A man intended for the eleventh century had been set down in the fourteenth.

The restoration of knightly ceremonial, tournaments at the Louvre, the details of a new Crusade which he was planning, and the distribution of new titles, these were the things occupying the mind of the king, while his kingdom, rent by factions within, was in a death-struggle with foes from without.
A fantastic Don Quixote, on a tottering throne, was fighting the most practical statesman and the strongest-armed warrior Europe held at the time.
With this weakness at the centre, France was again falling into fragments.

There was even a resumption of private wars between nobles; and, most paralyzing of all, an empty treasury.

Such time as he could spare from his main projects John gave to the affairs of the kingdom.
First of all, taxes must be levied; and when the first tax was upon salt, King Edward condescended to make an historic witticism, saying "he had at last discovered who was the author of the _Salic Law_!" In the various plans for raising money, it was important that the taxes should be levied so that the burden would fall upon those who could, and who would, pay.

This meant the dwellers in the towns and cities; the bourgeoisie.