The French war ran its disastrous course.

One English fleet was beaten by the Spaniards, a second sunk by a storm; and a campaign in the heart of France ended, like its predecessors, in disappointment and ruin.

Meanwhile the strife between employers and employed was kindling into civil war.

The Parliament, drawn as it was wholly from the proprietary classes, struggled as fiercely for the mastery of the labourers as it struggled for the mastery of the Crown.
The Good Parliament had been as strenuous in demanding the enforcement of the Statute of Labourers as any of its predecessors.

In spite of statutes, however, the market remained in the labourers' hands.