GREY FRIARS IN OXFORD

The object of this work is to give an account of the outward life of the Franciscans. This might be fairly taken to include the whole activity of the friars with the exception of their contribution to scholastic philosophy; for that clearly forms a subject by itself. But even with this limitation the account here given of the Franciscans’ work does not pretend to be complete. The documents which remain to us do not by any means cover the whole of the active life of the Franciscans. While for the thirteenth century and the Dissolution the records are fairly numerous, the materials for the intervening period are very scanty. Thus any attempt at a chronological narrative was out of the question. And the almost total absence of all Franciscan records (properly so called) in England, has proved an effectual bar to any completeness of treatment at all. The arrangement here adopted, both in the choice of subjects and in the relative prominence given to each of them, is due simply to the exigencies of the available materials relating to the Oxford Convent. The topographical information derived from records and other sources has been neither full enough nor accurate enough to enable me to supply a map or plan of the property and buildings of the Grey Friars.