John of Gaunt's object in favouring Wicliffe was purely political; with the reformer's religious views he can have had little sympathy. But he wished to turn the seething discontent of England into the channel of an attack on the Church, and to keep it from his own doors. For the last twenty years legislation against ecclesiastical grievances had been not infrequent. In 1351 the _Statute of Provisors_ had prohibited the Pope from giving away English benefices to his favourites. In 1353 the _First Statute of Praemunire_ had forbidden English litigants to transfer their disputes to the Church courts abroad. Duke John's attempt to distract the attention of the nation to the reform of matters ecclesiastic was partly successful; we find many proposals in Parliament to strip the Church of part of her overgrown endowments, and utilize them for the service of the state. On this point clerk and layman had many a bitter wrangle. But Lancaster could not altogether keep the storm from beating on himself and his father; in 1376 the "Good Parliament" impeached Latimer and Neville, Edward's favourites and ministers, and removed and fined them. Alice Perrers, the old king's mistress, was at the same time banished. In the following year Lancaster reasserted himself, packed a Parliament with his supporters, and cancelled the condemnation of Latimer, Neville, and Alice Perrers. The Bishop of London in revenge arrested Lancaster's _protégé_ Wicliffe, and began to try him for heresy; but the duke appeared in the court, and so threatened and browbeat the bishop that he was fain to release his prisoner. But new complications were now at hand; the aspect of affairs was suddenly changed by the death of the old king on January 2, 1377, and political affairs took a new complexion on the accession of his young grandson, Richard II., the only surviving child of the Black Prince. DESCENDANTS OF EDWARD III.