‘in urbe redolet Cantuarie, ac plures nostre congregacionis fratres ipsius sedulos auditores ita sacre scripture aspersione intima fecundavit, quod ipsos ad lectoris officium in scolis nostris subeundum ydoneos reputamus; nos unum de fratribus et commonachis nostris predictis loco dicti fratris Roberti ad hujusmodi ministerium exequendum duximus subrogare[448].’ Thus the friars disseminated over the country, from the universities outwards, the ‘New Learning’ of the thirteenth century. But the fame of the Franciscan school at Oxford was not only English, but European[449]. Friars were sent thither to study not only from Scotland[450] and Ireland[451], but from France and Aquitaine[452], Italy[453], Spain[454], Portugal[455], and Germany[456]; while many of the Franciscan schools on the Continent, both in universities and elsewhere[457], drew their teachers from England, and, in England, mainly from Oxford. Eccleston mentions a friar who studied with him at Oxford, where his lectures, after some failures, won the admiration of Grostete; afterwards, as his fame increased, he was called by the Minister-General to Lombardy, and enjoyed a great reputation even at the Papal court[458]. Grostete, on his return from the Council of Lyons, was anxious to get Adam Marsh out of the neighbourhood of Paris as soon as possible. ‘It is not safe,’ he writes to the Provincial Minister, ‘to let Adam stay there; for many greatly desire to keep him at Paris, especially now that Alexander of Hales and John de Rupellis are dead; and so both you and I shall be deprived of our greatest comfort[459].’ At another time[460] the General writes to the Provincial Minister of England, requesting him to send English friars to Paris to teach; it was probably on this occasion that Richard of Cornwall[461] left Oxford to win the applause of his hearers at Paris. Peckham received his early education in the schools of his Order at Oxford, and lectured at Paris and at the Court of Rome[462]. Among those whom the Oxford Convent sent to teach in the universities of the Continent, were John Wallensis, William of Gainsborough, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham[463]. All these names belong to the thirteenth or early fourteenth century; from that time onwards international jealousies and wars rendered the connexion of the English universities with Paris far less close, and contemporaneous with this breach was the beginning of the intellectual decline of the Order of St. Francis.