But, very soon, those houses were divided by discord, and the city was plunged into all the evils which it had suffered before the existence of the Tribuneship.
"The community at large," says Matthew Villani, "returned to such condition, that strangers and travellers found themselves like sheep among wolves." Clement VI.

was weary of seeing the metropolis of Christianity a prey to anarchy.

He therefore chose four cardinals, whose united deliberations might appease these troubles, and he imagined that he could establish in Rome a form of government that should be durable.
The cardinals requested Petrarch to give his opinion on this important affair.

Petrarch wrote to them a most eloquent epistle, full of enthusiastic ideas of the grandeur of Rome.

It is not exactly known what effect he produced by his writing on this subject; but on that account we are not to conclude that he wrote in vain.
Petrarch had brought to Avignon his son John, who was still very young.
He had obtained for him a canonicate at Verona.