  In 1229/30 Grosseteste began a formal association with the Franciscans at Oxford as their first lecturer.  The Franciscans had arrived at Oxford in 1224. Their Minister Provincial, Agnellus of Pisa, provided this small but growing group with their first school and requested that Grosseteste lecture to them.  Grosseteste’s high regard for the mendicants no doubt played a role in his acceptance of this request. Some indeed thought that Grosseteste would himself follow the path of many other eminent scholars of his day and join the Franciscan order, but this was not to be. Instead, in 1235 he was elected Bishop of Lincoln. He was not the electors’ first choice but rather a compromise candidate, but he went on to become a powerful and exacting bishop.  Grosseteste’s teaching career was over, but he continued to enjoy close relations with the Franciscans for the rest of his life. They were members of his episcopal household and he employed them as assistants and bequeathed his books to them. These books, kept in the Oxford Franciscan convent library, were to become an important source for later thinkers’ knowledge of Grosseteste’s teachings.