Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/411

 1920 BROTHER WILLIAM OF ENGLAND 403 — mostly late — preserved in chronicles of the order about an early Brother William of England, who may be the author of the drawing, are put together. Since then Professor Lethaby ^ has ingeniously suggested the identification of the artist Brother William ' secundus in ordine ' with William of London ' secundus f rater qui receptus est a fratre Agnello ', who is described by Eccleston (p. 19) as familiaris of Hubert de Burgh, ' laicus et latinus. . . et in arte scissoria famosissimus '. It is, however, clear that Matthew Paris did not mean ' second in the order in England ', and equally clear that an Englishman who entered the order in 1224 or 1225 cannot have been socius of St. Francis. Matthew Paris may have misunderstood his informants. But there is the independent tradition of an early Brother William of England who was buried at Assisi to be considered. The point is of some importance in the history of art : is this remarkable and unique drawing a purely English product or the work of an Englishman in Italy ? In my endeavours to identify William the artist I came across the letter of Gregory IX printed below. The original is in the Public Record Office, Papal Bulls, box 49, no. 9. It is not included in the papal registers and has escaped the editors of the Bullariwn Franciscanum. There is, however, nothing to connect the William mentioned here with the artist ; but the letter is not without interest in the history of English Franciscans. Gregory IX, at the request of his familiaris, Friar William of the Minorite order, writes on 15 (or 14) April 1239 to the abbot of Holy Cross, Waltham, instructing him to right the wrongs of Friar William's brother {germanus) who is also named William : the latter is being kept out of his inheritance by W. Scot, clerk, and others of the diocese of London (who are under the abbot's jurisdiction) and cannot afford the heavy costs of a lawsuit. There can be little doubt that Friar William familiaris of Gregory IX is the same as Friar William poenitentiarius noster, who appears frequently in letters of Gregory IX between 1235 and 1241.2 Of twenty-four papal letters either addressed to him or referring to him during this period, twenty-three are concerned with the raising of money or men for the crusades in France, mainly in the provinces of Rheims and Sens, Rouen, Tours, and Bordeaux, and one with a dispute between the French king and » Bvllarium Franciscanum, i ; Greg. IX, nos. 185, 186, 187, 209, 229, 230, 232, 238, 239, 240, 241, 246, 247, 248, 253, 256, 261, 267, 277, 279, 281, 282, 333, 337 ; Innoc. IV, nos. 6, 8, 31. The Frater Willelmus mentioned in a letter of 6 February 1229 (no. 32) as having brought viva voce a good report to Gregory IX at Perugia of John Halgrin, bishop of Sabina, papal legate in Spain, may or may not be the penitentiary. William, ^on of G. de Poenceyo, lord of la Guerche, mentioned in a letter of 15 December 1238 (no. 283) is certainly not the penitentiary. . ■ Dd2
 * Burlington Magazine, xxxi. 51 (August 1917).