Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/412

404 BROTHER WILLIAM OF ENGLAND July the church of Beauvais. There is a gap between 2 December 1238 and 4 March 1241, during which time the only letter in which Friar William is mentioned is the letter printed below. On 4 March 1241 the pope writes to Friar William instructing him to apply 5,000 marks of crusading money for the ransom of Alberic count of Montfort ; he is to make up this sum without touching money given to the knights templars or hospitallers or that left by the late bishop of Norwich (probably Ralph Blunde- ville). In April 1241 Friar William is described as custodian of the Friars Minor of Gascony,^ and is associated with the bishop of Oleron in collecting large sums of crusading money in Beam. About the same year (1241) the French continuator of William of Tyre notes the presence of a friar minor, ' frere Guillaume, qui estoit peneancierz I'apostole ', with the army in Syria, and gives the prayer with which he ended some of his sermons and which some of the crusaders turned into songs.^ From letters of Innocent IV dated 7 August and 17 September 1243, it appears that William had left behind him his socius, Friar Robert de Colli vil, in charge of money collected in the city and diocese of Coutances ; another papal letter of 23 December 1243 instructs the treasurer and knights templars of Paris to take charge of the residue of the money collected for the ransom of the count of Montfort (now deceased) by the late archbishop of Sens and Brother William penitentiary of the last pope. (The phrase bonae memoriae probably applies only to Archbishop Walter of Sens, who died in 1241.) Assuming that William familiaris is identical with William poenitentiarius of Gregory IX and therefore an Englishman, can we identify him with any of the many contemporary English Franciscans who bore the name of William ? The most likely seems to be William de Cole vile. From Eccleston we learn that William de Colevile senior, a man of the highest simplicity and of the utmost charity and holiness, came to England from France with Haymo of Faversham, soon after the arrival of Agnellus : this implies that he had entered the order abroad. He induced Adam of Exeter or Oxford, socius of Adam Marsh, to take the Franciscan habit, probably in 1226. He was appointed the first visitor of the English province, and held his visitatorial chapter in London, at the time of the opening of the chapel built by William Joynier : the exact date is unknown, but it must have been before 28 September 1230, soon after which time the second visitor was sent. Eccleston adds that later William de Colevile's » The custody of Gascony was perhaps equivalent to the later custody of Bordeaux, in the province of Aquitaine. » Becueil dee Hist, des Crois., Occid. u. 650-1, quoted by Gulobovich, Biblioteca, &c., i. 188-9.