Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XIII · HENRY III. 1216-1272.

7. The Coming of the Friars. 1220-1224.—In 1220 the first Dominicans arrived in England. Four years later, in 1224, the first Franciscans followed them. Of the work of the early Dominicans in England little is known. They preached and taught, appealing to those whose intelligence was keen enough to appreciate the value of argument. The Franciscans had a different work before them. The misery of the dwellers on the outskirts of English towns was appalling. The townsmen had made provision for keeping good order amongst all who shared in the liberties,[13] or, as we should say, in the privileges of the town; but they made no provision for good order amongst the crowds who flocked to the town to pick up a scanty living as best they might. These poor wretches had to dwell in miserable hovels outside the walls by the side of fetid ditches into which the filth of the town was poured. Disease and starvation thinned their numbers. No man cared for their bodies or their souls. The priests who served in the churches within the town passed them by, nor had they any place in the charities with which the brethren of the gilds assuaged the misfortunes of their own members. It was amongst these that the Franciscans lived and laboured, sharing in their misery and their diseases, counting their lives well spent if they could bring comfort to a single human soul.