[Sidenote: William Whittlesey, archbishop, 1368-1374.]
Simon Islip, Bradwardine's successor, endeavoured to remedy ecclesiastical abuses. He founded Canterbury Hall at Oxford, to enable the clergy to receive a better education, and published some excellent constitutions in convocation. Clerical offenders claimed by the Church from the secular courts, and committed to the custody of the bishops, were often kept in comfort; they sometimes escaped from their prisons, and sometimes were released without good cause. This was no longer to be; and imprisonment was to be made a real punishment. The archbishop also decreed that chaplains who were engaged to perform commemorative masses should, if required, be bound to do parochial work at a fixed stipend of one mark beyond their ordinary pay, which he fixed at five marks. A long-standing dispute between the sees of Canterbury and York as to the right of the northern metropolitan to carry his cross erect in the southern province was at last settled by an agreement between Islip and John Thoresby, archbishop of York. When the king and the parliament checked the papal aggressions Islip abstained from interference; for, while he could not quarrel with the papacy, he would not uphold it against the will of the nation. While, however, he was prudent and moderate in temper, he did not shrink from speaking plainly on behalf of good government, and wrote a strong remonstrance to the king about the oppression of the people by the royal purveyors. On Islip's death Simon Langham, bishop of Ely, was raised to the primacy. He was chancellor when he was translated, but did not hold the office long afterwards. By the command of Pope Urban V. he instituted an inquiry into cases of plurality, and found that some clerks held as many as twenty benefices by provisions, with license to add to their number. After he had held the archbishopric two years, Urban made him a cardinal. The king was displeased at this, and seized his temporalities. Langham resigned the see and went to Avignon, and was succeeded at Canterbury by his kinsman, William Whittlesey, who took little part in the affairs either of Church or State, for he soon fell into ill health.