Transcript

of

Cross Friars of Exeter

Devon & Cornwall Notes and Queries vol. VI, (January 1910 to October 1911), p. 90.

by

R.C.F.

Prepared by Michael Steer

The Fratres Cruciferi (cross-bearing brethren) are a Roman Catholic religious order. There were four main independent branches of Fratres Cruciferi: an Italian order, a Portuguese order, Belgian order, and a Bohemian order. They were also known as Crutched Friars, Crossed Friars, Crouched Friars or Croziers because of the staff they carried with them surmounted by a crucifix. Their first appearance in England was at a synod of the Diocese of Rochester in 1244, when they presented documents from the Pope and asked to be allowed to settle in the country. They established eight or nine houses in England, the first being at either Colchester (according to Dugdale), or at Reigate (according to Reyner), founded in 1245. They settled in London in 1249, where they gave their name to the locality, near Tower Hill, still called Crutched Friars. Other houses were at Oxford; York; Great Welnetham (Suffolk); Barham (Cambridgeshire) (a cell to Great Weltham; Wotten-under Edge, Gloucestershire; Brackley, Northamptonshire; and Kildale, Yorkshire. The order was dissolved, along with other Catholic orders, by Henry VIII in 1539. The article, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

76.CROSSED FRIARS OF EXETER. - In Early Chancery Proceedings, Bundle 246, No. 87, John Wykes asks for the delivery of certain evidences concerning three tenements and 100 acres of land belonging to him, in South Tawton, which he says have been detained by William Wykes and Richard Hyll, "prior of the Crosse Freres of the cite of Exeter in the seid counte of Devon." They deny this. The petition is addressed to the Bishop of Salisbury, Keeper of the Great Seal, and so belongs to the years 1500-1.

These friars are not mentioned at the Dissolution, probably because they owned no land; and nothing more seems to be known of them. The order was not largely represented in England, though it had houses at London and Oxford. It effected a settlement at Colchester in 1496 (V. C. H. Essex, II. 181) on a very doubtful plea of earlier possession, and may have had an outburst of activity about this time.