‘he took with him,’ in the words of the so-called Lanercost Chronicle[1015], ‘the reader and master of the Friars Minors at Oxford, Friar William de Hedley, a man beloved of God and in favour with men.’
The chronicler puts these events in the year 1266. Edward took the cross in 1268 and sailed in 1270. Friar William died on the outward voyage in the sea of Greece:
‘his corpse,’ continues the same authority ‘being given to the waves as the custom is, followed the course of the ships for three days, until, at Edward’s command, it was taken again into the vessel and afterwards committed to the earth.’
10. Thomas de Bungay (Suffolk) has been traditionally associated with Roger Bacon and regarded as a wizard by later generations. Very little is known of him. He perhaps entered the Order at Norwich. He lectured as D.D. in the Franciscan convent at Oxford about 1270; he seems like Roger to have attached a great importance to mathematics and may have held his views on the value of natural science and of induction. He lectured afterwards at Cambridge, being the fifteenth in the list of Franciscan masters there. He was the eighth English Provincial Minister, and was succeeded by Peckham, probably in 1275. He was buried at Northampton[1016].
According to the Catalogue of Illustrious Franciscans he wrote a Commentary on the Sentences[1017]. None of his works are printed; only one seems to be extant in MS.
De celo et mundo: 3 books. Inc. ‘Summa cognicionis, &c. Aristoteles probat his tres questiones in primo capitulo. Prima est quod omne corpus est completum quo ad divisiones.’ Expl. ‘Hic terminantur questiones super 3 c. et m. a Magistro T. de bungeya.’
MS. Cambridge:—Caius Coll. 509, § 3 (sec. xiv. ineuntis).
Cf. MS. Bibl. Nat. Paris 16144 (sec. xiii), ‘Thomas super librum de celo et mundo’ (Aquinas?).
11. John Peckham was born in Sussex and received his earliest education in the Priory of Lewes[1018]. He took the Franciscan vows about 1250[1019]; he was then tutor to the nephew of Master H. of Anjou, perhaps in the University of Paris, but was probably for the time being residing at Oxford[1020]. On entering the Order he resigned the tutorship. Adam Marsh calls him ‘Dominus Johannes de Pescham Scholaris;’ he may therefore either have had no degree at this time, or that of bachelor. He appears to have spent some time at Oxford, as in later years he expresses his gratitude for the training he received in the Franciscan convent of that University[1021]. He then returned to France, studied under Bonaventura, and took the Doctor’s degree at Paris, where he ruled in theology[1022]. Among his pupils was St. Thomas of Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford[1023]. At Paris too he came in contact with Thomas Aquinas and probably attended his lectures. He was present when the latter submitted his doctrine about the ‘Unity of form’ to the judgment of the masters in theology;