Edward was not satisfied to have to ask the Pope’s leave to tax his own subjects, whether clerical or lay; he had begun to assemble the clergy in councils of their own, for the purpose of obtaining money grants, and, a little later, gave them a representative constitution as an estate of parliament. They were, on the other hand, unwilling to obey the summons to attend a secular court, and to spend their money on secular purposes, much more so when it was demanded out of all proportion and without reasonable consultation. Robert Winchelsey, who became archbishop in 1294, was fitted to be the leader of a strong ecclesiastical opposition. He was a pious, learned and far-seeing man, but he was fully possessed with the idea that the king was determined to subject the Church to the State; and he knew that in the Pope, Boniface VIII., he had a friend and supporter who would not desert him. He was ready to fight the battle the prospect of which was very near. [Sidenote: Quarrel between Edward and the clergy. ] Edward regarded the situation of affairs in 1294 as entitling him to assume the office of dictator; to take all advantage of the law offered him for raising men and money; but, if he saw means which the law did not warrant, to use them also as justified by the necessity of the case. So he not only assembled the barons, clergy, and commons, to obtain money grants from them, but seized the wool of the merchants and took account of the treasures of the churches. It is true that by negotiating with the merchants in assemblies of their own he obtained their consent to pay a large increase of custom on the wool, and that he did not actually confiscate the church treasure, still the measures were oppressive and alarming; and when in the autumn council of 1294 he demanded one-half of the revenue of the Church the alarm became a panic. The clergy yielded, only to find another heavy demand made on them the next year; but the king was becoming irritated by delay and the clergy emboldened by papal support. Boniface VIII., in February 1296, issued a famous Bull called, from its opening words, the Bull _Clericis Laicos_, in which he forbade the king to take or the clergy to pay taxes on their ecclesiastical revenue. Armed with this Archbishop Winchelsey in 1297 declined to agree to a money grant, and the king replied by placing all the clergy, who would not submit, out of the protection of the law. [Sidenote: Discontent of the greater barons under the growth of the royal power. ]