The needs of the treasury were met by a novel form of taxation.

To the earlier land-tax, to the tax on personality which dated from the Saladin Tithe, to the customs duties which had grown into importance in the last two reigns, was now added a tax which reached every person in the realm, a poll-tax of a groat a head.

In this tax were sown the seeds of future trouble, but when the Parliament broke up in March the Duke's power seemed completely secured.

Hardly three months later it was wholly undone.

In June Edward the Third died in a dishonoured old age, robbed on his death-bed even of his rings by the mistress to whom he clung, and the accession of his grandson, Richard the Second, changed the whole face of affairs.