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THE FRANCISCANS. 153
of all episcopal interference. And as to the bishops
themselves, too many of them were taken up with
secular work as high officers of state, and paid little
regard to the higher duties of their spiritual functions.
The population of the towns was at this time increasing,
and clusters of miserable hovels constituted
their suburbs. Undrained, close, and ill-ventilated,
they were the hot-beds of disease. Fever and leprosy
were constant visitants. In these squalid localities the
friars established their houses. They were missionaries
preaching to the poor, living like them, clothed like
them, content with such subsistence as was afforded by
the alms bestowed upon them ;
which, at the outset,
were far more the offerings of the poor than the gifts of
the wealthy. They nursed and tended the leper with
an unmercenary charity, and were constant in their
endeavour to alleviate every form of human misery.
Their popularity was immense and their spread most
rapid. Within thirty years after the Franciscans
arrived in England, their number amounted to 1,242,
and they had forty-nine convents in various localities,
of which York was one. Matthew Paris tells us
what they were in the fervour :— and devotion which
marked their first appearance " They filled the
land, dwelling in cities and towns by tens and sevens,
having literally no worldly goods of any kind, living
of the Gospel. They ate the food and they wore the
raiment which marked the extremity of poverty ;
they
went about barefooted, showing a pattern to all of the
very deepest humility. On Sundays and holy days
they issued from their lowly dwellings and offered
their services as preachers of the Word of Life in the