imposing extent and dimensions, being three yards in breadth, two and
a quarter miles in circumference, and having thirty-two towers and
twelve gates.[3] Nehemiah Wharton, a Parliamentary officer in 1642,
reports of the city that it is:

Environed with a wall co-equal, if not exceedinge, that of
London, for breadth and height; and with gates and battlements,
magnificent churches and stately streets and abundant fountains
of water; altogether a place very sweetly situate and where there
is no stint of venison.

To return to the monastic history. We have seen how, in the
mid-thirteenth century the Monastery had become the landlord of the
city; shortly before this it had been so impoverished with ceaseless
quarrels with the King and the Lichfield Chapter, involving costly
appeals to Rome, that the Prior was reduced to asking the hospitality
of the monks of Derley for some of the brethren. A period of
prosperity followed and many benefactions flowed in, including the
gift of various churches by the king. It was after twenty-six years of
quarrelling that the Pope, in 1224, had appointed to the bishopric
Walter de Stavenby, an able and learned man. During his episcopacy the
friars made their appearance in England, and by him the Franciscans
were introduced at Lichfield, while at Coventry Ranulph, Earl of
Chester, gave them land in Cheylesmore on which to build their oratory
and house.

They were not generally welcomed by the monks. A Benedictine laments
their first appearance thus "Oh shame! oh worse than shame! oh
barbarous pestilence! the Minor Brethren are come into England!" and
at Bury they were obliged to build outside a mile radius from the
Abbey. The parish priests also soon found out that they were undersold
in the exercise of their spiritual offices and although no doubt many
badly needed awakening they were not, on that account, the more likely
to welcome the intruders.

Another innovation, affecting the fortunes of the parish priest, had
its beginning under the rule of Bishop Stavenby though its greatest
development occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This
was the foundation of Chantries designed primarily for the maintenance
of a priest or priests to say mass daily or otherwise for the soul's
health of the founder, his family and forbears. The earliest we hear
of are one at Lincoln, and one at Hatherton in Coventry Archdeaconry
while the Bishop himself endowed one in Lichfield