Moreover, the King had recently put down a serious revolt in South Wales and only a year ago he had sacked Berwick and brought Balliol and others to their knees. Yet the rebellion in Scotland refused to subside. News had come south of a new Scottish war leader, a commoner, William the Wallace, who had fanned the flames of unrest by perpetrating secret night raids on isolated garrisons and columns, not missing any opportunity to harass and attack the English occupiers.

The wars demanded good silver. Edward had taken loans from the Italian bankers, the Frescobaldi, but now they would give no more and so he had turned on the Church. The Church was wealthy, a fat milk cow, and Edward dearly wanted to separate some of its riches from it. He had seized the tax levied by the former pope, Nicholas IV, who had nurtured grand ideas of uniting all Christendom in a new offensive against the Turk. Edward had enthusiastically taken up the idea of a crusade but had seized the money raised. He then turned to the alien priories, those houses owned by religious orders abroad, seizing their revenue and temporalities. Corbett had played a significant role in the appropriation of this ecclesiastical wealth, going through memoranda rolls, documents and charters, searching out what the king's rights were in these matters. Time and again, Corbett with barons of the exchequer and other treasury officials, had met to study long lists of rents, dues and fee-farms owing to the king. The results had been meagre, certainly not enough to finance Edward's wars abroad, so the king had begun to cast envious eyes on the wealth of the rest of the English Church. In this he met two staunch opponents: Boniface VIII in Avignon, who was totally determined on the churches in Western Christendom resuming their regular payments to the coffers of St Peter, and Robert Winchelsea, consecrated archbishop four years earlier, who had a very clear idea about his own rights and those of the English Church.