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As the monastic system was increased, and especially after the mendicant orders had consecrated mendicancy, the evil assumed gigantic dimensions.

It cannot, I regret to say, be denied that mendicancy is very common in Ireland; so common as to be little less than a national scandal.

It was no part of Francis’s design that the friars should live by idle mendicancy, and we have seen that the Rule expresses the obligation to labor.

He recommended a life of religious mendicancy and voluntary poverty as absolutely necessary for admission to his kingdom.

This licensed mendicancy was finally suppressed by the Act of Parliament, passed in the thirty-ninth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, “For the Suppressing of Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars.”