English
Monasteries
[Illustration:
_Allen & Sons_] [_Nottingham_
CHAPTER-HOUSE CHAPEL, NEWSTEAD PRIORY (Austin Canons)
[In continuous use since the Dissolution]]
ENGLISH
MONASTERIES
From Saxon Days to their
Dissolution
London
G. J. PALMER AND SONS
PORTUGAL STREET
1904
CAMBRIDGE
PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER
ALEXANDRA STREET
_Introduction_
In accordance with many requests, the following sketch of some of the
features of monastic life in England is reprinted from _The Church
Times_, in a somewhat extended and slightly amended form.
It has been suggested that it would be helpful to students to give a
list of authorities on which these pages are based. A large number
of authorities, such as monastic chartularies and customaries, and
episcopal registers, only exist in manuscript; but the following are
some of the principal printed books, in addition to the extended
edition in eight vols. of Dugdale’s _Monasticon_:
_English Monastic Life_ (1904). Abbot Gasquet.
_Customary of the Benedictine Monasteries of St. Augustine,
Canterbury, and St. Peter, Westminster_ (1902). Henry Bradshaw
Society.
_Observances of the Austin Priory of Barnwell_ (1897). J. Willis
Clark.
_Mediæval England_ (1903), Chaps. 3, 9, 15. Mary Bateson.
_Rites and Customs of Durham_ (1842). Surtees Society.
_Halmota Prioratus Dunelmensis_ (1886). Surtees Society.
_Durham Account Rolls_, 3 vols. (1898-1900). Surtees Society.
_St. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines_ (1902). Rose Graham.
_Gesta Abbatum S. Albani_, and other monastic volumes of the Rolls
Series, including Nos. 8, 28, 29, 33, 36, 43, 45, 72, 78, 79, 85,
and 96.
_The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakeland_, of Bury St. Edmunds (1903).
Sir Ernest Clarke.
_The Obedientiaries of Abingdon Abbey_ (1902). Camden Society.
_Records of Wroxall_ (1904). J. P. Rylands.
_Saint Anselm_ (1888), Chap. 3. Dean Church.
_A Consuetudinary of St. Swithun’s_ (1886). Dean Kitchin.
_Obedientiary Rolls of St. Swithun’s_ (1892). Dean Kitchin.
_Charters and Records of Cluni_ (1888). Sir G. Duckett.
_Rentalia et Custumaria of Glastonbury._ Somerset Record Society.
_Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich_ (1888). Dr. Jessopp.
_Collectanea Anglo-Premonstratensia_ (1904). Abbot Gasquet.
_Inventories of Christ Church, Canterbury_ (1902). Messrs. Legg and
Hope.
_Chartularies of Finchale Priory_ (1837); _of Jarrow and
Monkwearmouth_ (1854); _of Fountain’s Abbey_ (1863-78); _of Whitby
Abbey_ (1879); _of Newhouse Abbey_ (1878); _of Rievaulx Abbey_
(1889); _of Giseburne Priory_ (1889); _and of Brinkburn Priory_
(1893). Surtees Society.
_Chartularies of St. Peter’s, Bath_ (1893); _of Bruton and Montacute
Priories_ (1894); _and of Muchelney and Athelney Abbeys_ (1899).
Somerset Record Society.
_Episcopal Registers of Exeter_, 7 vols. (1886, etc.). F. C.
Hingeston-Randolph.
_Episcopal Registers of Winchester_, 3 vols. (1896, in progress).
Hampshire Record Society.
_Episcopal Registers of Worcester_ (1898, in progress). Worcester
Historical Society.
_Sede Vacante Register of Worcester Priory_, five parts (1893-7).
Worcester Historical Society.
_Episcopal Registers of Bath and Wells_, 4 vols. (1887-1889, in
progress). Somerset Record Society.
_Register of Walter Gray, Archbishop of York_ (1872). Surtees Society.
_Register of Bishop Kellaw of Durham_, 4 vols. (1873-8). Rolls Series.
