According to the saying of Solomon, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child," in the time of the youth of the same Richard many misfortunes, both caused thereby and happening therefrom, ceased not to harass the kingdom of England ... even to the great disorder of the State, and to the last undoing of King Richard himself and of those who too fondly clung to him. Amongst all other misfortunes, nay, amongst the most wicked of all wicked things, even errors and heresies in the catholic faith, England, and above all, London and Bristol, stood corrupted, being infected by the seeds which one master John Wycliffe sowed, polluting, as it were, the faith with the tares of his baleful teaching. And the followers of this master John, like Mahomet, by preaching things pleasing to the powerful and rich, namely, that the withholding of tithes and even of offerings and the reaving[44] of temporal goods from the clergy were praiseworthy, and, to the young, that self-indulgence was a virtue, most wickedly did sow the seed of murder, snares, strife, variance, and discords, which last unto this day, and which, I fear, will last even to the undoing of the kingdom.... The people of England, wrangling about the old faith and the new, are every day, as it were, on the very point of bringing down upon their own heads rebellion and ruin. And I fear that in the end it will happen as once it did, when many citizens of London, true to the faith, rose against the Duke of Lancaster to slay him, because he favoured the said Master John, so that hurrying from his table into a boat hastily provided, he fled across the Thames, and hardly escaped with his life. FOOTNOTES: [44] Plundering. THE PARLIAMENT OF 1384 (APRIL, 1384). SOURCE.--Higden's _Polychronicon_ (Rolls Series), ix. 32-40. [This Parliament has been well called the turning-point of Richard's reign. It marked his first deliberate attempt to enforce his own policy in Parliament.] Moreover, on the 29th day of April the King of England held a Parliament at Salisbury, and it lasted until the 27th day of the month of May. At the beginning of which several extraordinary things happened. _Firstly_, because both the lords spiritual and temporal, quarrelling among themselves, almost frustrated the object of Parliament. But the Duke of Lancaster intervening pacified them, mingling threats with much eloquence of words. _Secondly_, because of the words of the Earl of Arundell; for, in the hearing of all, in full Parliament, when the King was present, he said these words, or to this effect: