Exaggerated as such statements were, the wealth of the Church was really great; but even more galling to the nobles was its influence in the royal councils.

The feudal baronage, flushed with a new pride by its victories at Crecy and Poitiers, looked with envy and wrath at the throng of bishops around the council-board, and attributed to their love of peace the errors and sluggishness which had caused, as they held, the disasters of the war.

To rob the Church of wealth and of power became the aim of a great baronial party.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the Church] The efforts of the baronage indeed would have been fruitless had the spiritual power of the Church remained as of old.

But the clergy were rent by their own dissensions.

The higher prelates were busy with the cares of political office, and severed from the lower priesthood by the scandalous inequality between the revenues of the wealthier ecclesiastics and the "poor parson" of the country.