_Register of Archbishop Peckham_, 3 vols. (1882-5). Rolls Series.
For the suppression of the monasteries the following should be
consulted:
_Letters and Papers of the reign of Henry VIII._ (Domestic State
Papers). Dr. Gairdner.
_History of the Church of England_, 6 vols. Canon Dixon.
_Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries_, 2 vols. (1888). Abbot
Gasquet.
_Henry VIII._ (1901). F. Darwin Swift.
_Reformation of the Church of England_, 2 vols. (1882.) J. H. Blunt.
The _Victoria County Histories_, now in progress, propose to deal
thoroughly with all the religious houses; up to the present, those of
Hampshire (2nd vol.) have been treated by Rev. Dr. Cox, and those of
Bedfordshire (1st vol.) by Sister Elspeth. The _Times_, in reviewing
the first of these volumes, said that if the scheme was followed up in
other counties after a like fashion with Hampshire, the result would be
the issue of a new ‘Monasticon.’
Possibly it is presumptuous to quote St. Augustine in connection with a
booklet of this description, but the words with which the great Doctor
concludes his treatise _De Civitate Dei_ seem applicable:
“If in these pages there is either too much or too little, the fault is
mine, and may I be forgiven; but if there is just sufficient join with
me in giving thanks to God.”
F. S. A.
_October, 1904._
_Contents_
CHAPTER I
PAGE
VOCATION 1
CHAPTER II
THE MONASTIC TENANTS 18
CHAPTER III
EDUCATION IN MONASTERIES 32
CHAPTER IV
MONASTIC CHARITIES 40
CHAPTER V
MONASTIC DIET 49
CHAPTER VI
MONASTIC MORALITY AND FOREST COURTS 69
CHAPTER VII
VISITATIONS 80
CHAPTER VIII
THE TWO COMMISSIONS OF HENRY VIII 93
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUDING WORDS 108
_List of Illustrations_
I NEWSTEAD PRIORY _Frontispiece_
PAGE
II RIEVAULX ABBEY _facing_ 16
III FOUNTAINS ABBEY ” 32
IV BYLAND ABBEY ” 48
V BUILDWAS ABBEY ” 64
VI LLANTHONY PRIORY ” 80
ENGLISH MONASTERIES
CHAPTER I
VOCATION
It is proposed, in the course of a few chapters, to put on record
certain facts and statements on the “religious” (using the word in its
technical signification) life of England from the seventh century to
the sixteenth. Such statements, though based on the original study of
a large number of episcopal registers and monastic chartularies, as
well as on a variety of old documents at the Public Record Office or in
private keeping, will, in many cases, only yield evidence familiar to
those well acquainted with a too little studied subject; but some of
the points brought forward may be novel to all.
It may be well, in the first instance, to disabuse the mind of the
low motives that are often supposed to have actuated men and women in
seeking admission to the cloistered life.
A recent American writer of repute, on _Monks and Monasteries_ (Mr.
Wishart, 1900) has said:--
“The jilted lover and the commercial bankrupt, the devoted or bereaved
wife, the pauper and the invalid, the social outcast and the shirker
of civic duties, the lazy and the fickle, were all to be found in the
ranks of the monastic orders.”
Now and again, in a very small minority of cases, such instances
as these found their way into the mediæval monasteries, with the
result that those whose intentions were so poor became the very ones
about whom scandal afterwards arose. But, broadly speaking, such a
statement, as applicable to the monastic life generally, is simply an
impossible libel, that could not be put forth by any genuine student
of monastic life. The notion of a “lazy” man or woman desiring to take
vows is an absurdity; that laziness, and other sins, might of course
attack cloistered as well as uncloistered lives, no one would deny.
