ABSTRACT
The war in France exercised an important influence on life in England. Also, by provoking a hatred of foreigners, the war promoted the growth of a national consciousness. There followed a prolonged and exhausting war with France, in the midst of which the plague descended upon England, reducing its population by nearly a third between 1350 and 1400. Prince Edward opened the war on a grandiose scale. Under Edward I it was uncertain whether the magnates were present in Parliament as petitioners or decision makers. In 1380 Parliament, growing weary of paying for the war in France with the usual tenth-and-fifteenth, taxes which fell on the propertied classes, passed a poll, or head, tax, which fell on everyone equally, the lowliest villein paying the same as the wealthiest duke. This chapter talks about the last quarter of the fourteenth century that witnessed a religious crisis as deep as the social crisis, a crisis associated with the ideas of John Wyclif.
