Twice afterwards we hear of licence being granted by Richard II to dig stone in Cheylesmore Park, first for Grey Friars Gate, and later for Spon Gate, “near his Chapel of Babelake.”  The walls so built were of imposing extent and dimensions, being three yards in breadth, two and a quarter miles in circumference, and having thirty-two towers and twelve gates.[3] Nehemiah Wharton, a Parliamentary officer in 1642, reports of the city that it is: 

Environed with a wall co-equal, if not exceedinge, that of London, for breadth and height; and with gates and battlements, magnificent churches and stately streets and abundant fountains of water; altogether a place very sweetly situate and where there is no stint of venison.

To return to the monastic history.  We have seen how, in the mid-thirteenth century the Monastery had become the landlord of the city; shortly before this it had been so impoverished with ceaseless quarrels with the King and the Lichfield Chapter, involving costly appeals to Rome, that the Prior was reduced to asking the hospitality of the monks of Derley for some of the brethren.  A period of prosperity followed and many benefactions flowed in, including the gift of various churches by the king.  It was after twenty-six years of quarrelling that the Pope, in 1224, had appointed to the bishopric Walter de Stavenby, an able and learned man.  During his episcopacy the friars made their appearance in England, and by him the Franciscans were introduced at Lichfield, while at Coventry Ranulph, Earl of Chester, gave them land in Cheylesmore on which to build their oratory and house.

They were not generally welcomed by the monks.  A Benedictine laments their first appearance thus “Oh shame! oh worse than shame! oh barbarous pestilence! the Minor Brethren are come into England!” and at Bury they were obliged to build outside a mile radius from the Abbey.  The parish priests also soon found out that they were undersold in the exercise of their spiritual offices and although no doubt many badly needed awakening they were not, on that account, the more likely to welcome the intruders.

Another innovation, affecting the fortunes of the parish priest, had its beginning under the rule of Bishop Stavenby though its greatest development occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  This was the foundation of Chantries designed primarily for the maintenance of a priest or priests to say mass daily or otherwise for the soul’s health of the founder, his family and forbears.  The earliest we hear of are one at Lincoln, and one at Hatherton in Coventry Archdeaconry while the Bishop himself endowed one in Lichfield Cathedral.  Many were perpetual endowments (L5 per annum being the average stipend), others were temporary, according to the means of those who paid for the masses—­for a term of years or for a fixed number of masses, Although chantry priests were often required to give regular help in the church services or taught such scholars as came to them or served outlying chapelries, the system permitted a great number to live on occasional engagements and was doubtless productive of abuses.  Chaucer tells us that his poor parson was not such an one as