Incorporated with the buildings of Worcester College are some curious little tenements once occupied by a colony from different Benedictine Monasteries. These, with the Church of St. Frydeswide, now Christ Church Cathedral, and the small remains of Osney Abbey, are about the only relics of monastic Oxford which survived the Reformation. But in the Middle Ages there were Houses for novices of the great Orders, Benedictines, Cistercians, Carmelites, Augustinians, and most notable and powerful of all, the two great mendicant Orders of Dominicans and Franciscans. The Mendicants, who came into the country angels of humility as well as of asceticism, begging their bread, and staining the ground with the blood from their shoeless feet, soon changed their character, and began in the interest of Holy Church to grasp power and amass wealth. The Franciscans especially, like the Jesuits of an after day, strove to master the centres of intellectual influence. They strove to put the laws of the University under their feet. Struggles between them and the seculars, with appeals to the Crown, were the consequence. Attraction of callow youth to an angelic life seems to have been characteristic of the Brethren of St. Francis, and it is conjectured that in this way Bacon became a monk. Faintly patronised by a liberal and lettered Pope, he was arraigned for necromancy by his Order, and ended his days in gloom, if not in a monastic prison. The Church of the Middle Ages with one hand helped to open the door of knowledge, with the other she sought to close it. At last she sought to close it with both hands, and in her cruel panic established the Inquisition. * * * * * Tory in its later days, the University was liberal in its prime. It took the part of the Barons and De Montfort against Henry III., and a corps of its students fought against the King under their own banner at Northampton. Instead of being the stronghold of reaction, it was the focus of active, even of turbulent aspiration, and the saying ran, that when there was fighting at Oxford there was war in England. Oxford's hero in the thirteenth century was its Chancellor, Grosseteste, the friend of De Montfort and the great reformer of his day, "of prelates the rebuker, of monks the corrector, of scholars the instructor, of the people the preacher, of the incontinent the chastiser, of writings the industrious investigator, of the Romans the hammer and contemner." If Grosseteste patronised the Friars, it was in their first estate. * * * * *