Expansion continued after Eccleston’s death. The number of foundations was reaching its peak between 1263–70, when the English province consisted of seven custodies and fifty-six friaries. Within the next two decades three more friaries were added. The friars’ ranks, however, were still growing and probably peaked at the turn of the fourteenth century. One gauge of the health of a community was the number of friars presented for orders. 201 Franciscans were ordained in the Diocese of Lincoln between 27 May 1290 and 19 September 1299, straddling the custodies of Oxford and York. In the same period there were 121 Dominicans, 114 Carmelites and 88 Austin Friars. Recruitment from the secular and regular clergy continued apace. Thomas of Geytinton, master of the Hospital of St Leonard at York, resigned before 25 March 1276 to become a friar, as did William of Spondon, prior of the Augustinian Canons of St Mary’s at Ulverscroft before 27 October 1276. Robert of Cava, rector of Folkingham, was admitted to the order at Oxford before 30 November 12775 and John of Clare, seneschal of Bishop Thomas Cantilupe and rector of Colwall (1278–83), was clothed as a friar before 10 October 1283. Richard Hanworth, abbot of the Premonstratensian monastery of Barlings, was clothed as a friar at York on 8 September 1285. John of Houghton, Benedictine prior of Luffield, resigned before 21 May 1289 to don the friars’ habit and Nicholas of Turribus, rector of Kirkheaton, did the same before 27 January 1293. Some secular priests provided friars with texts for their studies. A note in pencil partially obscured by a later note explains that Master John de Malebraunche, rector of Cherry Hinton and a fellow of Peterhouse in Cambridge (1295/96–1315), gave thirteen quires of Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics(now Peterhouse, MS 82) to Walter Bosevile, a friar of Cambridge, who was in Oxford in the summer of 1300.

Friars were becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Henry Bellington, a friar of Hereford, earned the accolade of being one of the finest preachers in the country (et reputabatur tunc melior predicator de patria illa). Two friars, Richard de Slykeborn and John of Peverel, were instrumental in the foundation of Balliol College, Oxford, and Pembroke College, Cambridge. Friars were named as members of episcopal retinues and witnessed appointments and pivotal documents.

Between 1235 and 1255 the English province was in transition. The initial premises occupied by the friars – ordinary dwellings – were no longer adequate to house the expanding number of friars. In one sense, they were the victims of their own success because they had drawn innumerable men and youths to the order. This daily increase in their number (crescente indies numero fratrum) generated questions of how best to accommodate them and organise their domestic lives. The criteria for the construction of friaries and churches moved imperceptibly to the top of the order’s agenda at provincial chapters. The writings of St Francis, especially his Testament, enshrined the principles to guide friars in executing their programmes of building friaries and churches. The multiple questions facing the order were also addressed in the hagiographical literature. The Compilatio Assisiensis, for example, sounded the warning against those who sought to justify building on a larger scale and moving from domestic chapels to small churches. Sometimes three successive churches were built on the same site. In other cases the friars relocated from the suburbs to the heart of the city, requiring the demolition of some domiciles and creating upheaval in their wake, a policy which jarred with the friars’ self-projected image. The polemical exchanges of the 1250s and 1270s frequently pointed to the cathedralesque churches erected by the friars. He argued that the friars’ churches were finer than cathedrals and their ornaments were more splendid than those of any prelate, apart from the pope; their bell-towers were very costly; they had double cloisters of great splendour in which armed knights could do battle with lances erect. St Paul’s cross was within earshot of the newly completed Greyfriars, with its spacious church and its second cloister. From the end of the 1220s the friars began to construct chapels. One prominent benefactor was Henry III who donated timber from the royal forests. Albert of Pisa was a reforming minister provincial and he took steps to reaffirm the principle of building in a modest manner. Before the end of this period external critics, professed themselves to be scandalised by the opulence of the order’s churches and conventual complexes.

Religious reformers and building

The question of how religious orders should build was a perennially challenging one.

The friars’ merits, the rapid expansion of the order in England and the torrent of vocations were trumpeted by Eccleston and others. Their good example begat vocations and this, in turn, led to the division of the English province into custodies. Initially there were four custodies, apart from London. The number was later augmented to seven with custodies flourishing at Cambridge, Bristol, London, Newcastle, Oxford, Worcester and York. The custody of Salisbury was relatively short-lived and was suppressed around the middle of the thirteenth century, being absorbed into the custody of London, although it does feature in the Registrum Anglie. Eccleston testifies that:

The office of the custos, an office embedded in the evolution of the order, was mentioned in the Regula bullata, which was confirmed by Honorius III on 29 November 1223.

