"For three or four hundred years or more the monastic order did not
hasten to destruction so quickly as their order [Minorites and
Preachers] of whom now the brothers, twenty-four years having scarcely
elapsed, had first built in England dwellings which rivalled regal
palaces in height. These are they who daily expose to view their
inestimable treasures, in enlarging their sumptuous edifices, and
erecting lofty walls, thereby impudently transgressing the limits of
their original poverty and violating the basis of their religion,
according to the prophecy of German Hildegarde. When noblemen and rich
men are at the point of death, whom they know to be possessed of great
riches, they, in their love of gain, diligently urge them, to the
injury and loss of the ordinary pastors, and extort confessions and
hidden wills, lauding themselves and their own order only, [247] and
placing themselves before all others. So no faithful man now believes
he can be saved, except he is directed by the counsels of the
Preachers and Minorites."--Matthew Paris's English History. Translated
by the Rev. J. A. Giles, 1889, Vol. I.