348 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION". 
of preaching founded on meditation and deep experience, and not 
obtained from the writings of others, the influence of the Fran- 
ciscans upon the neglected masses of the population may be 
imagined. Lessons of patience and endurance fell with greater 
persuasion and tenderness from the lips of men who were living 
and voluntary examples of what they taught. Dressed in his coarse 
robe, with bare head and feet, the friar begged his bread from 
house to house, and his voluntary poverty removed the scandal 
under which Christianity was labouring, in consequence of the 
luxuries and superfluities in which many of its privileged teachers 
indulged. The rule of poverty of the Franciscan was a consistent 
one, and one that in England continued to the end. The inven- 
tories at the dissolution show that, unlike some of the other orders, 
no treasure had been laid up on earth. 
These things made the Minor Friars very popular, and in all 
the large towns, striking a real chord of sympathy, they found 
favour and increased rapidly. Within thirty years after their 
arrival in England they mustered 1242 members, and had forty- 
nine convents in different localities. England was divided into 
seven wardenships. The west country was included in the warden- 
ship of Bristol, and in it were the important houses at Exeter 
and Bodmin. 
There is no reference to Plymouth in the account in the Monu- 
menta Franciscana. When the Franciscans first arrived here we do 
not know, nor do we know when their house was commenced. It 
is, however, certain that Plymouth, which would not at the time 
have stood in less need of the services of the friars than other 
towns, where we find them settled soon after the arrival of 
Angnellus and his companions, would be passed over. Probably 
brethren were sent from Exeter or Bodmin into the surrounding 
country, and some found their way to Plymouth. 
The Bodmin house was completed in June, 1239, only fifteen 
years after the arrival of the friars, and they were established in 
Exeter in 1240; but it is not until long after this that we have 
certain evidence of any being at Plymouth. 
The two or three who settled down here worked as we find 
them doing elsewhere, and I think we meet with something with 
which they were connected in 1374, when we find that a leper's 
house was erected in Plymouth, as appears by a document dated 
30th August, which Bishop Brantyngham patronized, dedicated to 
