" All that made no difference to the swash-bucklers, and up and
down England there was wild extravagance, and money seemed to burn in
people's pockets. Feasting and merriment, and all that appertains
thereto, were the order of the day, and all went merry as a marriage
bell.
The King got all he could get out of the Parliament, but he did not
get, he could not get, all he wished. What was to be done next? The
Pope said, "Make peace!" and his Holiness did his little best to
bring about the desired end. The summer of 1348 had come, and it
seems that at Avignon the plague had by this time spent itself,
people were no longer afraid to go there now, and the Pope would
peradventure come out of his seclusion and receive an embassy. So on
the 28th of July Edward III. wrote a letter to Pope Clement, and
announced his intention of sending his ambassadors to Avignon to
treat about terms. The negotiations fell through, and on the 8th of
October the King announced by proclamation that he was once more
going to make an inroad upon France with an armed force. He did not
keep his word. In November a truce was patched up somehow; and on the
first of the next month we find the King once more at Westminster,
and there he seems to have remained over Christmas. If the dates are
correctly given, the news from the west of England about this time
was not likely to have provoked much merriment.
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