346 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
was made penal ; but the bitterest penalty that man could inflict 
did not extinguish lepers or paupers ; they still continued to cumber 
the face of God's earth, to the discomfiture of the medieval eco- 
nomist and his political regulations."* 
I need not tell you how St. Francis saw these things, and how 
with aching heart, but simple faith, he set himself the task of en- 
deavouring to remedy them. It was to the classes I have mentioned 
that the follower of St. Francis directed his attention ; it was 
among the miseries I have referred to that the Franciscan- found 
his work. 
Mr. Brewer has investigated the situations of the religious 
houses of the order in England, and he finds that they generally 
were planted in the most wretched localities. In London their 
first house at their settlement stood in the neighbourhood of 
Cornhill, where they built cells, stuffing the party walls with 
dried grass. Wear the Shambles in Newgate, and close upon 
the city gate of that name, on a spot appropriately called 
Stinking Lane, rose the chief house of the order in England. 
In Oxford, the parish of St. Ebbes; in Cambridge, the decayed 
Town Gaol ; in Norwich, the water side, running close to the walls 
of the town, are the special and chosen spots of the Franciscan 
missionary. In all instances the poverty of their buildings corres- 
ponded with those of the surrounding district ; their living and 
lodging no better than the poorest among whom they settled. At 
Cambridge their chapel was erected by a single carpenter in one 
day. At Shrewsbury, where, owing to the liberality of the towns- 
men, the dormitory walls had been built of stone, the minister of the 
order had them removed and replaced with mud. Decorations and 
ornaments of all kinds were zealously excluded. At Gloucester, a 
friar was deprived of his hood for painting his pulpit, and the 
warden of the same place suffered similar punishment for tolerating 
pictures. Their meals corresponded with the poverty of their 
buildings. Mendicancy might encourage idleness, but it also 
secured effectually the mean and meagre diet of the friars. It 
kept them on a par with the masses among whom their founder 
intended them to labour. They could not sell their offerings; they 
were not permitted to receive more than their actual necessities 
required — meal, salt, figs, and apples, wood for firing, stale beer, 
or milk. "Whatever the weather, however rough the way, they 
* "Mon. Fran." p. 21. 
