Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines. THE COMING OF THE FRIARS AND OTHER HISTORIC ESSAYS BY THE REV. AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D. Hon. Canon in Norwich Cathedral, Hon. Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, and Hon. Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge FOURTEENTH IMPRESSION TO MY FRIEND AND SOMETIME TUTOR, FRANCIS WHALLEY HARPER, CANON OF YORK, I OFFER THIS VOLUME AS A TOKEN OF MY GRATITUDE [These Essays have appeared at various times in "The Nineteenth Century," and are now printed with some alterations, corrections, and additions.] CONTENTS. I. THE COMING OF THE FRIARS II. VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO III. DAILY LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL MONASTERY IV. THE BLACK DEATH IN EAST ANGLIA V. THE BLACK DEATH IN EAST ANGLIA (_continued_) VI. THE BUILDING UP OF A UNIVERSITY VII. THE PROPHET OF WALNUT-TREE YARD I. THE COMING OF THE FRIARS. Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again!--_Lord Tennyson._ When King Richard of England, whom men call the Lion-hearted, was wasting his time at Messina, after his boisterous fashion, in the winter of 1190, he heard of the fame of Abbot Joachim, and sent for that renowned personage, that he might hear from his own lips the words of prophecy and their interpretation. Around the personality of Joachim there has gathered no small amount of _mythus._ He was, it appears, the inventor of that mystical method of Hermeneutics which has in our time received the name of "the year-day theory," and which, though now abandoned for the most part by sane men, has still some devout and superstitious advocates in the school of Dr. Cumming and kindred visionaries.