‘eat of all manner of meats which be set before them[44],’ a practice which occasionally caused some scandal[45]; and Friar Albert of Pisa ordered them to keep silence in the house of hosts, except among the preachers and friars of other provinces[46]. Like St. Francis himself, the Oxford friars often possessed the courtesy and charm of manner which is born of sympathy[47]; and it was perhaps to this quality that their employment as diplomatic agents is to be attributed. Thus Agnellus was chosen in 1233 to negotiate with the rebellious Earl Marshall and try to bring him back to his allegiance[48]. Adam Marsh was on more than one occasion sent beyond the sea as royal emissary[49], and Edward I sent Oxford Minorites to treat for peace with his enemies[50]. But to the mediaeval mind, there was a cause more sacred than that of peace or good government; and the Franciscans would not have had their great influence--would not have become leaders of men throughout the world--had they not shared the one ideal, which still even in the thirteenth century appealed to every class in every country of Europe. The Crusades attracted the scholastic philosopher no less than the baron with his sins to expiate, or the serf with his liberty to win. It was partly to increase his influence as a missionary[51] that Adam of Oxford, one of the first ‘masters’ who joined the Order[52], took the vows of St. Francis; against the wishes of his brethren in England, who hoped to keep among them so famous and learned a convert, and who indeed feared lest he should come under heretical influences[53], he went to Gregory IX, and at his own prayer was sent by the Pope to preach to the Saracens[54]. When Prince Edward went to the Holy Land in 1270, he took with him as preacher Friar William de Hedley, the lecturer and regent master of the Friars Minors at Oxford[55]. Hedley died before the army reached Acre; but these learned friars did not flinch when summoned to meet a sterner fate. In 1289 Tripoli was captured by the Saracens: an English friar led the last charge of the despairing Christians, carrying aloft the cross till his arms were hewn off; ‘the above-mentioned friar,’ continues the chronicler, ‘who by his example provoked very many to martyrdom, had been no small space of time warden of the Oxford Convent[56].’