‘in the Conventual Church of the Friars Minors of Oxford before the image of the blessed Mary the Virgin of Pity[167].’
And in 1526 Richard Leke, ‘late bruer of Oxford,’ desired
‘to be buried within the Graye ffreres in Oxford before the awter where the first masse is daily vsed to be saide[168].’
But more honoured than any of these was the ‘fair stone sepulchre[169]’ in which the body of Agnellus, the only Provincial Minister known to have been buried at Oxford, found its final resting place. For the shrine of Agnellus possessed all the fascination of miraculous association and miraculous power. When the friars, many years after his death, went in the night to remove the body from the original chapel before its demolition,
‘they found the little leaden box in which it lay, together with the grave, full of the purest oil, but the body itself with the vestments uncorrupted and smelling most sweetly[170].’
Here, too, we are told, was the tomb of one greater than Agnellus; but if the statement of John Rouse, that Roger Bacon was buried among the Franciscans at Oxford, is anything more than a tradition, it was perhaps not in the church, but in the common burial place of the brethren of the convent, that the Warwick antiquary found his grave[171].
The cloisters, of which we find no mention till the dissolution, were no doubt situated on the south of the church, round ‘Penson’s Gardens.’ Whether the friars were buried in the cloisters, the garth, the chapter-house, or ‘the cemetery of the Friars Minors,’ in which John Dongan was interred in 1464[172] or sometimes in one place, sometimes in another, is unknown. On the east of the cloisters would be the chapter-house[173]; over it, and joining the church, a dormitory[174]. On the south of the cloisters, opposite the church, stood the refectory. It is possible, but not probable, that the long narrow building stretching down towards Trill Mill Stream, which is marked in old maps of Oxford[175], was the refectory: Bridge Street marks the site. The library may have been on the west side of the cloisters, but no hint remains as to the building or its position, while the contents may be more appropriately treated elsewhere. The warden’s house is equally unknown; he may perhaps merely have had rooms set apart in some one of the larger buildings[176], as was probably the case with the vice-warden[177]. From the Lanercost Chronicle we learn that in the thirteenth century the ‘master of the schools’ had a chamber of his own[178]; and Wiclif tells us that in his time
‘Capped Friars, that beene called Maisters of Diuinitie, haue there chamber and service as Lords or Kings[179].’
Ample accommodation for guests was a marked feature in most religious houses, and there is no reason to suppose that the Oxford Franciscan Friary formed an exception to a custom which, while it excited some animosity against the apostles of poverty, tended to ensure the favour and secure the alms of the rich[180].
The convent was supplied with good water by a conduit of leaden pipes, which, according to Wadding, was made in the thirteenth century by a magnate at his own expense, and extended many miles under the watersheds of the Isis and Cherwell[181]. In 1246-7 we hear that the Friars Preachers and Minors had appropriated many places on the Thames, and had made there ‘ditches and walls and other things[182].’ Lastly, there were three gates: one in Freren Street[183], perhaps an entrance to the church through ‘Church Place;’ another in St. Ebbe’s Street, opposite Beef Lane[184], where St Ebbe’s Churchyard now extends; and a third—their principal entrance, which existed in Wood’s time—in Littlegate Street, apparently where the latter is now joined by Charles Street[185].