The History of Pontefract in Yorkshire Author:George Fox General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1827 Original Publisher: Sold by John Fox Subjects: Pontefract (England) Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access t... more »o Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: They practised the greatest austerities, as essentially necessary to subdue the flesh, and secure final happiness. They rose in the summer at four o'clock in the morning, and in the winter at five. They slept in their coffins upon straw, and on every morning they dug a shovel full of earth in forming their graves. They crept on their knees to devotion, and imposed on themselves strict silence from vespers until the tierce next day. They ate twice in each day, but refrained from flesh meat. They were enjoined confinement in their cells, and to continuance in prayer; and fasted from the feast of the Holy Cross until Easter. The rigour of their discipline was relaxed by pope Innocent IV. and the pious brothers who had grown weary of mortification, were once again permitted the use of flesh meat. From their dress they were called White friars, from their first residence, Carmelites, or brethren of the blessed Virgin, and from their poverty, mendicants. Their rules were given them by St. Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem, about the year 1205. They came into England about the same period as the Benedictines, A. D. 1240, and Edmund de Lascy, earl of Lincoln, and constable of Chester, who died about the year 1257, granted to them a house here ; f although no vestige remains or tradition points out where it stood. I. eland, when describing Pontefractgenerally, thus writes : -- ' This parte of the toun where St. Leonard's in the Frith stands, as I lerne is railul Kyrkeby, and in this parte of the toun Edmund de Lascy builded a house of Whitefrie...« less