‘It is generally reported and proved by experience, that the nobles of this realm, those of good birth, and very many of the common people, are afraid, and therefore cease, to send their sons or relatives or others dear to them in tender youth, when they would make most advance in primitive sciences, to the University to be instructed, lest any friars of the Order of Mendicants should entice or induce such children, before they have reached years of discretion, to enter the Order of the same Mendicants; and because owing to the admission of such boys to the Mendicant Orders, the tranquillity of the students of the University has been often disturbed; therefore the said University, zealous in the bowels of piety both for the number of her sons and the quiet of her students, has ordained and decreed, that if any of the Order of Mendicants shall receive to their habit in this University, or induce, or cause to be received or induced, any such youth before the completion of his eighteenth year at least, or shall send such an one away from the University or cause him to be sent away, in order that he may be received into the same Order elsewhere: then _eo ipso_ no one of the cloister or community of such a friar, ... being a graduate, shall during the year immediately following, read or attend lectures in this University or elsewhere where such exercises would count as discharge of the statutable requirements in this University (_vel alibi quod in hac Vniversitate pro forma aliqua sibi cedat_); and this penalty shall be inflicted on all those of the Order of Mendicants, and the associates of all those, who shall be convicted by credible persons of having withdrawn youths in any way from the University, or from hearing philosophy.’ The friars did not deny the charge, but defended their conduct[531], and exerted themselves to the utmost to obtain a repeal of the statute. Their efforts were successful. While a suit which they had begun in the Roman Court was yet undecided, the Provincials of the four Orders laid their grievances before the King in Parliament[532]. In 1366 the obnoxious statute was formally annulled, on condition that the friars’ suits at Rome and elsewhere against the University should cease[533]. The latter, however, did not abandon the struggle; its influence is probably to be seen in the petition of the Commons in 1402[534], that no one be allowed to enter any of the four Orders under the age of twenty-one years. The King’s answer was not favourable: he ordained merely that no friar should admit to his Order an infant under fourteen years without the assent of his father, mother, or guardians. The ordinance applied to the whole of England, and the petition of the Commons is a sign that the popularity of the friars had suffered under the attacks of Wiclif.