In 1262 the Penitentiarian Friars or Brothers of the Sack, so called because they wore sackcloth, obtained from Henry III. a grant of land which formed the parish of S. Budoc and lay to the west of the property of the Franciscans. The Order was soon afterwards suppressed and the Franciscans acquired their house and lands.
The brethren of the Holy Trinity also made a settlement in Oxford (1291). Their house, afterwards known as Trinity Hall, was situated outside the East Gate (opposite Magdalen Hall). They also acquired the old Trinity Chapel adjoining and the surrounding land.
The Trinitarians had, besides, a chapel within the East Gate, which was purchased by Wykeham to make room for New College.
The Crossed or Cruched Friars, after one or two moves, settled themselves in the parish of S. Peter’s in the East.
The older religious Orders were presently stimulated by the example and the success of the friars to make some provision for the education of their monks. But they never aimed at producing great scholars or learned theologians. Historians of their Order and canonists who could transact their legal business were the products which the monastic houses desired.
A Chapter-General held at Abingdon in 1279 imposed a tax on the revenues of all the Benedictine monasteries in the province of Canterbury with a view to establishing a house at Oxford where students of their Order might live and study together. John Giffard, Lord of Brimsfield, helped them to achieve their object.
Gloucester Hall, adjoining the Palace of Beaumont, had been the private house of Gilbert Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who built it in the year 1260. It passed to Sir John Giffard, who instituted it a “nursery and mansion-place solely for the Benedictines of S. Peter’s Abbey at Gloucester.” The buildings were afterwards enlarged to provide room for student-monks from other Benedictine abbeys. Of the lodgings thus erected by the various abbeys for their novices, indications may still be traced in the old monastic buildings which form the picturesque south side of the large quadrangle of Worcester College. For over the doorways of these hostels the half-defaced arms of different monasteries, the griffin of Malmesbury or the Cross of Norwich, still denote their original purpose.