From the family records it appears that he was one of the earlier Knights of the Garter.
The future malleus hæreticorum was already at Oxford the hammer of recalcitrant friars. Before his election to the chancellorship the friars had given the university a great deal of trouble, claiming to be outside its authority, not only for themselves but even for the students whom they sheltered in their houses. The same difficulty arose at Cambridge; and both the friars and the universities carried their quarrel to the Archbishop and to the King—to the former, apparently, before he had resigned his chancellorship of the kingdom into the hands of Wykeham. As a result it was ordered in the King's name that henceforth no scholar should be received into the houses of any of the four mendicant Orders—Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, or Augustinians—under the age of eighteen; that the friars should not produce any new bull from the Pope, or take advantage of any old one, in their controversies with the universities; and that any future difference between the parties should be decided in the King's Court, without further appeal to Rome—which, indeed, would be an offence against the statute of Præmunire.
Wyclif and Courtenay were associated in this dispute against the Orders, which left rankling memories in the minds of all concerned. It was natural that Courtenay's election should have been stoutly resisted by the friars, who were by no means prepared to obey the monition which had been addressed to them. They even went so far as to
