‘Know that whereas certain horses, cups, books, money, silver vessels, and diverse other goods and chattels, which belonged to our beloved brother in Christ, John Welle of the Order of Friars Minors, doctor in theology, have been abstracted and carried away out of his dwelling in London by one Thomas Bele his servant and other evil doers, ... we have of our special favour granted to the said John all the horses, cups, books, money, vessels and other goods and chattels aforesaid, wheresoever they may be,’ &c. It was probably the glaring contrast between the lofty claims of the friars and their actual life, rather than any inferiority in their morality as compared with the secular priests, which exposed them to the bitterest denunciations and taunts of the reformers. The Mendicants were far more in sympathy with the poor than were the endowed monks, and possessed far more than the parish priests the confidence of the people[525]. Wiclif recognised this fact, while he lamented it. ‘Though it raine on the Awter of the Parish Church, the blind people is so deceived, that they will rather give to waste houses of Friars, then to Parish Churches, or to common waies, though men cattle and beasts ben perished therein[526].’ The first important attack on the friars in the fourteenth century was that led by Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh. He had been Fellow of Balliol College before 1325 and Chancellor of the University in 1333[527]. While assailing the whole principle of mendicancy, his main charge against the friars, especially the friars at Oxford, was that of ‘stealing’ children, i.e. of secretly inducing them to enter the Mendicant Orders. In 1357 the Archbishop was cited to appear and defend himself before the Papal Court at Avignon; and on the 8th of November, in a solemn assembly of Pope and Cardinals, he made a great speech in defence of the parish priests against the Mendicants[528]. The Archbishop stated that, owing to the privileges of hearing confessions which the friars enjoyed, almost all youths in the Universities, and in the houses of their parents (in nearly all of which friars were to be found as ‘_familiares_’), had Mendicants as their confessors.