ill with podagra (gout), was unable to attend. The Conclave began on Sunday, 5 May 1342, and on the morning of Tuesday, 7 May, agreement was reached. Two cardinals wrote to King Edward III of England on 8 May that the election had been accomplished "with no preliminary politicking and with only Divine Inspiration." Cardinal Pierre Roger was chosen to succeed Benedict XII as pope. He was crowned on Pentecost Sunday, 19 May, in the church of the Dominicans, the largest church in Avignon. Present were Prince John of France, Duke of Normandy; Jacques, Duke of Burgundy, Imbert, Dauphin of Vienne, and many others. Cardinal Roger chose the regnal name Clement VI. During the season of Pentecost immediately following his coronation, as Peter de Herenthal writes, when a new Pope customarily gratifies the expectations of his family, his followers, his supporters, his cardinals, and the Roman Curia, Pope Clement promised gifts to every cleric who presented himself at Avignon within two months. Such a multitude of poor clerics appeared in Avignon that a computation was made that the number of poor clerics in all the dioceses of the world was around 100,000, a number which Peter de Herenthal was quite prepared to accept. When Clement VI, at the very beginning of his pontificate was making reservations of abbacies and prelatures, and declaring elections in monasteries and Chapters void, in order to acquire benefices for papal use in granting favors, it was intimated to him that his predecessors had not engaged in reservations of such a sort. Clement is said to have replied, "Our predecessors did not know how to be pope." New cardinals One of the greatest ways in which a pope can reward his supporters is to raise them to the cardinalate. On 20 September 1342, four months after his coronation, Clement VI held a Consistory for the creation of cardinals. He appointed ten prelates, including three nephews, Hugues Roger, Ademar Roberti and Bernard de la Tour d'Auvergne. He also elevated Guy of Boulogne, the archbishop of Lyon and son of Count Robert VII of Auvergne, and Gerard de Daumar, the master-general of the Dominicans and a papal cousin, who died a year after his creation, on 27 September 1343. Five of his appointments were from his own native area of Limoges and one from Périgueux. Only one was Italian, Andrea Ghini Malpighi, a Florentine, who died on 2