Three streets in Chester in the neighbourhood of the Church of S. Martin bear the names of Grey Friars, Black Friars, and White Friars respectively. During the thirteenth century numbers of begging friars, clad in simple grey or black or white tunics, came to Chester and settled in the poorest quarters of the city. Like the early disciples of Christ, whose lives of poverty they sought to imitate, they carried with them neither gold nor silver, and walked unshod, begging their food and shelter as they journeyed from town to town.

Their simple teaching appealed to the poor, who soon began to look upon them as their best friends. For they brought the Gospel of Christ to them in their streets, and tended the sick and the aged amid their squalid homes. They were forbidden by the rules of their Orders to receive either money or lands.

The first to arrive in Chester were the Dominicans or Black Friars, who settled near the Watergate when Randle Blundeville was earl. The old palace of the Stanleys formed part of the home of the Black Friars. They were followed a few years later by the Franciscans or Grey Friars who also lived by the Watergate, near the spot on which the Linen Hall was afterwards erected, and in the reign of Edward the First the White Friars or Carmelites took up their abode in the neighbourhood of White Friars Street.

Unlike the monks, the friars had at first no fixed homes of their own, and preached at wooden crosses set up at the street corners. Afterwards, with the alms they received from the people and the legacies from rich men who admired their devout lives, each of the different Orders of friars built for themselves a permanent dwelling-place or friary, to which a church in time was added. The Church of the Carmelites must have been one of great beauty. Some of the glazed coloured tiles which formed the pavement of the building may be seen in the Grosvenor Museum. Excavations have been made at the spot where the tiles were found, and three feet lower down the workmen came across broken columns and bases of a large Roman building. Mediaeval Chester was built on the ruins of the ancient Roman city. A doorway in an old house called 'The Friars' was part of the Carmelite Friary.

The friars studied medicine and devoted themselves particularly to the care of lepers. They also built schools for the children of the poor. The Dominicans were also skilful engineers, and Edward the First employed them in making wells and laying water-pipes in the city.

Unfortunately some of the friars did not live up to their early vows of poverty, and the rules which S. Francis and S. Dominic had drawn up for them. When wealth poured in upon them they became jealous of one another, and quarrels and disturbances frequently arose between them. The Records of Chester tell of many violent acts on the part of the Dominicans and Carmelites, the latter of whom, armed with cudgels, were wont to roam in the night time through the city to the terror of the inhabitants.

The monks of the thirteenth century had also become idle and luxurious. They had, as you have already read, become great landowners, and received the manorial dues from the manors which belonged to them. The Abbots of Vale Royal ruled with a rod of iron. The poor people rebelled, and fights between them and the monks were frequent. They laid their complaints before the king, and good Queen Philippa interceded for them as she did for the burghers of Calais, but the abbot was generally able to prove his 'rights', and the people obtained little satisfaction. The wealth of the monasteries was also greatly increased by the cultivation of crops and the sale of their wool. But the richer they became, the more they neglected their spiritual duties. The poor could no longer look to them for their spiritual teaching or for charity and good works, and so gladly turned to the friars who for a time ministered to their needs so well.

Monks and friars alike were bitterly attacked in Edward the Third's reign in a poem written by William Langland. In this poem, which is called 'The Vision of Piers Plowman', the poet speaks of the ignorance and sloth of the monks, one of whom is made to confess that he cannot even chant the Lord's Prayer.

A few exceptions there were to the general rule. In his quiet retreat in the Abbey of S. Werburgh, Ranulf Higden wrote a work called 'Polychronicon', which contained a history of the world from the Creation to his own day, with geographical descriptions of the different countries of the world, and the favourite mediaeval legends of Babylon and Rome. The book is valuable because it is one of the earliest pieces of literature written in the language of mixed Norman and Saxon which is our mother tongue to-day. When printing was invented in the fifteenth century, the Polychronicon was one of the books printed by Caxton the first English printer.

Many of the churches in Cheshire show us that the masons and builders of Edward the Third's long reign made great progress in their art.

We have seen how the thirteenth-century workmen learned to group a number of lancets together under one hood, and to shape the lancet heads like a clover leaf by the addition of cusps. In the fourteenth century the space above a row of lancet or trefoil-headed lights was filled in with a number of geometrical figures such as circles and foils. Hence the name of Geometrical or Decorated has been given to the work of this period. The large east windows of many of our Cheshire churches are made up in this way. The patterns of flowing lines thus produced are called 'bar tracery'. There are Decorated windows in the aisles of the choir and south transept of Chester Cathedral.

Windows and arches were now made wider than in the previous century. The builders of the Pointed period sought after height; those of the Decorated period aimed rather at breadth and openness.

The fourteenth-century masons studied nature carefully, and put masses of carved fruit or flowers or leaves in the capitals of their columns. The arches of the nave of Chester Cathedral prove this fact.

A favourite ornament of the Decorated period is the crocket, a projecting bunch of foliage added to pinnacles, the hoods of arches, and the canopies of niches and tombs. Another device is the ball-flower carved in the mouldings. The ball-flower is as sure a sign of Decorated mouldings as the dog-tooth was in those of the Early English period.

The choir of Stockport Parish Church is a beautiful example of the Decorated style, and the greater portions of Macclesfield, Nantwich, and Prestbury Parish Churches belong to the same period. In many other churches you will find some detail, generally a window or a doorway or an altar tomb, which will show you some of the features of this style.

In the Early English and Decorated periods a spire was sometimes added to the tower, as at Astbury and Bebington. The spire grew out of the pyramid-shaped roof with which the towers of Norman churches were covered. In the low-lying portions of the Cheshire plain, where stone was scarce but timber plentiful, the framework of a church was often built of wood. In the village of Warburton, on the banks of the Mersey, is a fourteenth-century wooden church, which served as the chapel of a priory that was established here by the Normans. The name itself ('Werburgh-ton') speaks to us of S. Werburgh, the patron saint of the Abbey of Chester, and a field by the river is still called the Abbey Croft; the stone coffins within the church once contained the bones of monks who lived here.

The arches within are made of rough-hewn timber, rudely shaped with the axe. Lantern pegs of buck-horn from the deer that once roamed the woodlands of Dunham Massey are fixed on the oak pillars; the roof is supported by stout cross-beams. The brick tower has been added at a later day, and the south wall built when the timbers on that side of the church collapsed. The timber churches of Lower Peover and Marton belong to the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. Marton Church was the burial-place of the Davenports, who lived at Marton Hall.

The Davenports had a more splendid home at Bramhall, the oldest portions of which were built when Edward the Third was king. The great hall at Baguley was built about the same time. The massive upright posts are cut from timber more than two feet square, and the spaces between them filled with wickerwork and plaster. The open roof is supported by a mighty 'tie-beam' and two uprights called 'queen-posts'[2]. The windows are tall and the lights narrow, and separated from one another by oak mullions.

Surely the men who built it had hearts of oak. The building reflects the rugged character of the men of the days when 'knights were bold' and 'might was right'. In this hall we can picture old Sir William Baggiley feasting with his family and his retainers, when the summons came from his king to follow him to the French wars.

His effigy still rests in the hall that he himself perhaps built. It is broken and battered, but enough remains to show us that the knights who fought for Edward and the Black Prince had changed the fashion of their war dress since the Crusades. A hood of mail still protects the head and neck, but the suit of mail has given way to plates of steel riveted or hooked together, so that the whole body is cased in armour.