THE GREY FRIARS IN OXFORD.
HISTORY OF THE CONVENT, A. D. 1224-1538.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS.
Arrival of the Franciscans at Oxford.—Their early Poverty, and Cheerfulness.—Oxford Friars as Peacemakers, and Crusaders.—Relations to the University, and to the first Colleges.—Their strict observance of the Rule.
The Franciscans first arrived in England in 1224[3]. On Tuesday, the 10th of September in that year (to follow the account of Friar Thomas Eccleston, the earliest historian of the Order in this country), a company of nine friars, four of them clerks and five laymen, landed at Dover, under the leadership of Agnellus of Pisa, the first Provincial Minister. After staying two days at Canterbury, four of them proceeded to London; and at the end of the month, two of these, Friar Richard of Ingeworth and Friar Richard of Devon, set out for Oxford. It is perhaps to this place that the well-known story told by Bartholomew of Pisa properly belongs[4]. As they neared Oxford they were stopped by the floods, and finding themselves at nightfall ‘in a vast wood which lies between Bath and Oxford,’ they sought refuge ‘for the love of God’ at a grange belonging to the monks of Abingdon, ‘lest they should perish from hunger or the wild beasts in the forest.’ The prior, judging them to be jesters[5], had them turned out; but a young monk, when the rest had gone to bed, put them into a hayloft and brought them bread and beer. That night he had a dream. The prior and his brethren were summoned before the judgment-seat of Christ; and
‘there came a certain poor man, humble and despised, in the habit of those poor friars, and he cried with a loud voice: “O most impartial Judge, the blood of my brethren, which hath been shed this night, crieth unto Thee. The guardians of this place have refused them meat and lodging, although they have left all for Thy sake, and were now coming here to seek those souls which Thou hast redeemed with Thy blood; they would not, in fact, have refused as much to jesters and mummers.”... Then the Judge commanded them to be hanged on the elm that stood in that cloister.’
In the morning the young monk found his companions dead, and became an early convert to the order of St. Francis.