246 LETTERS TO THE " TIMES " v 



secular favour. Some, however, finding themselves 

 opposed at the Court of Rome, were restrained by 

 obvious reasons, and went away in confusion ; for the 

 Supreme Pontiff, with a scowling look, said to them, 

 ' What means this, my brethren 1 To what lengths 

 are you going? Have you not professed voluntary 

 poverty, and that you would traverse towns and 

 castles and distant places, as the case required, bare- 

 footed and unostentatiously in order to preach the 

 word of God in all humility? And do you now 

 presume to usurp these estates to yourselves against 

 the will of the lords of these fees ? Your religion 

 appears to be in a great measure dying away, and 

 your doctrines to be confuted.' " 



Under date of 1243, Matthew writes : 

 " For three or four hundred years or more the 

 monastic order did not hasten to destruction so 

 quickly as their order [Minorites and Preachers] of 

 whom now the brothers, twenty-four years having 

 scarcely elapsed, had first built in England dwellings 

 which rivalled regal palaces in height. These are 

 they who daily expose to view their inestimable 

 treasures, in enlarging their sumptuous edifices, and 

 erecting lofty walls, thereby impudently transgressing 

 the limits of their original poverty and violating the 

 basis of their religion, according to the prophecy of 

 German Hildegarde. When noblemen and rich men 

 are at the point of death, whom they know to be 

 possessed of great riches, they, in their love of gain, 

 diligently urge them, to the injury and loss of the 

 ordinary pastors, and extort confessions and hidden 

 wills, lauding themselves and their own order only, 



