A HISTORY OF LONDON there for a time/ and, during the reigns of Edward II and Edward III especially, councils, both royal * and ecclesiastical,' were held at the White Friars. That the house owed its position not merely to a convenient situation is shown by the employ- ment of its members in political and diplomatic business. The convent seems to have gained its freedom from livery of the king's stewards and marshals through Friar Adam Brown who was a clerk of Edward 11.^° John de Reppes, prior in 1343, was engaged in important negotiations for both the king and the pope between 1344 and 1348.^' He received in return many privi- leges from the pope, among them leave to retain his chamber in the London house for life,^" and faculties similar to those of bishops to meet the requirements of the many noble personages who came to confess to him.*^ This seems to indi- cate that, like the Franciscans and Dominicans in the fourteenth century, the White Friars were popular with the English nobility." Their patrons, however, were not all of the one class. Thus, while the priory was rebuilt in 1350 by Hugh Courtenay, earl of Devon,^* it was to the mayor and commonalty of the City that they owed the grant of Crockers Lane for the west end of their church ; '* and the frequent mention of the friars in the wills of London citizens^' attests the general favour in which they were held. Moreover, the fraternity of the Concep- tion of the Blessed Virgin Mary, established in the conventual church about 1364, was said to owe its foundation to certain ' poor men ' of the City and suburb.^' It may also be noticed, as bearing on this point, that when the rebels of 1 38 1 were carrj'ing on their work of destruc- tion at the Temple and the Savoy they appear to have left the White Friars in peace, and 'C<»/.?/"C/i;/<r, 1318-23, p. 313 ; 1330-3, p. 550; 1337-9. PP- i°9' 146, 267, 284, &c. Mbid. 1307-13, p. 563; 1339-41. P- 339; Sharpe, Cal. of Letter Bk. D, 305. ' Chron. of EJa. I and Edw. II (Rolls Ser.), 286. '" Cal. of Pat. 1 317-21, p. 61. He received the exemption for all houses built by him in the past and future w-ithin the precinct of Whitefriars, Fleet Street, and after his death the friary was to continue to enjoy the privilege. " Cal. Pap. Letters, iii, 6, 8, 10, 1 1, 29, 33, 36. " Ibid. 168. " Cal. Pap. Peti turns, i, 24. He was confessor to the earl of Derby. " The list of persons buried in the church included Sir John Mowbray earl of Nottingham {J. 1398), Elizabeth countess of Athole, John Lord Gray, and Lord Vescey (1466). Stow, op. cit. iii, 268. " Ibid. 267. '^ Pat. 23 Edw. Ill, pt. I, m. 7, quoted in Tanner, No tit. Mon. "Sharpe, Cal. of Wills, i, 271, 404, 577, 620 ; ii, 107, 210, 232, 300, 375, &c. "GUdCert. No. 189. 50; although one Carmelite, Richard Lavingham, fell a victim to them, it was as a friend of Arch- bishop Sudbury that he suffered.^' Judging from the class of house in the close, the priory must have occupied a large area in 1385; but in 1396 some groimd along the river was acquired ^^ for the extension of the friary, probably for the rebuilding of the church," of which Sir Robert Knolles bore the main expense. The choir, steeple, and other parts were added somewhat later by Robert Marshall, the Carmelite bishop of Hereford.^ Of the Carmelites summoned by the arch- bishop to the Council of 1382, one, at any rate, John Lovey or Loney,"' was connected with the London house,-' which had a not unworthy record in respect of learning. The increase in the library of the Carmelites, which dates from about this period, and was probably one of the fruits of the Wycliffite controversy, affords an example of this point in the persons of the two chief contributors, both at one time members of the White Friars, London : Robert Yvory,^ provincial from 1379 to 1392; and Thomas Walden, confessor and privy counsellor of Henry V and English provincial.^ But if the new ideas resulted in a multiplication of books to produce the learning to combat them, they also tended to affect the minds of the religious themselves in favour of change,^ naturally enough if the tale told in 1391 by John Lethinard, an apostate Carmelite of London,** be true. There was something wrong when a child of twelve years of age could be persuaded to enter a convent, and when older forced to become professed by intimidation. The storj' is not improbable, for minors did enter the " Villiers de St. Etienne, Bibl. Carmel. ii, 679. ^ 26 Oct. 1385, Matilda de Well had licence to crenellate a dwelling in her lodging within the close of the Carmelite Friars. Cal. of Pat. 1385—9, p. 42. " Ibid. 1 391-6, p. 658. " The church was either not finished or was being repaired in 1275, for the king gave them twelve oaks for the work. Cal. of Close, 1272-9, p. 261. The rebuilding probably extended over some time, for a bequest was left to the new work in 1 386. Stow, Surv. iii, 268. " Stow, op. cit. iii, 268 ; Fabyan, Chron. (ed. EUis), 573. " Stow, op. cit. iii, 268. " Wilkins, ConciRa Mag. Brit, iii, 158. " Stevens, Hist, of Abbeys, ii, 167. He was buried in the church of the Carmelites, London. Weever, Anct. Fun. Monuments, 439.
- ' Stevens, op. cit. ii, 167. Yvory was a Londoner
of the rich merchant class. Villiers de St. Etienne, op. cit. ii, 693. •* Stevens, op. cit. ii, 171. " The cases of apostasy from the various orders show this. For a Carmelite friar see Cal. of Pat. 1 391-8, p. 357. '° Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 322-3.
