Page:Chronicle of the Grey friars of London.djvu/14

x Ministers in the principal kingdoms of Europe. In the year 1224, two years before the death of their founder, a deputation of nine of the fraternity, four clerics and five laics, arrived in England, with letters recommendatory from Pope Honorius III. and took up their first residence in the Benedictine priory of the Holy Trinity at Canterbury, in which city five of their number soon after formed the first Franciscan convent in England.

The other four proceeded to London, and were first entertained for fifteen days in the house of the Friars Preachers, or Dominicans. Afterwards they hired a house in Cornhill of John Travers, then sheriff, where they made some small cells, and continued until the following summer, when the devotion of the citizens enabled them to remove to the site of their future residence near Newgate. Their first and principal benefactor was John Iwyn, citizen and mercer, who gave them some land and houses in the parish of St. Nicholas in the Shambles, by deed dated in the 9th Hen. III. Upon this they erected their original building. The first chapel, which became the choir of the church, was built at the cost of sir William Joyner, who was mayor of London in 1239; the nave was added by sir Henry Waleys, who was mayor during several years of the reign of Edward I.; the chapter-house by Walter the potter, citizen and