[586] Mon. Franc. I, 552; Appendix C.
[587] The deed of W. Wileford (Appx. A. 1) is not a Franciscan record, any more than the Public Records are. I have not been able to find the seal of the Oxford Minorites. It was attached to the original letter addressed by the four Mendicant Convents to John of Gaunt, a copy of which is printed in Fascic. Zizan. pp. 292-5. This is the only mention of the seal which I can recall. There are a few special references to Oxford in the decrees of the General Chapters; see Index, under Franciscan Order.
[588] See Testament of St. Francis: ‘Oure dyvyne servyce the clerkis saide as other clerkis.’ Mon. Franc. I, 564. An article in the Dominican statutes of 1228 (Dist. 1, n. 4) provides that ‘hours’ shall be said rapidly, ‘ne fratres devotionem amittant et eorum studium minime impediatur.’ Archiv für Litt. u. Kirch. Gesch., Vol. I, p. 189.
[589] Mon. Franc. I, 10-11; Bullarium Romanum, I, 250.
[590] Wiclif, Two Short Treatises, &c., p. 31: ‘and who can best rob the poore people by false begging and other deceipts shal have this Judas office.’
[591] Bullarium, ut supra. Constitutions of Martin V, cap. vi: ‘Item quod omnes fratres vadant pro eleemosyna confidenter juxta discretionem Praelati praecipientis, cujus arbitrio committimus discernendum, qui congrue mittendi sunt pro eleemosyna, vel qui non.’
[592] Wadding, IX, 438; complaint of the Minorites of Cambridge in 1395 that a house of the same Order at Ware was trespassing on their limites, and bull forbidding the same. Cf. Polit. Songs and Poems, &c., Vol. II, pp. 21, 78.
[593] In early days they carried the offerings themselves in their ‘caparones’ or under their arms. Mon. Franc. I, 10-11.
[594] Poet. Works, I, 382. This poem, though banished, owing to its coarseness in some parts, from polite society, contains a more lifelike and graphic description of the English mediaeval friar than is to be found elsewhere in literature.
[595] Ibid. 367.