FRIAR OF THE SACK
TRINITARIAN
viii. The Bonshommes
These friars were apparently of English origin. Some have thought that they were the same as the “Friars of the Sack,” but this is by no means clear. Polydore Vergil says that Edmund of Cornwall, the brother of Henry III., on his return from Germany in A.D. 1257, built and endowed a fine monastery at Ashridge. This he gave “to a new order of men, never before known in England, called Boni Homines, the Bonshommes. They followed the rule of St. Augustine, wearing a blue-coloured dress of a form similar to that of the Augustinian hermits.” The only other house possessed by the Bonshommes was at Edingdon.