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 as England was at war with France for much of that time, the respect of Englishmen for a French Pope was naturally slight. After the ‘Captivity’ came the ‘Schism’ (division) (1378–1445), during which there were two and sometimes three persons, each calling himself Pope. In fact the old Church of the Middle Ages was fast going downhill.

Edward’s death closes the best period of these ‘Middle Ages’. From that time to the Reformation the country, except in material wealth, did not improve. Even the glorious foreign wars of Edward III brought in the long run more harm than good to England.

Edward II (‘the Poltroon’) was a most impossible person, heartless, ignorant, extravagant, cruel and weak-minded. Men rubbed their eyes and said, ‘Is this creature the son of “Pactum serva”?’ He gave up the Scottish war at once, and, when in 1314 he was obliged to take it up again, his enormous army got a most thorough thrashing from the Scottish spearmen at Bannockburn. He hung on the neck of a low-class Gascon favourite, who made fun of the sober English barons till they caught and killed him. Edward afterwards took a fearful revenge on such barons as he could catch, especially on his cousin Earl Thomas of Lancaster. Thus began a feud between the Crown and this man's family, which ended in the overthrow of Edward’s great-grandson Richard II and eventually in the civil ‘Wars of the Roses’.

The barons grew worse as well as the King—for no one class in a country can be bad without the others suffering; they used the meetings of Parliament to carry on their quarrels. Several of them were of royal descent (from younger sons of Henry III and Edward I);