In the early days of Henry III.’s reign, a modest alien invasion anticipated the more noisy coming of the Poitevin or the Provencal.  The most remarkable development of the “religious” life that the later middle age was to witness had just been worked out in Italy.  St. Francis of Assisi had taught the cult of absolute poverty, and his example held up to his followers the ideal of the thorough and literal imitation of Christ’s life.  Thus arose the early beginnings of the Minorite or Franciscan rule.  St. Dominic yielded to the fascination of the Umbrian enthusiast, and inculcated on his Order of Preachers a complete renunciation of worldly goods which made a society, originally little more than a new type of canons regular, a mendicant order like the Franciscans, bound to interpret the monastic vow of poverty with such literalness as to include corporate as well as individual renunciation of possessions, so that the order might not own lands or goods, and no member of it could live otherwise than by labour or by alms.  In the second chapter of the Dominican order, at Whitsuntide, 1221, an organisation into provinces was carried out; and among the eight provinces, each with its prior, then instituted, was the province of England, where no preaching friar had hitherto set foot, and over it Gilbert of Freynet was appointed prior.  Then Dominic withdrew to Bologna, where he died on August 6.  Within a few days of the saint’s death, Friar Gilbert with thirteen companions made his way to England.  In the company of Peter des Roches the Dominican pioneers went to Canterbury, where Archbishop Langton was then residing.  At the archbishop’s request Gilbert preached in a Canterbury church, and Langton was so much delighted by his teaching that henceforth he had a special affection for the new order.  From Canterbury the friars journeyed to London and Oxford.  Mindful of the work of their leaders at Paris and Bologna, they built their first English chapel, house, and schools in the university town.  Soon these proved too small for them, and they had to seek ampler quarters outside the walls.  From these beginnings the Dominicans spread over England.

The Franciscans quickly followed the Dominicans.  On September 10, 1224, there landed at Dover a little band of four clerks and five laymen, sent by St. Francis himself to extend the new teaching into England.  At their head was the Italian, Agnellus of Pisa, a deacon, formerly warden of the Parisian convent, who was appointed provincial minister in England.  His three clerical companions were all Englishmen, though the five laymen were Italians or Frenchmen.  Like the Dominican pioneers, the Franciscan missionaries first went to Canterbury, where the favour of Simon Langton, the archdeacon, did for them what the goodwill of his brother Stephen had done for their precursors.  Leaving some of their number at Canterbury, four of the Franciscans went on to London, and thence a little later two of them set out for Oxford.  Alike at