Golden Friars

“ We have come very fast; it is only a few minutes past two, darling."
But each felt the chill and load of their returning anxiety.
While the people at the George were rapidly getting a team of horses to, Lady Walsingham contrived a moment for an order from the other window to her servant, who knew Golden Friars perfectly, to knock-up the people at Doctor Torvey's, and to inquire whether all were well at Mardykes Hall. ”

“ And of the Friaries once flourishing in Hull nought remains but their mere names.
‘Even where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, even there shall the dogs lick thy blood also, O King.’ Such was the text which a certain Grey Friar used when he had occasion to preach before King Henry. A bold man he must 202have been thus to take his fate into his hands. What the fate of Friar Peto actually was is not recorded, but we know that the Grey Friars and the Carthusian Monks were treated with particular brutality. ”

“ In England the chief orders of friars were distinguished by the colour of their habit: thus the Franciscans or Minors were the Grey Friars; the Dominicans or Preachers were the Black Friars (from their black mantle over a white habit) , and the Carmelites were the White Friars (from their white mantle over a brown habit) : these, together with the Austin Friars or Hermits, formed the four great mendicant orders—Chaucer’s “alle the ordres foure.” Besides the four great orders of friars, the Trinitarians (q.v.) , though really canons, were in England called Trinity Friars or Red Friars ”

“ What could be too good, too costly, too precious for such men? They would accept no endowment. They lived on the broken meats of charity. Then let their church be adorned; let the pillars bear aloft the roof over chapels and altars ablaze with gold and lights; let their sacred vessels be of gold—nothing less would serve; let the vestments be of cloth of gold and silver. And so on until the dreadful suspicion arose that the Grey Friars were not so holy and so devoted as of old. They lived upon their reputation for a hundred years and more ”

“ On hearing this dream, the friars were frightened and behaved without very noticeable laughter [36] .’
Grostete said to a Friar Preacher, ‘Three things are necessary to temporal health—to eat, sleep, and be merry [37] .’ Excessive austerity was discountenanced by the authorities of the Oxford convent. Friar Albert of Pisa, who was himself ‘always cheerful and merry in the society of the brethren [38] ,’ compelled Friar Eustace de Merc, contrary to custom, to eat fish, saying that the Order lost many good persons through their indiscretion [39] . ”

“ There have been cases which I could name, where friars, coveting the wife or sister of a man, have procured his banishment or even secured for him an appointment at a distance, so that they might have the way open to accomplish their purposes. There was a fear which beset every man, even those who through fear were nearest to the friars, that if his eyes should light upon his wife or daughter in an envious way, if he did not give them up he was lost. ”

“ The people are poor, living for the most part in grass houses, while the friars are rich and live in luxury; and this has been going on for centuries.”
“Bad, very bad; the morals of the tropics and the Orient.”
“This is not all. The friars exercised the power of secret investigation, and one never knew when he was safe. A friar might report a man as a conspirator against Spain, and, [19] while meeting him and showing friendship for him in public, secretly secure his banishment. ”

“ A Friar, who gathered simples in the wood,
A grey-haired man—he loved this little boy,
The boy loved him—and, when the Friar taught him,
He soon could write with the pen: and from that time,
Lived chiefly at the Convent or the Castle.
So he became a very learned youth.
But Oh! poor wretch!—he read, and read, and read,
Till his brain turned—and ere his twentieth year,
He had unlawful thoughts of many things:
And though he prayed, he never loved to pray
With holy men, nor in a holy place—
But yet his speech, it was so soft and sweet,
The late Lord Velez ne'er was wearied with him. ”

“ Every one was ready to die with laughing, seeing the chase of the two friars thus mounted, who both looked more dead than alive; the mare leaped from one side of the road to the other, and the enraged stallion after her, and of course the poor friar was often in danger of being wounded, as may well be imagined. ”

