The four orders of friars were all represented in Cambridge, and all settled there in the course of the xiii century. The Carmelites or Whitefriars were the first to arrive, settling in 1200 at
A.D. 1249.
Chesterton near the town, then at Newnham, and finally in Mill Street (1291). For nearly a hundred years the Carmelites took no part in the academic life of Cambridge. They refused to graduate, and showed no desire to display the insignia of a secular doctorate over the peculiarly sacred habit of their Order. It was, indeed, at Cambridge that S. Simon Stock had had, in 1251, his vision of the Blessed Virgin, and had received from her hands the celebrated “scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel”; and it was not till forty years after this that the Carmelite Humphrey Necton, at the urgent instance of the then chancellor of the university, consented to take the degree of Doctor in Theology.[33] In the reign of Richard II. this was the richest religious house in Cambridge, and Edmund Langley Earl of Cambridge and Courtney Archbishop of Canterbury lodged there during the parliament of 1388. The Cambridge Carmelites put forth several eminent men: Bale, the historian, had been a Carmelite at Norwich before proceeding to the university; Walter Diss, a zealous opponent of the Lollards, was confessor to that friend of Cambridge John of Gaunt; Nicholas Cantilupe (1441) wrote the Historiola Cantabrigiae,[34] and friar Nicholas Kenton was chancellor of the university as late as the middle of the xv century.
Franciscans.
The Franciscans, or Greyfriars, came to Cambridge soon after their arrival in England, and during the lifetime of S. Francis. Among the nine friars who landed in 1224 there were three Englishmen, Richard Ingworth (the only friar in priest’s orders), who was accompanied probably by another East Anglian, and by Richard of Devon. This East Anglian element among the first Franciscans is noteworthy, for the first Franciscan readers in divinity at both universities hailed from our Eastern counties. The Cambridge burgesses established the friars at the Jewish synagogue next to the prison.[35] These uncomfortable quarters were exchanged later for a site in the present Sidney Street, where Edward I. built them a friary. Here they took part and share in the life of the university: the novices and younger brethren studied and graduated, the elder taught; while the church of the Franciscans, which was one of the finest buildings in the town, served the purposes of a university church before the rebuilding of Great S. Mary’s.
Dominicans.
The Dominicans, or Blackfriars, did not reach Cambridge till about the last quarter of the xiii century,[36] fifty years after the Franciscans. A strange destiny decreed that a house which had once been under the patronage of the seraphic Francis should nurture Oliver Cromwell and become the first Protestant college; and that the house of “the Lord’s Watchdogs” (Dominicanes) should become the front and centre of Puritanism in the university.[37]
Austinfriars.
The last to arrive were the Austinfriars, who entered Cambridge in 1290, at the same time as the Sempringham canons, just as the first Carmelite took his university degree, and as the Jews were expelled from the town. The priory was behind the present college of Corpus Christi, occupying part of the site of the Botanical Gardens, where the new museums now stand. Here was nurtured Miles Coverdale whose reforming principles were imbibed from its prior Barnes afterwards burned as a heretic.[38] Like the other Cambridge friars, the Austinfriars were dissolved at the Reformation.[39]
Other friars at Cambridge.