The Minoresses were instituted by St. Clare, the sister of St. Francis of Assisi, about A.D. 1212, as the branch of the Franciscan Order for females. They followed the Rule of the Friars Minor and were thus called “Minoresses,” or Nuns of St. Clare, after their foundress. They wore the same dress as the Franciscan Friars, and imitated them in their poverty, for which cause they were sometimes known as “Poor Clares.” They were brought to England somewhere about A.D. 1293, and established in London, without Aldgate, in the locality now known as the Minories. The Order had two other houses, one at Denney, in Cambridgeshire, in which at the time of the general dissolution there were some twenty-five nuns; and the other at Brusyard in Suffolk, which was a much smaller establishment. The nuns at Denney had previously been located at Waterbeche for about fifty years, being removed to their new home by Mary, countess of Pembroke, in A.D. 1348. iii. _Carmelites_ The Carmelite Friars were so called from the place of their origin. They were also named “White Friars” from the colour of the cloak of their habit, and Friars of the Blessed Virgin. These friars are first heard of in the twelfth century, on being driven out of Palestine by the persecution of the Saracens. Their Rule is chiefly founded on that of St. Basil, and was confirmed by Pope Honorius III. in A.D. 1224, and finally approved by Innocent IV. in 1250. They were brought into England by John Vesey and Richard Grey, and established their first houses in the north at Alnwick, and in the south at Ailesford in Kent. At the latter place the first European Chapter of the Order was held in A.D. 1245. In the sixteenth century there were about forty houses in England and Wales. [Illustration: FRANCISCAN FRIAR] [Illustration: FRANCISCAN NUN, OR MINORESS] iv. _Austin Friars, or Hermits_ The body of Austin Friars took its historical origin in the union of several existing bodies of friars effected in A.D. 1265 by Pope Clement IV. They were regarded as belonging to the ranks of the mendicant friars and not to the monastic Order. They were very widely spread, and in Europe in the sixteenth century they are said to have possessed three thousand convents, in which were thirty thousand friars; besides three hundred convents of nuns. In England at the time of the dissolution they had some thirty-two friaries. V. THE LESSER FRIARS i. _Friars of the Sack, or De Penitentia_