the haze of incense at the tall emaciated figure of the chief celebrant, Walter de Montfort: Archbishop Winchelsea had decided that the Church's case – requiring its full approval before it was taxed should be put to the king by no less a person than the Dean of St Paul's, Walter de Montfort. The archbishop's choice was a quiet, deadly insult to Edward, for the dean was a member, albeit tenuously, of the great de Montfort family who forty years ago had opposed Edward and his father, King Henry. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, one of the great barons of the time, had risen in revolt, seized the government and virtually dictated his own terms to the defeated monarch, Henry III.
    Edward, then Prince of Wales, had quietly accepted such demands until he had gathered sufficient forces for a counter-attack. The ensuing civil war was a bloody, vicious affair, ending only when de Montfort was killed, hacked to pieces at the Battle of Evesham. After that the de Montforts, or most of those who had survived the collapse of Earl Simon, had gone abroad, but continued a secret war against Edward, sending assassins into the country to kill him and attacking his envoys abroad. On one occasion they even murdered the king's cousin while he was at mass en route to Rome. Of course, Walter de Montfort was not a traitor, nor even tainted with any treason, but he was a fiery, logical, eloquent preacher and, Once again, Edward would be faced by a de Montfort lecturing him on the limitations of the Crown in taxing its subjects. It would not be a pleasant meeting. Corbett had met the king just after he learnt of the choice of speaker and his anger had been uncontrollable.
    'By God's mouth!' he muttered. 'Must I listen to a de Montfort tell me when and where I can get my monies from? I will not forget Winchelsea's insult. I