Greyfriars, London

[1] The establishment included a conventual church that was one of the largest in London, and a studium or regional university, with an extensive library of logical and theological texts.

They settled in London in the summer of 1225, after John Iwyn, a wealthy businessman, bought a plot of land for them in the parish of St Nicholas in the Shambles (butchers' quarter).

[5] In 1229 King Henry III gave the Conventual Franciscans of London oak to build their house.

Historian Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, who published the London Greyfriars' register and wrote a history of the site in the same volume, concludes from the sums of money spent on building work in this period that the friary would have been "of a modest kind".

In 1301–1302 Queen Margaret (Marguerite of France, born 1282, second wife of King Edward I) spent 60 marks on land in the parish of St Nicholas for the Grey Friars.

The Friars were made to confess that "the perfeccion of Christian liuyng dothe not conciste in ... weryng of a grey cootte, disgeasing our selffe aftyr straunge fassions, dokynge, nodyngs and bekynge, in gurdyng our selffes wythe a gurdle full of knots, and other like Papisticall ceremonyes"[7] After the Surrender, some of the houses on the site were converted for private use, and the church was closed and used as a store-house for treasure looted from the French.

Christ's Hospital (Blue Coat School) was founded for orphans in some of the old friary buildings in 1553 by Edward VI.