Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

220 COMING OF THE
were the first to appear in England, and they remained
throughout the most numerous and popular
of the friars. When at last the flourishing English
province was attainted by the new order of things,
Franciscans were in the foremost ranks of champions
and martyrs.
^^- The year 12191 brought these friars, headed by
Fr. Agnellus de Pisa, to England. They were four
fathers and five lay brothers wTho thus came to
scatter the seed of St. Francis on English soil. As
a rule, the Franciscans built their convents in. the
most wretched localities. They chose populous sites
as the Cistercians had formerly chosen lonely ones,
and transformed the spiritual wilderness into a
flower garden. In London the chief house of the
order rose on a spot appropriately called Stinking
Lane. At Cambridge the burgesses gave them the
dilapidated town gaol. Again, at Norwich their convent
was built on the water side.2 Poverty was in
their sites as well as in their spirit, and it was this
poverty which won them the hearts of the people.
On landing, four friars set out for London, where
they parted company, two of them proceeding to
Oxford. Fr. Agnellus and the four others stayed to
build their first convent at Canterbury. They
brought literally nothing with them but the sweet
a f t lives, nor w tl t t
1This date is given by the Franciscan author of Antiquities of
the English Franciscans.
* Monumenta Franciscana. Preface by J. S. Brewer, p. xviii.