A post script

Summary

Expansion continued after Eccleston’s death. The number of foundations was reaching its peak between 1263–70, when the English province consisted of seven custodies and fifty-six friaries. Within the next two decades three more friaries were added. The friars’ ranks, however, were still growing and probably peaked at the turn of the fourteenth century. One gauge of the health of a community was the number of friars presented for orders. 201 Franciscans were ordained in the Diocese of Lincoln between 27 May 1290 and 19 September 1299, straddling the custodies of Oxford and York. In the same period there were 121 Dominicans, 114 Carmelites and 88 Austin Friars. Recruitment from the secular and regular clergy continued apace. Thomas of Geytinton, master of the Hospital of St Leonard at York, resigned before 25 March 1276 to become a friar, as did William of Spondon, prior of the Augustinian Canons of St Mary’s at Ulverscroft before 27 October 1276. Robert of Cava, rector of Folkingham, was admitted to the order at Oxford before 30 November 12775 and John of Clare, seneschal of Bishop Thomas Cantilupe and rector of Colwall (1278–83), was clothed as a friar before 10 October 1283. Richard Hanworth, abbot of the Premonstratensian monastery of Barlings, was clothed as a friar at York on 8 September 1285. John of Houghton, Benedictine prior of Luffield, resigned before 21 May 1289 to don the friars’ habit and Nicholas of Turribus, rector of Kirkheaton, did the same before 27 January 1293. Some secular priests provided friars with texts for their studies. A note in pencil partially obscured by a later note explains that Master John de Malebraunche, rector of Cherry Hinton and a fellow of Peterhouse in Cambridge (1295/96–1315), gave thirteen quires of Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics(now Peterhouse, MS 82) to Walter Bosevile, a friar of Cambridge, who was in Oxford in the summer of 1300.

Friars were becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Henry Bellington, a friar of Hereford, earned the accolade of being one of the finest preachers in the country (et reputabatur tunc melior predicator de patria illa). Two friars, Richard de Slykeborn and John of Peverel, were instrumental in the foundation of Balliol College, Oxford, and Pembroke College, Cambridge. Friars were named as members of episcopal retinues and witnessed appointments and pivotal documents.