The friars’ vocation differed significantly from that of the monk, who entered a monastery and remained there for life, apart from stints at a dependent priory, at the appointment of the abbot. In contrast, Salimbene de Adam introduced himself as a friar, a priest and a preacher who had lived in different provinces of the order and had seen numerous things in many provinces. For instance, he spent eight years in the Tuscan province: two years in Lucca, two in Siena and four years at Pisa. He informs readers of the places where he had lived and for how long. The office of custos is found in the Regula bullata on 29 November 1223.

Provinces and custodies

Some countries, such as Italy, France and Germany, had more than one province. By 1230 five of the thirty-two provinces were French (Aquitaine, Burgundy, France, Provence and Touraine). England and Ireland, in contrast, had only a single province, although there was some movement of friars across the Irish Sea. The Scottish province survived for no more than five or six years before it was suppressed and reunited with England during the general chapter of Rome in 1239.

Recruits to the order were its life-blood, just as converts had revitalised the apostolic community (Acts 6:1 and 6:7). Chroniclers were inclined to view admissions to the order as a mark of providence and divine approbation. Novices were accustomed to adopt a new identity and name. The friars’ vigorous ministry attracted a torrent of vocations to their ranks, as the first three collationes demonstrate. The second chapter of St Francis’s Regula non bullata speaks of those divinely inspired to seek admission to the order. Informed by this profound conviction, Eccleston emphasises the spiritual dimension which united men of different backgrounds in the fraternity:

Salimbene de Adam adopted a more scathing tone in sketching some of the more eccentric friars whom he encountered in various friaries of the Tuscan province, beginning with his unnamed socius in Pisa c.1240. Chroniclers delighted in recounting the prodigious success of reform movements in the monastic world. Orderic Vitalis reported that within approximately thirty-seven years of its foundation a flood of recruits had hastened to the Cistercian monastery at Cîteaux, which had founded sixty-five daughter houses. Eccleston likewise rejoices that so many impressive young men and admirable adults were clothed as friars and went on to play a pivotal role in the life of the fledgling province. His narrative focuses especially on the first indigenous vocation, Solomon, who is depicted as virtually flawless, a friar adorned with all the virtues.

Solomon and the first vocations in London

Given the speed with which the order spread throughout England and reached Wales, where three foundations were made (at Llanfaes, Carmarthen and Cardiff), it is probable that Eccleston regarded the recruitment at London as a symbol of what was taking place elsewhere. The first five vocations were introduced and each one was associated with the capital city. The first was Solomon, who embodied the fervent spirit of the order in its fidelity to the ideals of St Francis. He was a commendable friar, the first to be admitted by Agnellus of Pisa. Eccleston was at pains to show that the proto-vocation was closely attuned to the principles enunciated by the founder.

Thomas of Eccleston is celebrated as the first friar to record the deeds of the Franciscans, or Friars Minor, in England, from their arrival in 1224 until the close of his narrative in 1257/58. He wrote about the friars whose life he shared, and he recounted the order’s settlement in the cities and major boroughs. He assiduously collected materials for his chronicle, and he dipped into his resources to find anecdotes to chart the friars’ deeds and to illustrate their virtues, which greatly enriched the Church.

Thomas of Eccleston and Franciscan history

Thomas acquired the toponym de Eckleston from John Bale, who does not cite any evidence. Somewhat earlier John Leland summarised Thomas’s life and his treatise. He believed that Eccleston had studied at Oxford and that he

Leland’s account carries added weight due to the fact that on the eve of the Dissolution of the friaries in 1538/39 he had consulted the anonymous Catalogus quoque illustrium Franciscanorum in the Oxford Greyfriars.

Eccleston’s chronicle is the chief source of information regarding the friars’ arrival in England and their early expansion. Much of it consists of notes and anecdotes. His stature within the community of chroniclers has long been recognised. He was fêted as the chronicler of the Franciscans’ arrival and their impact on English soil.

No sooner had the friars reached Canterbury than they split into two groups, with four proceeding to London and thereby advertising their intentions of opting for a presence in the large commercial centres. Canterbury was the ecclesiastical capital of England, the primatial see, with its galaxy of shrines, its Benedictine monasteries of Christ Church and St Augustine and various priories of canons and nuns. The city was close to the coastline and had easy communications with Northern France. London was the capital city, the seat of the royal administration and a bustling centre of commercial activity, the home of a busy port on the River Thames which exported wool to the continent. The Diocese of London was created in 604 and its cathedral church of St Paul was accompanied by as many as ninety-nine parish churches inside the city walls in the thirteenth century. There were several religious houses, beginning with Westminster Abbey, the home of a major Benedictine community which housed the shrine of St Edward the Confessor. Henry III was at work in refurbishing the saint’s tomb. Royal residences were located in the city. One friar dubbed London as the most famous and wealthy city under the sun.

