Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

224 FRANCISCANS AND DOMINICANS.
Jesuits of the Middle Ages. The Dominicans
numbered 56 houses at the Dissolution, and at least
one convent of Sisters. Princess Bridget, a sister of
Queen Elizabeth of York, was a Dominicaness at
Dartford.1 Owing to the loss of the conventual
registers,2 it is not easy to follow the working of
the Black Friars in England. There is one glory
which St. Dominic shares with only a few7: his inheritance
has ever remained one and undivided.
How soon the Franciscans and Dominicans estab-
*
lished their claims may be gathered from the fact
that Kihvardby, a Dominican, became Archbishop of
Canterbury in 1272, and Peckham, a Franciscan,
succeeded him in 1279. Kihvardby was made a
cardinal by Pope Nicolas III., but he always wore
"
the Dominican habit, and observed both the letter
and the spirit of his rule. Archbishop Peckham was
a man of strong character. It \vill be seen in another
place that he was opposed by a saint in consequence,
it is supposed, of his excessive claims as primate and
metropolitan. On his accession he told the Bishop
of Tusculum that " he had put his shoulder to the
wheel writh the firm resolution of following in the
footsteps of Blessed Thomas, for it appeared (to him)
that the Church was more contemptuously trampled
under foot then than in the days of that holy martyr,"
and he added, in the fulness of his repugnance for his
new dignity, " in the first year of my bitterness ".3
"
1 Life of Blessed Thomas More, Bridgett, p. 16.
-Fr. R. Palmer, Provincials, p. 1. ^Epistol(B Joanni^Peckham^ p. 22.