Grey Friars

“ There appears to have been a contemporary writer of the same name, a Carthusian, who studied at Oxford and Cambridge. Among those buried in the choir of the Grey Friars, London,
‘in plano sub lapide jacet venerabilis pater et frater Johannes Persevall doctor egregius et ordinis minorum in anglia minister qui obiit 16 die Mensis Decembris, Ao Domini 1505o’ [1709] .
Thomas Roger, warden of the Grey Friars of Gloucester, is mentioned in the following record of the Chancellor’s Court; it is to be regretted that no explanation of the circumstances is forthcoming. ”

“ And this, ladies, leads me to beg of you to change your ill opinion into compassion, remembering that he (3) who blinds the Grey Friars is not sparing of the ladies when he finds an opportunity.”
3 The demon.—B. J.
“Truly,” said Oisille, “this was a very wicked Grey Friar. A monk, a priest and a preacher to work such wickedness, and that on Christmas day, in the church and under the cloak of the confessional—all these are circumstances which heighten the sin.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ We can hardly wonder at the burst of enthusiasm which welcomed the itinerant preacher whose fervid appeal, coarse wit, and familiar story brought religion into the fair and the market place. In England, where the Black Friars of Dominic arrived in 1221, the Grey Friars of Francis in 1224, both were received with the same delight. As the older orders had chosen the country, the Friars chose the town. They had hardly landed at Dover before they made straight for London and Oxford. ”

“ 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] . ”

“ The legacies come from all ranks; tradesmen and [Pg 102] merchants being especially well represented. Nor were the benefactors confined to Oxford and its neighbourhood: the Convent, like the University, occupied a national position. But it will be best to give as complete a list as possible of the bequests to the Grey Friars, and leave readers to draw their own conclusions.
John of St. John [660] , clerk, by an undated will, probably about 1230, left half a mark to the Friars Minors of Oxford. ”

“ Edward III stayed at the Grey Friars, York, in 1335 (Rymer, Foed., Vol. II, pt. ii, p. 909) . In the Record Office (Excheq. Q. R. Wardrobe 21⁄12) is a document containing details as to feasts in the Dominican Convent at Oxford in connexion with the burial of Piers Gaveston; the feasts were continued for four weeks. The Earl of Hereford, who spent Christmas at Grey Friars, Exeter, in 1288, found his lodgings detestable and the stench insupportable: Oliver, Monast. Exon. p. ”

“ In the thirteenth century a very large number of men of position, of high birth, were attracted to the Order; but that this was unusual may be gathered from the rejoicings which took place over converts who were ‘valentes in saeculo [743] .’ There is every reason to suppose that the Grey Friars, as well as the other students at the University, were mainly recruited from the sons of tradesmen, artisans, and villeins [744] . Friar Brackley, D.D. was the son of a Norwich dyer [745] ; and the towns probably supplied the greater proportion of the Oxford Franciscans [746] . ”

“ 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 Black Friars, or Preachers, White Friars, or Carmelites, Grey Friars, or Minors, and the Austin Friars, all had at one period, from the thirteenth century to the era of the Reformation, large establishments within its precincts; besides which, there was a nunnery, and divers hospitals, as they were called, such as the Chapel of the Lady in the Fields, Norman’s Spital, and Hildebrand’s Hospital ”

“ The church of the Grey Friars had been the favourite place of sepulture with those of the aristocracy of England who had died in the metropolis. According to the reckoning of Weever the church had been honoured with the sepulture of four Queens, four Duchesses, four Countesses, one Duke, two Earls, eight Barons, [36] and some thirty-five Knights: and in all six hundred sixty and three persons of quality. Stowe tells us that "there were nine tombs of alabaster and marble, invironed with strikes of iron, in the choir; and one tomb in the body of the church, also coped with iron ”

“ We are told in our Chronicle [27] that every part of the Grey Friars' church was on this occasion filled with wine; but, except the injury it might sustain by such rough usage, it had not hitherto been dismantled. King Henry's letters patent of 1546 shew that the "partitions" or screens remained both in the church and chancel, the altars, pictures, images, and pulpit ”

“ 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 ... ”

“ The opposition of the older generation was, however, unavailing, and a ‘stately and magnificent [139] ’ convent began to rise. But of the new friary, too, there are but scanty notices. No English king bestowed on the house of Franciscans at Oxford that loving care which Henry III bestowed on the Minorite Church at Reading, or Edward II on the Dominican Church which rose over the tomb of his ill-fated favourite at Langley. From royal grants we learn that building was going on at the Grey Friars of Oxford in 1240, when ten oaks were given to them by the King for timber [140] . ”

“ Grostete urges the Friars not to grieve for his loss:
‘for the light of his knowledge is so bright that it ought to be concentrated most there where it may dissipate the thickest darkness of infidelity.’ ‘Have no fear,’ the writer continues, ‘that he will be cut off from the “Sacred Page;” he has humility, and no “haeretica pravitas” will slip in.’
He died at Barlete, and miracles are said to have been wrought by his relics or his memory [1230] .
William of York, ‘a solemn bachelor,’ was probably an Oxford man, as he entered the Order on the same day as Adam of Oxford [1231] . ”

