Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

ST. SIMON STOCK. ' 2'25
A Franciscan training and spirit made him dislike
honours and high position, but showed him for that
very reason better able to withstand their withering
influence on the soul's life.
About 1240 two English knights, John, Lord
Vesey, and Ivichard, Lord Grey, whilst away on the
Holy Wars, visited Mount Carmel, where they found
some countrymen of their own amongst the followers
of the Prophet St. Elias. They brought back a
small colony of these hermits, amongst them Ralph
Freburn, a Northumbrian, and founded the first
Carmelite houses in Europe at Aylesford in Kent
and Holn in Northumberland. Ealph Freburn became
first English provincial, and gave the habit to
Simon Stock, who had prepared himself for the Carmelite
noviciate by leading
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a hermit's life. Simon
became general d/ of the whole order in 1245. He was
at once a man of prayer and a man of action. His
ecstatic prayer gained him a vision of our Lady, in
which she gave him the brown scapular as a singular
mark of her protection. The oratory of the Carmelite
house at Cambridge (Xewenham) was said to
be the spot of this apparition. Simon gave our Lady's
little habit to Edward I. and Edward II. who were
then princes. The wretched Edward II. seems to
have had some devotion to our Lady. St. Simon
Stock died at Bordeaux in 1266.1 The Carmelites or
White Friars numbered forty-one houses in England.2
1 Xoi-thcoU-, Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Mmliniw, ]>. 285.
-l lasqiu-t. i. Appendix.
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