[Sidenote: Repudiation of vassalage, 1366.]
The victories of Edward and the Prince of Wales rendered the Popes powerless to resent anti-papal legislation. France was no longer able to protect them at Avignon. During their residence in that city the papacy had become French, and had consequently in a large measure lost its hold upon England. Urban V. unwisely provoked a declaration that bore witness to this decline of influence. He wrote to Edward demanding the arrears of the tribute promised by John, and threatened to cite the king if he neglected payment. Edward laid the demand before the parliament that met in May 1366, and requested the advice of the estates. The prelates, speaking for themselves, asked for a day for deliberation. The next day the three estates separately and unanimously declared that John had no power to bring his realm and people under such subjection, and repudiated the vassalage and tribute that the Pope demanded. For a short time Edward stopped even the payment of Peter's pence.
[Sidenote: The Church in relation to the State, 1327-1371.]
Early in the reign the Pope granted the king a clerical tenth for four years, and later, during the French war, the clergy taxed themselves heavily. All attempt to induce them to make their grants in parliament was discontinued, and they settled the amount of their contribution in their provincial convocations. In convocation they legislated without interference on spiritual matters, including those which concerned their jurisdiction. Parliament, however, did not allow them to enact anything that should bind the laity without its consent. Accordingly, when Stratford published a constitution on the right to the tithe of underwood, a petition was the next year presented by the commons, praying that the Crown would not grant any petition of the clergy that might prejudice the laity without examination; for, though the clergy legislated on the process for recovery of tithes, parliament claimed to determine their incidence. This distinction found its counterpart in jurisdiction; for the common law courts decided questions of right to tithes, while the spiritual courts enforced payment. In matters affecting temporal interests, parliament legislated for the Church. This legislation was during this period generally of a favourable character, and was founded on petitions from the clergy. Parliament, for example, declared by statute that the temporalities of bishops were not to be seized except according to the law of the land and after judgment, and that during a vacancy they were to be carefully and honestly administered. Again, as the pestilence raised the price of clerical as well as of all other labour, parliament in 1362 represented that chaplains had become scarce and dear, and prayed that they might be compelled to work for lower pay than they were in the habit of receiving. The king ordered the bishops to find a remedy; and they reported Islip's constitution, which was thus turned into a parliamentary statute, a kind of "Statute of Labourers" for the unbeneficed clergy. Disputes still went on as to rights of jurisdiction, and in 1344, after the grant of a clerical tenth, it was enacted, with the assent of the lay estates, that the ecclesiastical courts should not be subject to unfair interference either by writs of prohibition or by inquiry by secular judges; the whole statute forming a kind of reading of "Circumspecte agatis" in the clerical interest.