the church to which it belonged, deserves that some notice should be
given of it and of the men who reared it.

In 1234, eleven years after their first coming into England, the
Franciscan Friars are heard of at Coventry, Ranulph, Earl of Chester,
having granted them land for their oratory, and the Sheriff of
Warwickshire, on behalf of the King, giving them shingles from the
woods of Kenilworth wherewith to cover it. In 1359 the Black Prince,
then owner of the Manor and Park of Cheylesmore, just outside the
walls of the city and adjacent to their convent, granted them so much
stone from his quarry there, "as they should have occasion to use
about their buildings and walls," and probably at this time the
church, of which Christ Church spire is a remnant, was built.

At the same time he gave them "liberty to have a postern into the Park
to carry out any of their convent that should be diseased."

The house was surrendered to the King in 1539, the warden and ten
brethren being compelled to sign a humiliating document, in which they
professed to "profoundly consider that the perfection of Christian
living doth not consist in dumb ceremonies, wearing of a grey coat,
disguising ourself after strange fashions, ducking, nodding and
becking, in girding our selves with a girdle full of knots and other
like Papisticall ceremonies."

[Illustration: THE SPIRE OF CHRIST CHURCH.]

It is certain at least that they had no accumulated wealth. Whatever
they had received had been distributed for the advantage of the Church
or the poor. At their suppression they had neither lands, tenements,