Page:VCH London 1.djvu/601

 RELIGIOUS HOUSES Mendicant orders,'^ and a Bill was introduced into Parliament in 1 414 to forbid it. In 1443 Pope Eugenius IV commissioned John, abbot of St. Benet of Holme, to try a similar case, that of John Hawteyn, alias Schar- yngton, who had applied to Rome to be absolved from his vows on the ground that he had been forced against his will to enter the order of Carmelites in London'^ before he had completed his fourteenth year. A witness in his favour stated that Hawteyn at the age of eight had been placed in the London house by his parents, by whom he had afterwards been forced to make profession there, and the latter part of his testi- mony seems to receive support from the state- ment made by one of the friars that when Hawteyn ran away he was brought back by his mother. He was imprisoned at the White Friars by order of Thomas Walden, to whom his profession had been made,'' and was after- wards kept under ward for a time at Oxford. Then, some years later, he tried again to leave the order. The Carmelites, in spite of their declaration that from fear of the statute they never received anyone under the age of fourteen, seem not to have felt very sure of their ground, since it was owing to them that the king stopped the proceedings, and when the royal prohibition was removed and the case resumed in 1446, they did not appear to plead, and the sentence, given March, 1447, was against them, declar- ing Hawteyn not bound to the observance of the rule. The religious houses of London seem to be so completely disconnected with the history of the country in the fifteenth century that it is of some interest to find that a council between the two factions was held March, 1458, in the morning at the Black Friars, and in the after- noon at the Carmelites,'^ though it must be added that the two places were evidently chosen merely for their convenient situation. The friars and the secular clergy had united for a short time in face of a common danger, but their interests were too much opposed to allow of a lasting peace between them. The Mendicants, who had been the party attacked in the fourteenth century,'* in 1465 took the offensive. The incident seems to indicate that the popularity of the White Friars had some- what waned, since Harry Parker, the Carmelite friar who preached the sermon at St. Paul's " Sharpe, Cal. of Wills, i, 3 8 2. In the will of John de Gloucestre, rector of Herdyngton, legacies were left to two friars of the Carmelite order for their clothing, and a guardian was appointed during their minority. " B. M. Chart. L.F.C. xx, 13. " He was called Walden's 'beaufitz,' and Walden, afraid that he might be suspected of favouring him on that account, insisted on his punishment. ^* Gairdner, The Paston Letters, 1, 426. " By the archbishop of Armagh. Cross '^ comparing the beneficed clergy to their disparagement with the friars as followers of Christ, owned afterwards that his sole object had been to draw attention to his convent for its pecuniary advantage. Attention was certainly attracted, but hardly with the result expected. William Ive, master of Whittington College, took up the gauntlet on behalf of the beneficed clergy, and disproved Parker's arguments, par- ticularly the statement that Christ Himself was a beggar, the following Sunday. In the dispu- tations that followed at the White Friars, the prior and provincial of the order, Dr. John Milverton, and Dr. Haldon, also a Carmelite of London, laid themselves open to a charge of heresy, and were cited to appear before the bishop of London. They pleaded privilege, but this did not avail in case of heresy, and on their failing to appear they were excommunicated, Ive pronouncing the sentence at St. Paul's Cross. Parker, the cause of all the commotion, was imprisoned by the bishop and abjured. Milver- ton, the provincial, had meanwhile gone to Rome to lay the matter before the pope, but he had no better fortune, being kept in the Castle of St. Angelo until he submitted. The king is said indeed to have asked the pope to punish the friars for creating the disturbance. After this episode the White Friars seem to have been contented with obscurity. John Souley, one of the friars, formed a link between the traditions of his house and the new age as a man of learning and eloquence and a friend of Dean Colet." Such notices of the house as occur indicate that it was still regarded with favour by the upper classes of the community : Lord Vescey was buried there according to his will of May 1466;" Sir John Paston in the Lady Chapel of the church in 1479;'^ and the Marquis of Berkeley by his will of 5 February, 1 49 1, arranged for the establishment of a perpetual chantry of two friars at the altar of St. Gascon;*" moreover, when in 1527 the prior found himself unable to proceed with the rebuilding of a house in the precinct for lack of money, Margaret countess of Kent came to their aid with a loan of ^^60 that they might remember in their prayers her late husband who was buried in their church, and herself when she was dead.*' Nor were signs of the king's good- will altogether lacking.*^ ^ Coll. of a Land. Citizen (Camd. Soc), 228, &c. "Stevens, Hist, of Abbe'js,, 175. "Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, 302. "Gairdner, The Paston Letters, iii, 207, 262. "Nicolas, op. cit. 408. "Harl. Chart. 79, F. 32. "Aug. 1509 Henry contributed £13 6/. 'id. to their general chapter on St. Laurence's Eve. L. and P. Hen. Vlll, ii (2), p. 1457. A payment of [G 15^. to the prior and provincial of the White Friars is also noted 25 December 1530 among the King's Privy Purse Expenses. Ibid, v, p. 753. 509