Bur the war was, as usual, no less feeble in its operations than it wail frivolous in its cause and object; and after occasioning some mutual depredations,[*] and some insurrections among the barons of Poictou and Guienne, was terminated by a peace.

The terms of this peace were rather disadvantageous to Henry, and prove that that prince had, by reason of his contest with the church, lost the superiority which he had hitherto maintained over the crown of France; an additional motive to him for accommodating those differences.
The pope and the king began at last to perceive that, in the present situation of affairs, neither of them could expect a final and decisive victory over the other, and that they had more to fear than to hope from the duration of the controversy.

Though the vigor of Henry's government had confirmed his authority in all his dominions, his throne might be shaken by a sentence of excommunication; and if England itself could, by its situation, be more easily guarded against the contagion of superstitious prejudices, his French provinces at least, whose communication was open with the neighboring states, would be much exposed, on that account, to some great revolution or convulsion, He could not, therefore, reasonably imagine that the pope, while he retained such a check upon him, would formally recognize the constitutions of Clarendon, which both put an end to papal pretensions in England,[**] and would give an example to other states of asserting a like independency.[***] [* Hoveden, p.517.

M.Paris, p.75.Diecto, p.
547 p.

1402, 1403.