§ 71. THE FRANCISCANS. 417
absorbing relations of English affairs in the Middle Ages. At Canterbury they were entertained by the monks of Feskamp, and at London by the Black Friars. At Oxford they received a warm welcome. Grosseteste announced their ad vent with a sermon from the words, " They that sat in dark ness have seen a great light." It was as if the door to a new religious era had been opened. Of their settlement in St. Ebbe's parish, Oxford, it was said that " there was sown a grain of mustard seed which grew to be greater than all the trees." They were quickly settled at Cambridge, Norwich, Northampton, Yarmouth, and other centres. They were the first popular preachers that England had seen, and the first to embody a practical philanthropy.1 The condition of English villages and towns at that day was very wretched. Skin diseases were fearfully prevalent, including leprosy. Destructive epidemics spread with great rapidity. Sanitary precautions were unknown. Stagnant pools and piles of refuse abounded.2
Partly from necessity and partly from pure choice these ardent religionists made choice of quarters in the poorest and most neglected parts of the towns. In Norwich they settled in a swamp through which the city sewerage passed. At Newgate, now a part of London, they betook themselves to Stinking Lane. At Cambridge they occupied the decayed gaol.
No wonder that such zeal received recognition. The people soon learned to respect the new apostles. Adam Marsh joined them, and he and Grosseteste, the most influ ential English ecclesiastic of his day, lectured in the Fran ciscan school at Oxford. The burgesses of London and other towns gave them lands, as did also the king, at Shrews bury. In 1256 the number of English friars had increased to 1242, settled in forty-nine different localities.3 The Fran ciscans also gave an impetus to learning ; they set up schools,
1Creighton, p. 107.
2 See the descriptions of Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, pp. 21 sqq., and Brewer's Mon. Franc., pp. xv. sq. 8 Mon. Franc., p. xli. 2s
418 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
as at Oxford, where Robert Grosseteste delivered lectures for them. Most of the great English Schoolmen belonged to the Franciscan order. Eccleston describes the godly lives of the early English Franciscans, their abstinence, and their light-heartedness.1 Less than fifty years after their advent, one of their number, Robert Kilwarby, was sitting in the archepiscopal chair of Canterbury ; to another Fran ciscan, Bonaventura, was offered the see of York, which he declined.
In time, the history of the Franciscans followed the usual course of human prosperity.2 They fell from their first estate. With honors and lands came demoralization. They gained an unsavory reputation as collectors of papal reve nues. Matthew Paris' rebukes of their arrogance date back as far as 1235, and he said that Innocent IV. turned them from fishers of men into fishers of pennies. At the sequestration of the religious houses by Henry VIII., the Franciscan convent of Christ's Church, London, was the first to fall, 1532.3
1 He tells a comic story of William de Madeley, at Oxford, who, finding a pair of shoes, put them on and went to matins. Going to sleep he dreamt he was attacked by thieves, and thrust out his feet to show that he was a friar. But lo ! the shoes were still on, and starting up he flung them out of the win dow. Another poor friar, Gilbert de Vyz, so he relates, was badly treated by the devil. It happened at Cornhill. The devil at his final visit exclaimed, " Sir, do you think you have escaped me ? " De Vyz picked up a handful of lice and threw it at the devil, and he vanished, p. 13.
2 John L'Estrange says that, at the time they were falling out of favor, one English will out of every three conveyed property to the Franciscans. Quoted by Howlett in his Preface to Mon. Franc., II. p. xxvii.
3 According to Gasquet, p. 237, there were sixty-six Franciscan houses. Addis and Scannell's Catholic Diet., p. 388, gives a list of sixty-four. The first house of the Franciscan nuns, or Poor Clares, was founded outside of Aldgate, London, 1293, and was known as "the Minories," a name the locality still retains. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries they had three houses in England.