Oxford and Its Story

by Cecil Headlam

The Grey Friars were hospitably received by the Black, till Richard le Mercer, a wealthy burgess, let them a house in St Ebbe’s parish, “between the church and water-gate (South-gate), in which many honest bachelors and noble persons entered and lived with them.” Perhaps it was this increase in their numbers which compelled them to leave their first abode somewhere by the east end of Beef Lane, and to hire a house with ground attached from Richard the Miller. This house lay between the wall and Freren Street (Church Street). All sorts and conditions of men flocked to hear them. Being well satisfied, it is said, as to their honest and simple carriage and well-meaning as also with their doctrine, they began to load them with gifts and to make donations to the city for their use. One of their benefactors, Agnes, the wife of Guy, for instance, gave them “most part of that ground which was afterwards called Paradise” (cf. Paradise Square). A small church was built, and bishops and abbots relinquishing their dignities and preferments became Minorites. They scorned not “the roughness of the penance and the robe,” but “did with incomparable humility carry upon their shoulders the coul and the hod, for the speedier finishing this structure.” The site chosen by the Grey Friars for their settlement is not without significance. The work of the friars was physical as well as moral. Rapid increase of the population huddled within the narrow circle of the walls had resulted here as elsewhere in overcrowding, which accentuated the insanitary conditions of life. A gutter running down the centre of unpaved streets was supposed to drain the mess of the town as well as the slops thrown from the windows of the houses. Garbage of all sorts collected and rotted there. Within the houses the rush-strewn floors collected a foul heritage of scraps and droppings. Personal uncleanliness, encouraged by the ascetic prohibitions and directions of a morbid monasticism, which, revolting from the luxury of the Roman baths and much believing in the necessity of mortifying the flesh, regarded washing as a vice and held that a dirty shirt might cover a multitude of sins, was accentuated by errors of diet, and had become the habit of high and low. Little wonder that fever or plague, or the more terrible scourge of leprosy, festered in the wretched hovels of the suburbs of Oxford as of every town. Well, it was to haunts such as these that S. Francis had pointed his disciples. At London they settled in the shambles of Newgate; at Oxford they chose the swampy suburb of S. Ebbe’s. Huts of mud and timber, as mean as the huts around them, rose within the rough fence and ditch that bounded the Friary; for the Order of St Francis fought hard, at first, against the desire for fine buildings and the craving for knowledge which were the natural tendencies of many of the brethren. In neither case did the will of their founder finally carry the day.

“Three things,” said Friar Albert, Minister General, “tended to the exaltation of the Order—bare feet, coarse garments, and the rejecting of money.” At first the Oxford Franciscans were zealous in all those respects. We hear of Adam Marsh refusing bags of gold that were sent him; we hear of two of the brethren returning from a Chapter held at Oxford at Christmas-time, singing as they picked their way along the rugged path, over the frozen mud and rigid snow, whilst the blood lay in the track of their naked feet, without their being conscious of it. Even from the robbers and murderers who infested the woods near Oxford the barefoot friars were safe.

But it was not long before they began to fall away from “the Rule,” and to accumulate both wealth and learning. Under the ministry of Agnellus and his successor the tendency to acquire property was rigorously suppressed, but under Haymo of Faversham (1238) a different spirit began to prevail. Haymo preferred that “the friars should have ample areas and should cultivate them, that they might have the fruits of the earth at home, rather than beg them from others.” And under his successor they gained a large increase of territory. By a deed dated Nov. 22, 1244, Henry III. granted them

“that they might enclose the street that lies under the wall from the Watergate in S. Ebbe’s to the little postern in the wall towards the castle, but so that a wall with battlements, like to the rest of the wall of Oxford, be made about the dwelling, beginning at the west side of Watergate, and reaching southward to the bank of the Thames, and extending along the bank westward as far as the land of the Abbot of Bec in the parish of S. Bodhoc, and then turning again to the northward till it joins with the old wall of the borough, by the east side of the small postern.” In 1245 he made a further grant. “We have given the Friars Minor our island in the Thames, which we bought of Henry, son of Henry Simeon, granting them power to build a bridge over the arm of the Thames (Trill stream) which runs between the island and their houses, and enclose the island with a wall.”

When it was completed, then, the Convent of the Grey Friars could compare favourably with any convent or college in Oxford, except perhaps S. Frideswide’s or Osney. On the east side of it, where the main entrance lay, at the junction of the present Littlegate Street and Charles Street, was the road leading from Watergate to Preacher’s Bridge; on the South side, Trill Mill stream; on the West, the groves and gardens of Paradise; on the North, as far as West-gate, ran the City wall.

“Their buildings were stately and magnificent; their church large and decent; and their refectory, cloister and libraries all proportionable thereunto.”

The traditional site of this church is indicated by Church Place as it is called to-day. The cloisters probably lay to the south of the church, round “Penson’s Gardens.”

As the Franciscans fell away by degrees from the ideal of poverty, so also they succumbed to the desire of knowledge. “I am your breviary, I am your breviary,” S. Francis had cried to a novice who had asked for a Psalter. The true Doctors, he held, were those who with the meekness of wisdom show forth good works for the edification of their neighbours. But the very popularity of their preaching drove his disciples to the study of theology. Their desire not only to obtain converts but also to gain a hold on the thought of the age had led the friars to fasten on the Universities. The same purpose soon led them to establish at Oxford a centre of learning and teaching.

Their first school at Oxford was built by Agnellus of Pisa, and there he persuaded Robert Grossetete, the great reforming bishop of Lincoln, to lecture. Agnellus himself was a true follower of S. Francis and no great scholar. “He never smelt of an Academy or scarce tasted of humane learning.” He was indeed much concerned at the results of Grossetete’s lectures. For one day when he entered this school to see what progress his scholars were making in literature, he found them disputing eagerly and making enquiries whether there was a God. The scandalised Provincial cried out aloud in anger, “Hei mihi! Hei mihi! Fratres! Simplices cœlos penetrant, et literati disputant utrum sit Deus!” The miracles which were afterwards reputed to be performed at the grave of this same excellent friar caused the church of the Grey Friars to be much frequented.

The friars now began to accumulate books and we soon find mention of two libraries belonging to them. The nucleus of them was formed by the books and writings of Grossetete, which he bequeathed to the brethren. And they collected with great industry from abroad Greek, Hebrew and mathematical writings, at that time unknown in England. The fate of this priceless collection of books was enough to make Wood “burst out with grief.” For, when the monasteries had begun to decay, and the monks had fallen into ways of sloth and ignorance and were become “no better than a gang of lazy, fat-headed friars,” they began to sell their books for what they would fetch and allowed the remainder to rot in neglect.