The fate of the Observants was closely linked with that of Elizabeth Barton. Early in the reign of Henry VIII, as has been recorded above, a prelate of the black monks had complained of the strictness of the reforming regulations of Wolsey. It was not given to all, he said, to emulate the austerity of the Carthusians, of the Bridgettines, or of the Franciscan Observants. The collocation of these three bodies is significant: it was precisely they who, in different ways and tempers, opposed the designs of the king and were in consequence silenced or dispersed by authority before the general assault was delivered upon all the religious orders. Of the three, the Observants were the first to challenge Henry, and they were to prove at once more vocal, more violent and more unanimous in their opposition than any other order.

The Observants were the only representatives in England of the reforming movements of the later Middle Ages which had given birth to a number of new and zealous organizations among the monks and friars. In origin one of the successive waves of fervour which in every century had endeavoured to spiritualize and rejuvenate the institute of St Francis, the Observants had, as we have already seen, counted in their number three of the great Franciscan luminaries of the fifteenth century, St Bernardine of Siena, St James della Marchia, and St John Capistran.