“ Elsewhere we find an increase.
At Winchester, there were 23 Minorites in 1243 (Liberate, 27 Hen. III, m. 2) ; 43 in 1315 (Q. R. Wardrobe, 24⁄10) . At Reading, there were 13 in 1239 (Liberate, 23 Hen. III, m. 3) ; 26 in 1326 (Q. R. Wardrobe, 15⁄1) .
From these figures, and from the Bull of Clement V in 1309 (granting property of the Friars of the Sack to the Grey Friars) , we may infer that the numbers in the Oxford convent increased rather than diminished up to A. D. 1349. ”

“ Wiclif may have classed with the friars the ‘pardoners’ who did not belong to any of the four Orders [544] . The records relating to the Franciscan house at Oxford throw no light on the matter, which indeed belongs to the general history of the Mendicants, not to the history of a particular convent. Wiclif’s charges amount practically to this: the friars were the foremost champions of the external, unspiritual form of religion, which he laboured to destroy: they were no longer leaders of thought, but obstacles to progress. ”

“ He was patronized by Wolsey, but whether he came to England at the Cardinal’s invitation is doubtful. In Nov. 1528, ‘Fryer Nicholas of Oxford’ received £5 as a reward from Wolsey [1811] . In 1529 the King desired that the [Pg 281] friar should have a benefice [1812] ; payments to him from the Privy Purse and other sources are frequently found [1813] . The Italian friar had made himself useful by advocating the King’s divorce [1814] . He was perhaps the
‘Franciscan, who was one of the chief writers in favour of the King,’ ”

“ Under the circumstances we cannot be surprised if the friars sometimes took legal measures to recover the debts due to them. It was no doubt in connexion with this grant, that in 1466 Richard Clyff, ‘custos’ of the Oxford Grey Friars (first in person and afterwards through his attorney) sued John Broghton, late Sheriff of Kent, in the Court of Exchequer, for 100s. ”

“ On August 10th, 1540, William Frewers and John Pye of Oxford, obtained a lease of the house and site of the Grey Friars, together with the grove containing by estimation five acres, for twenty-one years, at a rent of 20s. ”

“ The Archbishop stated that, owing to the privileges of hearing confessions which the friars enjoyed, almost all youths in the Universities, and in the houses of their parents (in nearly all of which friars were to be found as ‘familiares’) , had Mendicants as their confessors.
‘Enticed by the wiles of the friars and by little presents [529] , these boys (for the friars cannot circumvent men of mature age) enter the Orders, nor are they afterwards allowed, according to report, to get their liberty by leaving the Order, but they are kept with them against their will until they make profession ”

“ To show how far short of this aim the result falls, it is only necessary to point out that the names of friars actually included in Part II number little more than three hundred: and the connexion of some of these with Oxford is doubtful. The bibliographies, appended to the biographical notices, are intended to include all the extant works of each friar, but not all the MSS. nor all the editions of each work. Occasionally works are added which have not been identified, but of whose previous existence there is sufficient evidence. ”

“ Wiclif repeats the charge against the Mendicants generally:—
‘A what cursedness is this, to a dead man, as to the world, and pride and vanitie thereof, to get him a cap of masterdom by praier of Lords [266] !’
It remains for us to give an account of the academic, or rather scholastic career of a Friar Minor at Oxford. As many of the friars entered the Order in tender years, there is no doubt that boys’ schools formed part of many of the friaries [267] . There is no evidence of such a school at Oxford, but at Paris one existed where the student friars received a preliminary education [268] . ”

“ Many of the questions discussed at vesperies, inceptions, and other disputations at Oxford at the end of the thirteenth century—probably in the convent of the Minorites—are preserved in a manuscript at Assisi [326] . The question on which Friar Hugh of Hertepol disputed at the vesperies of Friar John de Persole was: An Christus in primo instanti potuit mereri perfectione. Other questions of the same Friar Hugh were: An deus eadem ratione formali videatur trinus et unus, An incarnacio sit possibilis. ”

“ It is, however, in the wills of men and women of every rank and every status that we get most insight into the work of the friars as visitors of the sick. Unfortunately we possess but few wills as early as the thirteenth or first half of the fourteenth century, while for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the popularity of the friars had greatly declined, they are fairly numerous. Taking those proved in the Chancellor’s court between 1436 and 1538, we find that one will in every eight, roughly speaking [657] , contains a bequest to the Minorites. ”

“ It is however very doubtful whether he was ever at Oxford. The name occurs in the Old Catalogue of Fellows of Merton College, under the reign of Edward III. If the two are identical, Lamborne ought to be placed in the Catalogue under Edward II, as he was clearly a friar in 1327; but there is no good reason for assuming their identity: Robert Lamborn of Merton may be a mistake for Reginald Lamborn [1488] . Friar John (?) Lamborne, confessor to Queen Isabella, was buried in the choir of the Grey Friars Church, London [1489] . ”