The Black and the Grey Friars were followed to Oxford some years later by the White or Carmelite Friars. Nicholas de Meules or Molis, sometime governor of the castle, gave them a house on the west side of Stockwell Street,[17] now part of Worcester College. They would seem, like the other Orders, soon to have forgotten their traditional austerity. Lands accrued to them; they erected suitable buildings with planted groves and walks upon a large and pleasant site. But not content with this, they presently obtained from Edward II. the royal Palace of Beaumont. Thus they presented the curious paradox of an Order of monks who derived their pedigree in regular succession from Elijah, and trod in theory in the footsteps of the prophets who had retired into the desert, living at Oxford in the palace of a king.
“When King Edward I. waged war with the Scots (1304) he took with him out of England a Carmelite friar, named Robert Baston, accounted in his time the most famous poet of this nation, purposely that he should write poetically of his victories. Again, when King Edward II. maintained the same war after the death of his father, he entertained the same Baston for the same purpose. At length the said king encountering Robert Bruce, was forced with his bishops to fly. In which flight Baston telling the king that if he would call upon the Mother of God for mercy he should find favour, he did so accordingly, with a promise then made to her that if he should get from the hands of his enemies and find safety, he would erect some house in England to receive the poor Carmelites.... Soon after, Baston and some others were not wanting to persuade him to give to the Carmelites his palace at Oxford” (1317),
where Richard Cœur de Lion had been born. Beaumont Palace, whilst it remained in the hands of the Carmelites, was used not merely as a convent for the habitation of twenty-four monks, but also as a place of education for members of this Order throughout England; as well as for seculars who lived there as “commoners.” Cardinal Pole is said to have been educated in this seminary.
The library and the church of the White Friars were unusually fine.
The Austin Friars (or Friars eremite of S. Augustine) came also to Oxford and gradually acquired property and settled “without Smith Gate, having Holywell Street on the south side of it and the chief part of the ground on which Wadham College now stands on the north.”
The Austin Friars were famous for their disputations in grammar, and soon drew to themselves much of the grammatical training of the place. They engaged also in violent philosophical controversies with the other Orders, so that at last they were even threatened with excommunication if they did not desist from their quarrelling. It was in their convent that the weekly general disputations of Bachelors, known for centuries after as “Austins,” were held.
