the Trojan in the time of the prophet Samuel, and that Scotland was subjugated and annexed by his Edward’s ancestor king Arthur, a prince for whose existence there was the same authority then as now, namely the rhymes of the nursery. Boniface was struck with the antiquity of the English monarchy and the deeds of the valorous Arthur, and he changed sides: he commanded the Scotch no longer to resist his beloved son in the Lord, king Edward. Some years later we find Edward brought by his subjects to the verge of dethronement for his tyranny, and forced to ratify anew the Great Charter and swear to observe it; and then applying to Clement V. the French pope, Philip’s pope, first pope of the Captivity, for a dispensation from his oath. Great as Edward is made to appear to us in English histories, it is clear he was not the man to redeem his kingdom from the thraldom into which his grandsire had sold it. It was the paralysis of the political power of the Church effected by Philip IV., which gave scope to the innovations of Wiclif and led towards the emancipation of England. We pass over the reign of Edward’s worthless son, and come to that of his grandson in the early part of whose reign Wiclif was born. The day of his birth is not known. The third Edward came honestly by his qualities moral and immoral. He was the grandson not only of Edward I. but of the terrible Philip. He was not an Englishman--the English blood in his veins was just a two hundred and fifty-sixth part. He was a French Spaniard with a taint of the Moor. He ground his subjects to powder by unprecedented taxation. He put the crown itself in pawn and left it there eight years. But he had inherited the unfailing sagacity of his maternal grandsire, and his people never brought _him_ to terms by threatening to dethrone him. If he himself did not turn upon the Church and rend her like Philip, he was ready to see others do it. For aught he cared, Wiclif and the other neologists of the day, might have gone over to the faith of his Saracenic ancestors, and translated into English the Koran instead of the Bible. Nor were his subjects much more true to the hierarchy: loyalty to the pope was no longer the vogue. Now-a-days not one Roman Catholic in a thousand knows that the see of Rome was ever anywhere else than in Rome: the Church has been remiss in disseminating information on that point; but at that time every Englishman not idiotic, knew that the pope was a Frenchman seated down on the Rhone; that the cardinals were French; that it was a Frenchman in London who received the tribute of king John when he could get it; that in fine the Church was a French industry which every honest Briton was bound to look upon with distrust.