There were also some minor orders of friars, who do not need a detailed description. The Crutched (crossed) Friars, so called because they had a red cross on the back and breast of their blue habit, were introduced into England in the middle of the thirteenth century, and had ten houses here. The Friars de Poenitentiâ, or the Friars of the Sack, were introduced a little later, and had nine houses. And there were six other friaries of obscure orders. But all these minor mendicant orders--all except the four great orders, the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites--were suppressed by the Council of Lyons, A.D. 1370. Chaucer lived in the latter half of the fourteenth century, when, after a hundred and forty years' existence, the orders of friars, or at least many individuals of the orders, had lost much of their primitive holiness and zeal. His avowed purpose is to satirise their abuses; so that, while we quote him largely for the life-like pictures of ancient customs and manners which he gives us, we must make allowance for the exaggerations of a satirist, and especially we must not take the faulty or vicious individuals, whom it suits his purpose to depict, as fair samples of the whole class. We have a nineteenth-century satirist of the failings and foibles of the clergy, to whom future generations will turn for illustrations of the life of cathedral towns and country parishes. We know how wrongly they would suppose that Dr. Proudie was a fair sample of nineteenth-century bishops, or Dr. Grantley of archdeacons "of the period," or Mr. Smylie of the evangelical clergy; we know there is no real bishop, archdeacon, or incumbent among us of whom those characters, so cleverly and amusingly, and in one sense so truthfully, drawn, are anything but exaggerated likenesses. With this caution, we do not hesitate to borrow illustrations of our subject from Chaucer and other contemporary writers. In his description of Friar Hubert, who was one of the Canterbury pilgrims, he tells us how-- "Full well beloved and familiar was he With frankelins over all in his countrie; And eke with worthy women of the town,[22] For he had power of confession, As said himself, more than a curate, For of his order he was licenciate. Full sweetely heard he confession, And pleasant was his absolution. He was an easy man to give penance There as he wist to have a good pittance, For unto a poor order for to give, Is signe that a man is well y-shrive. * * * * * His tippet was aye farsed[23] full of knives And pinnés for to give to fairé wives. And certainly he had a merry note, Well could he sing and playen on a rote.[24] * * * * *