apparently while his case was considered. It does not appear what the charge against him was, or what (if any) further steps were taken[621]. His companion was warned to moderate his attentions to the same Joanna, wife of William Cooper or Cowper, of St. Ebbe’s, who appeared in the trial above referred to. Joanna seems to have taken a special interest in the Minorites. At the end of 1533[622] Friar Arthur, B.D., appealed to the court to stop her spreading evil reports against him, which she had failed to prove; she was ordered to abstain in future ‘from defaming the said friar or any of his house on pain of a fine of 40_s._ to be paid to the Convent of friars minors, and banishment from the town; also that she shall not in any way lay traps (_paret ... insidias_) for the said Arthur or any of his Order or cause such traps to be laid, under the aforesaid penalties.’ But if Friar Arthur was innocent, he was peculiarly unfortunate. A few months later[623] he again appealed for protection against the libels of Nicholas Andrews and John Poker, scholars of Peckwater’s Inn. At this time Dr. Baskerfeld, Warden of the Grey Friars, was acting as substitute for the Commissary, and he heard the case in the house of the Minorites. The accusation has been carefully obliterated in the Chancellor’s book, evidently by the friars themselves, but the gist of it can be deciphered. ‘Judex interrogavit eosdem an voluissent prefatum Arcturum accusare et denunciare: qui responderunt se nolle[624] hoc facere ...; a quibus judex petiit ... an aliquid scandalosum et d ... scirent contra dictum fratrem, et interrogavit eos quid hoc erat: et dicebant ambo hiis verbis sequentibus (tactis evangeliis); ... they saw the seyde frere Arctur in a chambre at the sygne of the Bere in all hollows parische in Oxoford with a woman in a red capp ... both locked together in a chambre, and seid to the mayd of the hous, “then ba ... why ... suche ale here to be kept? It is not thy masters will and thy mistres that ony suche ale shold be kept here.”’ Friar Arthur strenuously denied the accusation, and the court adjourned for two hours. When it reassembled, the defendants refused to submit to Dr. Baskerfeld’s jurisdiction, arguing that he was incompetent to decide a case in which one of the members of his convent was so deeply implicated. Two days later, however, they confessed before the judge that they would not swear to their original statement, and both sides promised to forgive and forget the whole matter.