"Three things," said Friar Albert, Minister General, "tended to the exaltation of the Order--bare feet, coarse garments, and the rejecting of money." At first the Oxford Franciscans were zealous in all those respects. We hear of Adam Marsh refusing bags of gold that were sent him; we hear of two of the brethren returning from a Chapter held at Oxford at Christmas-time, singing as they picked their way along the rugged path, over the frozen mud and rigid snow, whilst the blood lay in the track of their naked feet, without their being conscious of it. Even from the robbers and murderers who infested the woods near Oxford the barefoot friars were safe. But it was not long before they began to fall away from "the Rule," and to accumulate both wealth and learning. Under the ministry of Agnellus and his successor the tendency to acquire property was rigorously suppressed, but under Haymo of Faversham (1238) a different spirit began to prevail. Haymo preferred that "the friars should have ample areas and should cultivate them, that they might have the fruits of the earth at home, rather than beg them from others." And under his successor they gained a large increase of territory. By a deed dated Nov. 22, 1244, Henry III. granted them "that they might enclose the street that lies under the wall from the Watergate in S. Ebbe's to the little postern in the wall towards the castle, but so that a wall with battlements, like to the rest of the wall of Oxford, be made about the dwelling, beginning at the west side of Watergate, and reaching southward to the bank of the Thames, and extending along the bank westward as far as the land of the Abbot of Bec in the parish of S. Bodhoc, and then turning again to the northward till it joins with the old wall of the borough, by the east side of the small postern." In 1245 he made a further grant. "We have given the Friars Minor our island in the Thames, which we bought of Henry, son of Henry Simeon, granting them power to build a bridge over the arm of the Thames (Trill stream) which runs between the island and their houses, and enclose the island with a wall." When it was completed, then, the Convent of the Grey Friars could compare favourably with any convent or college in Oxford, except perhaps S. Frideswide's or Osney. On the east side of it, where the main entrance lay, at the junction of the present Littlegate Street and Charles Street, was the road leading from Watergate to Preacher's Bridge; on the South side, Trill Mill stream; on the West, the groves and gardens of Paradise; on the North, as far as West-gate, ran the City wall. "Their buildings were stately and magnificent; their church large and decent; and their refectory, cloister and libraries all proportionable thereunto."