and we may reasonably conclude that they filled the space from the City Wall on the north to Trill Mill Stream on the south, and from Littlegate Street on the east to a line drawn from the ‘fee of the Abbat of Bec in the parish of St. Bodhoc’s’ to the West Gate on the west[101].
Shortly after this, namely, on the 22nd of April, 1245[102], Henry III gave the Friars, to enlarge their new area,
‘our island in the Thames, which we have bought from Henry son of Henry Simeon,’
with permission to make a bridge over the arm of the river dividing it from their houses, and to enclose it with a wall, or in any other way which would insure ‘the security of their houses and the tranquillity of their religion,’ On the same day[103] the King ordered the Barons of the Exchequer to deduct from the fine of sixty marks,
‘imposed on Henry son of Henry Simeonis because he was implicated in[104] the murder of a scholar of Oxford, twenty-five marcs, for twenty-five marcs which we owed to Henry Simeonis his father for an island in the Thames at Oxford which we have bought from him, and which said marcs he begged should be reckoned to his son in the aforesaid fine.’
The next grant is dated the 27th of November, 1246[105]. The King announces that he has handed over to the friars, for the enlargement of their premises, the whole messuage, with its appurtenances, which Laurence Wych (or Wyth), Mayor of Oxford, committed to him for that purpose, desiring them to enclose the same as they shall see fit:
‘and the Sheriff of Oxfordshire was commanded to receive the messuage in place of the King for the use of the said friars.’
It is quite uncertain where this land lay, and whether Wych granted it in his public or private capacity.
For the next fifty years, excepting the undated grants of Richard Mepham and Agnes widow of Guydo, which probably belong to this period, there is no record of a gift of land to the Minorites. On the east they had already reached the permanent limit of their property[106], and the Friars of the Penitence of Jesus Christ settled about the year 1260 on the ground lying to the west. This formed the parish of St. Budoc. In 1262[107] the King allowed these friars to build an oratory here; in 1265[108] he granted them, as patron, the church of St. Budoc (which adjoined their premises, and which, owing to the removal or death of the parishioners, was too impoverished to support one chaplain), ‘to make thence a chapel for themselves.’ With the church they acquired[109]
‘the cemetery and the houses standing in the same and belonging to the said church,’