Opinion on the spiritual merits of the friars of late medieval England is much divided. In their own time, the fraternal orders attracted considerable criticism, stemming initially from their fierce battles with the secular clergy with whose ministry they were in direct competition. Indeed, as modern literary and theology scholars have observed, late medieval criticism of the friars was in large part rooted in stereotypes derived from the exegetically-charged debates of the mid thirteenth century. Richard Fitzralph, John Wyclif and even Geoffrey Chaucer drew upon them in their critiques. By contrast, modern historians – certainly in recent years – have been inclined to view late medieval friars in a more positive light, as inspired preachers who earned many friends among the laity, especially the noble, gentry and mercantile classes. It is undeniably true that the great and the good left them generous bequests at their deaths and chose to be buried in their fine churches.

Such popularity with the wealthy, however, was regarded unfavourably by some of the friars’ contemporaries. Wycliffite writers, in particular, saw it as a hypocritical contradiction of the fraternal ideal of poverty, and it is evident that many of their criticisms derived not merely from historical characterisation but also from their own experiences and observations. The criticisms that I would like to focus on here relate to this same issue of betrayal of the poverty ethos. Specifically, I will contend that late medieval friars in England did not derive all of their livelihood from begging and gifts, but at least some received regular stipends and salaries. This same claim was made in the Upland series of Wycliffite tracts written in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and it can now be substantiated by evidence drawn from clerical taxation records. This paper will present and analyse this evidence and then consider how these findings alter our perception of the late medieval English friar.

We begin, naturally, with the tax records. The unit of taxation of the clergy, like the laity, was its landed property. The secular clergy were taxed on their ecclesiastical benefices and members of the religious orders on their income from spiritual and temporal lands. Since, according to the rule of the four fraternal orders – Augustinian, Dominican, Franciscan and Carmelite – friars were not allowed to hold any property, they were traditionally exempt from taxation.