“ It is of Decorated date, and has wide centre and side aisles, divided by a very light and graceful arcade. Some fragments of the south walk of the cloister of the Grey Friars exist among the buildings of Christ s Hospital or the Blue-Coat School. Of the Black Friars all has perished but the name. Taken as a whole, the remains of the establishments of the friars afford little warrant for the bitter invective of the Benedictine of St Alban s, Matthew Paris : " The friars who have been founded hardly 40 years have built residences as the palaces of kings. ”

“ The Mendicants were far more in sympathy with the poor than were the endowed monks, and possessed far more than the parish priests the confidence of the people [525] . Wiclif recognised this fact, while he lamented it.
[Pg 79] ‘Though it raine on the Awter of the Parish Church, the blind people is so deceived, that they will rather give to waste houses of Friars, then to Parish Churches, or to common waies, though men cattle and beasts ben perished therein [526] .’
The first important attack on the friars in the fourteenth century was that led by Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh. ”

“ Friar (i. e. brother) , a name applied generally to members of religious brotherhoods, but which in its strict significance indicated an order lower than that of priest, the latter being called “father,” while they differed from monks in that they travelled about, whereas the monk remained secluded in his monastery; in the 13th century arose the Grey Friars or Franciscans, the Black Friars or Dominicans, the White Friars or Carmelites, Augustinians or Austin Friars, and later the Crutched Friars or Trinitarians. ”

“ The love of money was the root of all evil. The Minorites were right. When men with a divine fervour proclaim a truth, or even half a truth, which the world has forgotten, there is never any lack of enthusiasm in its acceptance. In five years from their first arrival the Friars had established themselves in almost every considerable town in England, and where one order settled the other came soon after, the two orders in their first beginning co-operating cordially. ”

“ One change in the life of the friars—their gradual approximation to the seclusion of the older Orders, may be illustrated by two passages from Matthew Paris and Wiclif (allowance being made for the prejudices of the writers) . The friars, says the Benedictine historian, ‘wandered through cities and villages,’ and ‘had the ocean for their cloister’ (Chron. Majora, V, 529) . Wiclif attacks them for living ‘closed in a cloister,’ instead of going about among the people, ‘to whom thy maie most profite ghostlie ... ”

“ Issuing triumphant from such an ordeal the Mendicant Orders proved once and for all that their position in the Church of Christ is impregnable. So important an incident ought not to be lightly dismissed.
Various causes tended to create a spirit of opposition to the Friars. Jealousy at their success, and a spirit of worldliness to which their lives was a constant reproach, appear to be the chief. The Friars succeeded in attracting universal admiration. Their professors were the most brilliant in the University; their lecture halls the best appointed; their audience the most enthusiastic. ”

“ With the dawn of the thirteenth century came the great revivalists--the friars. Wherever the friars established themselves they began not only to preach, but to teach. They were the awakeners of a new intellectual life; not only the stimulators of an emotional pietism always prone to run into religious intoxication and extravagance. ”

“ However, they had some consideration for her and waited for her to give birth to a child before whipping her. You know that the friars spread the belief that the only way to deal with the natives is with the whip. ”

“ The poor friars have, with one exception, no enjoyment of the things of this world, their only worldly comfort is good cheer. The friars have three carnivals in the year, of two or three weeks’ duration each. These are the only periods at which they can recruit their wasted strength, to enable them to resist the mortifications of the rest of the year. During these few weeks they have seven courses served at dinner, all substantial and choice dishes, the most dainty morsels that can be provided. At supper they have five courses. ”

“ There were beautiful Friesland girls in wooden shoes and coarse petticoats, with solid gold crescents encircling their heads, finished at each temple with a golden rosette and hung with lace a century old. Some wore necklaces, pendants, and earrings of the purest gold. Many were content with gilt or even with brass, but it is not an uncommon thing for a Friesland woman to have all the family treasure in her headgear. More than one rustic lass displayed the value of two thousand guilders upon her head that day. ”

“ The friars insist on the merit of giving to them above all others, and are very importunate. At last, to quiet them, he tells them he will leave them a jewel for which he would not take a thousand marks ”

