Chapter III - The New House

Summary

For about forty years the friars had been but poorly accommodated in the old house of Benjamin the Jew; but about 1265 plans were set on foot for a new building, and by 1267 operations seem to have been well advanced. In making this move to more commodious surroundings the Cambridge friars were doing what most of their colleagues in other houses were doing. By 1260 the policy of the order as a whole was towards larger and better friaries, though simplicity was still urged. But the days of mud-and-daub huts had gone. In future the friars were to be housed much like the older religious orders in monastic buildings designed very much on the same plan as the existing abbeys and priories, though generally on a smaller scale.

By 1270 there was much new building going on among the English Franciscans. Three explanations of this have been suggested. One is the generosity of devout citizens among whom the friars were popular and who wanted to give them decent buildings. Secondly, open-air preaching being more or less impracticable in the climate of England, the friars needed spacious churches in which to bring together their congregations, the existing parish churches being often too small. Thirdly, the custom of people desiring to be buried in the friars' churches was growing. Whatever the reasons, practically all the earlier foundations were engaged in some form of expansion or rebuilding in the latter part of the thirteenth century.