It is not often possible to trace the subsequent career of the friars when they had been turned adrift on the world. The monks as a rule received pensions, and the entries respecting the payment of these in the Ministers’ Accounts and other records, afford some clue to their fate. The Mendicants except in a few isolated cases received no pensions. Dr. London in his letter of the 8th of July[795] asked Cromwell
‘what reward euery freer shall have ...[796] at ther departinge,’
but the question no doubt refers merely to the gift of a few shillings, which was usually made to each friar on his dismissal. No instance occurs in the records of a pension having been paid to any of the Grey Friars who were at Oxford at the time of the suppression[797]. It is probable that Baskerfeld, who was an important person in the University, received a benefice with license to live in Oxford. Robert Newman seems also to have been presented to a living[798]. But the career of only one of these eighteen friars can be traced with any certainty. Simon Ludford, a native of Bedford, became an apothecary in London. On November 6, 1553, he supplicated for the degree of M.B. at Oxford after six years’ study in the medical faculty. On November 27, he obtained the degree and was admitted to practise. The College of Physicians remonstrated with the University and recommended that the degree should be revoked on the ground of Ludford’s ignorance. Though the University refused to withdraw its license, the ex-friar proceeded to Cambridge, but the Physicians hastened to warn the authorities there against him. They had, they wrote to the University, already examined Ludford ‘on the 17th day before the Calends of March, 1553’ (?), and, finding him completely ignorant of medicine, philosophy, and the liberal sciences, and distinguished only by ‘blind audacity,’ unanimously voted against his admission. Ludford left Cambridge, but persevered. In May 1560, he supplicated for the degree of M.D. at Oxford, stating that he had long practised in London by permission of the London College of Physicians. In July he incepted as M.D. of Oxford. In April 1563 he was made fellow of the College of Physicians, and he was censor of the same College in 1564, 1569, and 1572.[799]