THE FRANCISCANS IN ENGLAND, 1224-1538. By Edward Hutton. (Constable. 7s.
6d. net.)—Friar Agnellus of Pisa, with three English clerics and five foreign lay brothers, came in September, 1224, to found the Franciscan order in England. They settled in London and in Orford, and their mission was popular- from the outset. - Soon the Franciscans had large' convents and fine churches in many towns, and through their OXford lecturers they exercised great influence on the educated class, whether clerical or lay. Grosseteste him-, self lectured for them ; Roger Bacon, greatest of mediaeval English scholars, was a friar. But with prosperity mile a decline in spiritual power. Mr. Hutton, in his painstaking history, tries to show that Langland, Chaucer and W3iclif were unduly severe critics of the friars, but the rise of a reformed Franciscan order in the Observants suggests that the main body had degenerated. The fact bears on the Dissolution of the monasteries which Mr. Hutton denounces with exceeding bitterness. It is sad to think of the wholesale destruction of the Franciscan and other houses. But the friars suffered because they were the direct agents of the Papal power in England. The Observants, whom Henry VII. patronized, were the first to feel his son's heavy hand. Mr. Hutton should not blame the Church of England ; it was a
political and not a religious persecution. -
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