London, Oxford and Northampton

Twelve Dominican friars reached London in 1221, where they constructed their first friary at Holborn from c.1223 to 1286. Eccleston affirms that the followers of St Dominic had acted benigne in receiving the Franciscans and entertaining them for fifteen days in their priory, eating and drinking with them. The followers of St Francis were treated familiarissime. Medieval chroniclers frequently link the two orders of friars with their growing chain of foundations in the cities and major boroughs of England. The Austin Friars and the Carmelites arrived and expanded in the second half of the century. The Dominicans and Franciscans lived in many of the same cities and boroughs, such as Beverley, Boston, Canterbury, Carlisle, Chester, Hereford and Winchelsea. For instance, the first two mendicant orders were frequently yoked together and selected for special commissions on behalf of the local bishop or the pope. Gregory IX dispatched two Dominicans and two Franciscans to hold theological dialogue with the leaders of the Greek Church in 1232. Later in that decade both orders were recruited to preach the Crusade. Roger Bacon described them as the ordines studentes.

The Fourth Lateran Council in November 1215 promulgated a full pastoral programme for the rejuvenation of the Catholic Church. Innocent III had already imparted his blessing upon the nascent mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, before the ecumenical council. Although both orders were then hatchlings and friars were relatively few, both prospered in the wake of the ecumenical council and began to attract a large number of recruits, who propagated papal teaching throughout the western Church; Dominicans and Franciscans were enthusiastic champions of the papal reform and they assisted prelates in a variety of ways through teaching, preaching and hearing confessions. The canons of this council created a template for ecclesiastical reform, which can be detected in the pastoral dedication of friars such as Haymo of Faversham, who embodied the spirit of the Council. Franciscan literature provides innumerable examples of the friars responding to these canons and fervently promoting its teaching in the subsequent diocesan synods. The Revd Dr Maurice W. Sheehan, OFM, Cap, regarded the friars as a providential response to the problems besetting the Church, especially in the urban centres. He added:

The canons of this council framed the pastoral outlook of St Francis, as his writings show. His emphasis on eucharistic piety was communicated to the friars and it became the cornerstone of their teaching and preaching.

The friars’ good example, holiness of life and unswerving commitment to the dissemination of the Gospel were the keys to the respect and admiration in which they were held. They were seen to be injecting a new energy and vitality into the Church as they applied the lessons of the Gospel to urban life. In return, the laity responded by meeting the friars’ material needs by providing food and accommodation (loca sibi competentia). As indicated earlier, the first groups of friars were small enough to be accommodated in a house (domus). While as many as ten friars might be housed in adjacent properties, the expansion of the order brought change with it. The augmented communities of friars required more space and a greater range of amenities traditionally associated with the monastic world – a sacristy, a chapter house, a dormitory, a library, an infirmary, medical facilities, a muniments’ room, a refectory and one or more cloisters. The period between 1224 and 1274 saw a remarkable numerical expansion in the English province and this brought changes to the friars’ lives. The community was in the process of being transformed from a largely lay fraternity into a thriving institution whose pastoral ministry prospered. It spread, moreover, not only throughout the western Church, but it moved into missionary territories. The friars’ mission was apostolic and global; friars were seemingly ubiquitous with their poor tunics and bare feet. These changes could not be overlooked by Eccleston, who was instinctively drawn to the order’s heyday of the later 1220s and early 1230s.

Friars and their benefactors

In some towns such as Boston and Scarborough there was a single parish church, while cathedral cities such as London, Lincoln and York had multiple parish churches. Various allusions to the presence of the friars pinpointed the parishes in which they resided. The friars at Oxford lived in the parish of St Ebbe. The friars of London were initially in the parish of St Peter upon Cornhill, but a year later they moved to the parish of St Nicholas at Newgate. The parish of St Peter at Chichester was iuxta Fratres Minores. The parish of Holy Trinity below the hill at Lincoln was in Cleumarket iuxta Fratres Minores or ad fratres. The adjacent parish churches were Sts Edmund and Swithin.

Eccleston’s eleventh and twelfth collationes dovetail the friars’ ministry of preaching with the sacrament of penance and the schools. This combination was illustrated by the ministry of St Anthony of Padua, who divided his time in Padua between preaching, teaching and hearing confessions (predicando, docendo et confessiones audiendo). His preaching bore fruit in his exhortation that his hearers listen to the Scriptures, confess their sins and embark upon a penitential lifestyle. Wherever he preached, he was followed by teams of confessors. Friars were knowledgeable and sensitive confessors and their penitents included all ranks of medieval society.

The schools and instruction on penance

The friars’ schools played an integral role in preparing friars for the pastoral ministry. In the case of the office of preaching this is well recognised and that is why the friars’ schools proliferated and their theological syllabus was so admired. The sacrament of penance claimed a significant place in the faculty of theology. Just as the Eucharist generated a large number of quaestiones, so, too, did the sacrament of penance. While six distinctions of Peter Lombard’s Sententiae explored the sacrament of the Eucharist, de poenitentia occupied nine.

