Size

The first hermitages of the orders preceding the union of 1256 generally housed small numbers: in the Sienese countryside they seem never to have exceeded ten men, mostly recruited locally. The move into an urban context certainly involved expansion in numbers but records are frustratingly incomplete. One of the best indications of size is provided by contracts or other agreements listing the friars present, but these often name only representatives acting on behalf of a larger community. Calculating the size of that larger number is a hazardous business. Francis Roth and Keith Egan used royal pittances to estimate the size of English houses in the thirteenth century, giving results which varied from about sixty-four in London in October 1289 to four or six at Berwick in December 1299, but the London figure fluctuates between perhaps forty in the early 1280s to sixty again in 1324. Although most recruits to houses without a studium were local, the itinerant life of the friar meant that numbers could and did vary substantially. Later foundations frequently depended on an apostolic minimum of twelve, as prescribed in papal privileges and carried out in practice at Weil der Stadt (1294), Stafford (1343), Carhaix in Brittany (1355) or Atherstone (1374), amongst others. But this rule did not always apply and once established, some houses inevitably shrank, while others grew exponentially.