Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/174

 for a Royal Commissioner. In the first year of Edward's reign the Bishop of Worcester, who was sent to Avignon in order to secure a dispensation for the marriage of the young King to Philippa, received an allowance of five marks a day for 299 days. The value of money was higher in 1327 than in 1375, and the treatment of this bishop must have been at least three times and a half as good as that of Wyclif.

The negotiations ended in an unfortunate compromise. It was agreed that the Pope should desist from making reservations of benefices in England, but only on condition that the English King should no longer confer benefices by his writ of quare impedit. Evidently the whole question was left unsettled. Even if both parties had acted upon this agreement, which they did not, more harm than good would have been done. Englishmen had hoped to see the authority of the monarch in his own kingdom vindicated, and admitted by the Pope's delegates; but instead of this there was a formal limitation of his authority, and nothing had been effected to establish the rights of chapters and other ecclesiastical patrons. It is true that claims were made, then or subsequently, that the Pope had given way on other points, and that the nuncios had pledged him by word of mouth to abstain from certain acts to which the English Commissioners had taken exception. It is also possible that minor points were reserved at Bruges, and settled at leisure in the course of 1376; for in the Parliament of the following year (when the "King's friends" were in power again) mention was