The canonists of the twelfth century played a key role in important clarifications and developments regarding this sacrament of penance. The nature of condign satisfaction and the identity of the minister of the sacrament were among the questions to explored, developed and applied to the new commercial centres. The study of the sacrament of penance claimed a major position in the schools, especially because these schools were spreading throughout western Europe and their work presupposed a sound working knowledge of the history and theology of the sacrament. This was allied to contemporary studies of usury, simony, avarice and the nature of restitution among other questions. A key part of the curriculum of the schools at every level was to train friars for the ministry of hearing confessions. Those preparing for ordination to the priesthood were obliged to immerse themselves in sacramental theology and sound pastoral practice.

Debates about canon law were prominent in the schools and friars understood the theology of the sacrament of reconciliation and the recent papal pronouncements about the exercise of this sacrament. They highlighted questions of sacramental jurisdiction and looked to successive popes for their sacramental jurisdiction.

This collatio is devoid of exempla materials, although there is scope for the preacher, especially on the topical theme of the fitting exercise of authority within the order. Instead, Eccleston recounts events of the 1230s, a critical decade in the constitutional evolution of the order. The founder was dead and the order had grown spectacularly, perhaps too speedily. Chapter ten of the Rule required the ministers provincial to visitate the friars (fratres, qui sunt ministri […] visitant), but does not specify how often. The same was true, by extension, of the minister provincial. There are no hagiographical references to St Francis conducting visita-tions of provinces or individual friaries and there was no expectation that the first ministers general should systematically visitate the provinces. By the end of the 1220s the minister general was delegating this task. For instance, John, an English friar, was appointed as the first visitator (primus visitator) of the German province in 1229, at the instigation of John Parenti, minister general, who may have still been in office when William of Coleville senior was sent to England as a visitator a few years later. New developments were in the air at the beginning of the 1230s and these coincided with the election of Elias of Cortona, creating expectations which the new minister general was temperamentally unlikely to meet. General visitations were to become part of the framework of the order. The general chapter of 1230 was followed by Gregory IX’s Quo elongati on 28 September of that year and this papal document may have accelerated this development.

Elias of Cortona, elected by the general chapter of Rieti in 1232, responded to this stimulus by sending visitators, just as John Parenti had done before him. The three visitations of the English province during that decade are narrated by Eccleston. The fact that Elias employed visitators rather than visiting the provinces himself does not seem to have rankled with the friars at the time, but that percep-tion would change in the later 1230s along with expectations. Both Eccleston and Salimbene de Adam wrote from an environment in which a minister general was expected to hold visitations. Thus, the chroniclers’ comments about Elias’s refusal to visitate the provinces should be read against the backcloth of the expectations in the second half of the thirteenth century. They both wrote some time after 1239.

A brief sketch of the first three ministers provincial of England – Agnellus of Pisa, Albert of Pisa and Haymo of Faversham – is given by Eccleston, who presents each one as an exemplary friar. These friars had already featured in several of the earlier collationes, especially Haymo, who held several major offices prior to his election as minister provincial in the summer of 1239. The ministers provincial supervised the life and ministry of the friars and witnessed the order’s agreements with neighbouring institutions and individuals, notably the chirograph with Reading Abbey on 14 July 1233. The length of this ministry differed from one province to another. Haymo held office for a year before being elected as minister general, while William of Nottingham served for fourteen years until he was removed from office in 1254 by the general chapter of Metz. The minister provincial upheld standards and led the province. He collaborated with the regional custos and appointed friars to the offices of confessor, lector, preacher and penitentiary and assigned them to lecture in the schools. The minister provincial visitated the friaries on an annual basis and corrected friars who had been undisciplined or caused scandal. He liaised with local bishops in all that pertained to the public life of the friars and their church. They were required to pay close attention to relations with the crown, one of its major benefactors. It was not unusual for the minister provincial to be invited to court, perhaps to preach. A special responsibility of the minister provincial was the care of the sick friars. A good insight into the office of minister provincial is provided by the copious correspondence of Adam Marsh with William of Nottingham. The minister provincial contributed to the life of the order on the international stage and attended the triennial general chapters. He responded to pleas from the minister general for some friars to be appointed to friaries outside England. Adam of Exeter was given permission to proceed to the Holy Land, but died en route at Barletta in 1233/34. Arnulph was one of a number of English friars attached to the papal court as chaplains and penitentiaries by 1239. Ministers provincial were required to attend the triennial general chapters and to elect the ministers general. Haymo of Faversham was depicted as playing a major role in the general chapter of Rome in 1239, when Albert succeeded the deposed Elias.