Crossed Friars (Bretheren of the Holy Cross)

The Bretheren of the Holy Cross, also known as the Crossed Friars, Crutched Friars, or Crouched Friars, were an order of preaching canons who were commonly assumed to be friars in late-medieval and early modern England. Arriving in England in the mid-thirteenth century, the Crossed Friars occupied a site on Hart Street from the 1260s until King Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538.