‘I have thought,’ he wrote to Sir Edward Baynton, ‘that if I had been a friar in a cowl, I could not have been damned, nor afraid of death; and in my sickness I have been tempted to become a friar[748].’
Attitude of the Grey Friars towards the Reformation in its intellectual, religious, and political aspects.--The Divorce.--Visitation of Oxford in 1535.--Suppression of the friaries in 1538.--Condition of the Grey Friary.--Expulsion of the friars; their subsequent history; Simon Ludford.--Houses and site of the Grey Friars.--Dr. London tries to secure the land for the town.--The place leased to Frewers and Pye; bought by Richard Andrews and Howe; resold to Richard Gunter.--Subsequent history of the property.--Total destruction of the buildings.
The intellectual torpor which oppressed Oxford for more than a century after the disappearance of Wiclif and his followers was due less to the repressive measures adopted by Archbishop Arundel, than to the want of vitality, of adaptability to new modes of thought, in the scholastic philosophy and method, with which the intellectual life of Oxford had for so long been identified. The University as a whole did not extend a warm welcome to the New Learning, and it was to be expected that the Mendicant Orders especially should be attached to the old state of things, with which their past greatness was connected, and to which their present position and any prestige they still possessed were due[749]. The Grey Friars consequently were inclined to oppose the revival of learning; and Tyndale no doubt classed them among ‘the old barking curs, Duns’ disciples and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness,’ who ‘raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew[750].’ Dr. Henry Standish, sometime Warden of the Grey Friars of London and Provincial Minister of England, attacked Erasmus’ version of the New Testament in a sermon at Paul’s Cross and in conversation at Court, and seems to have been the recognised leader of the ‘Trojan’ party in England[751]. But even among the Minorites there are traces of the influence of the Renaissance. Another Provincial Minister, Richard Brynkley, was a student of Greek, and was supplied with a copy of the Gospels in Greek from the Franciscan Library at Oxford. Friar Nicholas de Burgo seems to have been one of that band of Humanists whom Wolsey attracted to Oxford, that they might propagate in his own University the learning and culture of Italy[752].