In fact, several years elapsed before the friars obtained property outside the city wall, their first efforts being directed to secure the land between the wall and Freren Street. It was not long before their cramped area was enlarged. In the Mayoralty of John Pady[83] the citizens of Oxford subscribed[84] forty-three marks sterling to buy from William, son of Richard de Wileford, his house in St. Ebbe’s, with all its appurtenances, ‘to house the Friars Minors for ever,’ the said good men of Oxford giving to William one pound of cummin annually in lieu of all service[85]. The next grant of which we find mention seems also to have been an act of municipal, rather than of private, charity. In 1236[86] Robert, son of Robert Oen, had given them a house adjoining their land, on condition that he, ‘having been a free tenant of the prior and brethren of St. John of Jerusalem in England in the aforesaid place,’ should have the same privilege attaching to his new house in the parish of St. Michael at the North Gate. This house of Robert Oen’s in St. Ebbe’s was one of the ‘mural mansions,’ on the occupiers of which the duty of repairing the city wall fell[87]. The obligation, however, was now, when the house came into the hands of the friars, willingly undertaken with the King’s assent by the Mayor and good men of Oxford. Under the ministry of Agnellus any tendency to accumulate property was rigorously suppressed[88], nor does his successor Albert appear to have been more lenient[89]. But under Haymo of Faversham (1238-9) and William of Nottingham (1239-51) a different spirit began to prevail, and one far less in accordance with the original idea of the Order. 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[90].’ And under William of Nottingham the Oxford house gained a large increase of territory[91]. It was in 1245 that this took place, and a remarkably full series of records relating to the event is still extant. By a deed dated 22nd December, 1244[92], the King gave the Friars Minors permission, ‘for the greater quiet and security of their habitation, to inclose the street which extends under the wall of Oxford, from the gate which is called Watergate[93] in the parish of St. Ebbe, up to the postern in the same wall towards the Castle; so that a crenellated wall like the rest of the wall of the same town be made round the foresaid dwelling, beginning from the west side of Watergate, and reaching southwards as far as the bank of the Thames, and extending along the bank westwards as far as the fee of the Abbat of Bec in the parish of St. Bodhoc, and then turning again northwards till it joins the old wall of the foresaid borough on the east side of the small postern;’