Their dress was a white frock over a dark blue tunic, and they were hence known as White Friars. In the 16th century they had about forty houses in this country. (Pl. [57], Fig. 2.)
The Augustines, or Austin Friars, were founded in the middle of the 13th century, consisting originally of hermits and solitaries, who lived under no rule at all. They were incorporated by Pope Innocent IV. into a new Order with the above name.
They wore a black gown with board sleeves, girdled with a leather belt, and a black cloth hood. They had thirty-two houses in England.
Besides these four principal Orders of mendicant Friars, there were a number of lesser Orders, the chief being the Crutched Friars (so called because they wore a red cross on the breast and back of their habit); Friars of the Sack, who wore a plain, bag-like garment of coarse cloth or sacking; and Friars of the Holy Trinity, or Trinitarians, who made part of their work the ransoming of Christians captured by the infidels.
All the minor mendicant Orders (excepting the four great Orders) were suppressed 1370 A.D.
THE CANONS.
A great monastic family was known under the name of Augustinians, from St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who, it is said, established monastic communities in Africa, and gave them a “rule,” or method of life.
In the middle of the ninth century all the clergy—priests, canons, clerks, etc.—who had not entered the monastic ranks were incorporated into one great Order to observe the rule of St. Augustine. The Canons Regular, as they were called, were the clergy of Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, living in a community on the monastic model. They wore during divine service a surplice, and a fur tippet or almuce over a long black cassock, and a four-square cap called a baret or biretta.
They had much more liberty than the monks. A writer in the thirteenth century says: “Among them one is well shod, well clothed, and well fed. They go out when they like, mix with the world, and talk at table.”