“ Then the Friar stiffened up; any one in the world, or any thing, had the right to impose upon the Friar as a man; but when they tried to interfere with what he spoke of as his callin’, why, he swelled up noticeable. The Friar’s humility was genuine, all right; but it was about four times stiffer an’ spikier than any pride I’ve ever met up with yet.
“I shall not ride your hosses,” sez he, scornful, “nor shall I tread upon your land, nor shall I breathe your air, nor drink your water; but in the future, as in the past, I shall use for the Lord only those things which belong to the Lord. ”

“ Six hundred years ago the Friars had been established in England about sixty years, and they were now by far the most influential Religionists in the country. The Friars, though always stationed in the towns, and by this time occupying large establishments which were built for them in Lynn, Yarmouth, Norwich, and elsewhere, were always acting the part of itinerant preachers, and travelled their circuits on foot, supported by alms. ”

“ It is said that he who hops among thorns is either chasing a snake or being chased by one; and it looked as if either the one or the other was the Friar's case, for he hopped high in the bramble bushes and danced as if he had gone mad in both heels at once.
To see the good Friar dancing willy-nilly among the bramble bushes, kicking up his heels to the tune of the pipe, higher still and higher—oh, it was a sight for Jack's eyes, for he loved the Friar to distraction in less ways than one. So long as Jack piped, the Friar danced. ”

“ We are only told enough to awaken curiousity and disappoint it.
Happily, of the early labours of the Franciscan friars in England much fuller details have reached us, though the very existence of the records in which they were handed down was known to very few, and the wonderful story had been forgotten for centuries when the appearance of the "Monumenta Franciscana" in the series of chronicles published under direction of the Master of the Rolls in 1858 may be said to have marked an event in literature. ”

“ Frithiof’s Temptation
Spring is come once more; birds warble in the treetops; freed from their icy bonds, the streams leap gaily downward to the vales below; the roses part their delicate sheaths and blossom red as Frigga’s cheeks. King Ring will now go hunting, and forthwith a joyous stir pervades the court. Bows twang, quivers rattle, fiery coursers paw the ground, the hooded falcon screams for its victim, and scarce can the huntsmen keep in leash the eager hounds. Fair as Frigga, dazzling as the battle-maiden Rota, sits the Queen upon her milk-white steed like a star on a summer cloud. ”

“ When John Wesley offered to the Church of England precisely their successors, we would have no commerce with them; we did our best to turn them into a hostile and invading force.
The Friars were the Evangelizers of the towns in England for 300 years. When the spoliation of the religious houses was decided upon, the Friars were the first upon whom the blow fell--the first and the last. [Footnote: The king began with the Franciscan convent of Christ Church, London, in 1532; he bestowed the Dominican convent at Norwich upon the corporation of that city on the 25th of June, 1540.] ”

“ That you may learn how hurtful are ignorance and fear, and how the lack of comprehension is often the cause of much woe, I will tell you what happened to two Grey Friars, who, through failing to understand the words of a butcher, thought that they were about to die.”
[The Grey Friar imploring the Butcher to Spare his Life]
TALE XXXIV. Two Grey Friars, while listening to secrets that did not concern them, misunderstood the language of a butcher and endangered their lives. (1)
Between Nyort and Fors there is a village called Grip, (2) which belongs to the Lord of Fors. ”

“ FRIAR. It is a leasing, credit me.
How chance, sir, then you were not sworn?
JOHN. What mean this groom and lozel friar,
So strictly matters to inquire?
Had I a sword and buckler here,
You should aby these questions dear.
FRIAR. Say'st thou me so, lad? lend him thine,
For in this bush here lieth mine.
Now will I try this new-come guest.
SCATH. I am his first man, Friar Tuck,
And if I fail, and have no luck,
Then thou with him shalt have a pluck.
FRIAR. Be it so, Scathlock. Hold thee, lad,
No better weapons can be had:
The dew doth them a little rust ”