The characters and antecedents of the first followers of St Francis to arrive in England, and the events of their first years of residence, give a peculiar interest to the early history of the English province of the Friars Minor, and we are fortunate in possessing, in the chronicle of Brother Thomas, a record which, though far from being as full as could be desired, is nevertheless more complete than any which remain from the other northern countries, and is, indeed, a valuable source of information concerning the early history of the order in general and of several of its most distinguished members. It has often been remarked that the early Minors, apostles of poverty and simplicity of life as they were, have yet left more intimate record of their doings than any other contemporary religious body. Besides the literature directly connected with St Francis and his companions, at least three friars of the second generation have given vivid accounts of the order and its luminaries as they saw them. Perhaps the very simplicity they were taught to prize, and a sense that they were a new leaven in the Church, together with a real appreciation of the saintly and remarkable personalities of their brethren, combined to inspire these compositions. In any case, the three Franciscan chroniclers Jordan of Giano, Salimbene of Parma and Thomas of Eccleston have, for all their differences of character, a striking family resemblance in their love of personal detail and anecdote, and in the direct, individual and unaffected style of their writing.