A.D. 1092
It was a foundation for six secular canons serving her church of S. Giles by the Castle, and the little community was transformed, twenty years later, by
A.D. 1112.
another Norman, Pain Peverel standard-bearer to the Duke of Normandy, into the Canons Regular of Barnwell under the rule of S. Augustine.[28] The six canons became thirty, and Barnwell Priory, on the other side of the river, became a house of considerable importance, and gave hospitality to Richard II. during the Cambridge parliament of 1388. It continued to exist till the Suppression. About 1135 a second canons’ house was established on the present site of S. John’s College. This was a hospital, or travellers’ hospice, designed by a Cambridge burgess, Henry Frost, who gave the plot of land and endowed “a master and poor brethren of the rule of S. Austin” to dispense the charity of the house.[29] If the Barnwell canons of S. Giles were among the earliest friends of the scholars, the canons of the hospice of S. John were to play the most important part in their history.[30] S. John’s and the other xii century foundation of S. Rhadegund were dissolved under similar circumstances within thirteen years of one another, the latter in 1497 the former in 1510.[31]
The Gilbertine canons of Sempringham.
There was a third community of Canons Regular at Cambridge. The Lincolnshire community founded by S. Gilbert of Sempringham in the xii century settled near Peterhouse in 1291. Their hostel “S. Edmund’s” took its name from the old chapel dedicated to the martyr-king enshrined at Bury-St.-Edmund’s, and a licence of Edward III.’s permitting the canons to acquire houses and lands in the town styles them “the Prior and Canons of the chapel of S. Edmund.” We hear of these possessions early in the xiv century when (in 1417) the Prior of S. Edmund’s leases land; and again in 1474 when the community sell land to William Bassett. Of the 26 houses of this Order—the only Order of English origin—there were two in the isle of Ely,[32] while a fourth was established near Hitchin. The Barnwell Memoranda announcing their arrival in Cambridge
A.D. 1291.
say: “The canons of Sempringham first came to dwell at the chapel of S. Edmund, and earnestly set about hearing lectures and attending disputations.”
Friars. Carmelites.