GREY FRIARS IN OXFORD
Oxford
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
THE
GREY FRIARS IN OXFORD
PART I
A HISTORY OF THE CONVENT
PART II
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF THE FRIARS
TOGETHER WITH
APPENDICES OF ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
BY
ANDREW G. LITTLE, M.A.
BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
Oxford
PRINTED FOR THE OXFORD HISTORICAL SOCIETY
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1892
[All rights reserved]
PREFACE.
The object of this work is to give an account of the outward life of theFranciscans. This might be fairly taken to include the whole activity ofthe friars with the exception of their contribution to scholasticphilosophy; for that clearly forms a subject by itself. But even with thislimitation the account here given of the Franciscans’ work does notpretend to be complete. The documents which remain to us do not by anymeans cover the whole of the active life of the Franciscans. While for thethirteenth century and the Dissolution the records are fairly numerous,the materials for the intervening period are very scanty. Thus any attemptat a chronological narrative was out of the question. And the almost totalabsence of all Franciscan records (properly so called) in England, hasproved an effectual bar to any completeness of treatment at all. Thearrangement here adopted, both in the choice of subjects and in therelative prominence given to each of them, is due simply to the exigenciesof the available materials relating to the Oxford Convent. Thetopographical information derived from records and other sources has beenneither full enough nor accurate enough to enable me to supply a map orplan of the property and buildings of the Grey Friars.
A few words will be necessary to explain the plan pursued in Part II. Anendeavour has been made to collect the names of all the Grey Friars wholived in the Convent at Oxford or who studied in the University: the list,if complete, would have[Pg vi] included all the names which were, or ought tohave been, entered in the ‘Buttery-books’ or ‘Admission-books’ of thehouse. To show how far short of this aim the result falls, it is onlynecessary to point out that the names of friars actually included in PartII number little more than three hundred: and the connexion of some ofthese with Oxford is doubtful. The bibliographies, appended to thebiographical notices, are intended to include all the extant works of eachfriar, but not all the MSS. nor all the editions of each work.Occasionally works are added which have not been identified, but of whoseprevious existence there is sufficient evidence. For this part of the bookI have used, besides the well-known mediaeval bibliographies, a number ofcatalogues of manuscripts; a list of these is given below, with the objectof showing not so much what has been done, as what has been left undone.
Among unpublished sources, the most valuable have been various collectionsin the Public Record Office, especially the Patent, Close, and LiberateRolls; the Registers of Congregation (Reg. A a, G 6, H 7, I 8), therecords of the Chancellor’s Court (Acta Curiae Cancellarii ...