The difficulties surrounding the first steps to enter a monastery
were by no means inconsiderable, the harshest side of the cloistered
life was always set sternly before the applicant, and the novices
were severely tested ere they were permitted to take the habit. As
we read the extraordinary and heart-rending methods adopted by the
English Carthusians to keep all save the most devoted out of their
ranks--precautions that were maintained, as can be proved, by the
Carthusians of Sheen up to the very moment of their terrible treatment
by Henry VIII.--who a short time before had praised them as the very
salt of the earth--the marvel is that they could ever find applicants
with sufficient courage to enter their ranks.
Among the Lansdowne MSS. of the British Museum is a small
fifteenth-century manuscript of the rule of the Carthusians of Sheen.
It opens with the form of receiving postulants and novices in English.
After a variety of preliminary questions had been put to the postulant
in chapter, he retired. Thereupon the prior asked each of the chapter
in turn whether they thought the applicant worthy to be admitted. If
the replies were in the affirmative, the candidate was recalled, and
was thus addressed by the prior:--
“The convent hath deliberated of your humble petition. And now our
Statutes doe appoint me breefly to set before your eyes the strictness
and austoritie of our order, and the length and prolixitie of the
divine office as well of the day office as the night office, which in
the wynter is farr longer, beside the office of our Blessed Lady which
you are to say daylie in your cell; morover you are to say yearly a
hundred dead offices in private, likewise many Psalters (or as we
tearme them monachales) which you are yearly to say unless you performe
them in masses. For your cloathing and lodging, after you have received
the habitt, you can make no further use of lynen except handkerchers
towels and the like, but for your body you are to weare a shirte of
heare and a cord aboute your loynes and a wolen shirte. You are to lie
upon strawe or a bed of chaffe with a blanket betweene. For your diet
it is a perpetuall abstinence from flesh, insomuch that in the greatest
or most dangerous sickness you can expect no dispensation theirin.
Also a good parte of the yeare we abstaine from all Whitmeates, as in
Advent, Lent and all the Fridayes of the yeare, besides many other
fasts both of the church and of our order in which wee abstain from
Whitmeat.
“Likewise from the exaltation of the holie Crosse until Easter wee
fast with one meall a day, except some few days of recreation before
Advent and Lent. For silence and solitude it ought to be perpetuall,
except when our Statutes giveth license or that you aske leave.
These be the generall observances of our order common to all as well
as seniours as juniours. But besides these generall there are some
particular ordained and appointed for novices or newly professed to
exercise them in the purgative way, and for theire soner attaining of
humility and solid vertue, as is the dressing up of Alters, sweeping
of churches and chappels, making cleane of candelstickes, serving
of others and suchlike. Which workes by how much they are more vile
and contemptible in the eyes of the world, by so much they are more
precious and meritorious in the sight of Almighty God, and by how much
that men, wether more noble, better learned, or of greater talents doth
willingly and affectionately perform the same for the love of God by
so much soner they will obtain remission of theire sinnes, be purged
from their reliques, be freed from theire former evil habitts and
obtaine puritie of hart, humility, and other solid vertues, which are
not gotten without humiliation, and therefore those who doe flye or
withdraw themselves from y^e works of humility, doe deprive themselves
of the best meanes to gaine the vertue itselfe. These according to our
Statutes and the Custome of our house I have layed unto you. _Putasne
ista posse performare?_”
In the great majority of cases, it is arguing against fact and reason
to try and believe that aught save a generous Christian enthusiasm
for the higher life led England’s sons and daughters to embrace the
vowed life, from the dawn of monasticism down to its suppression. No
one intending to be true to the rule would be moved to embrace it
through a worldly motive, or to gain any temporal end, or leisured
spiritual ease. Some of the causes that have led men of education,
without perhaps any particular prejudice, and only badly informed, to
adopt such views, or to write such passages as those just cited from
Mr. Wishart’s book are not far to seek. The chief factor in bringing
about such a belief was the desire shown and often carried out by the
high-born founders or benefactors of religious houses to end their days
within the cloister and wearing the monk’s habit. Sometimes such as
these passed the last few years of their life in religious retirement,
and in other cases only months or even days. In the rough days from
which England suffered for some little time after the Conquest, certain
of the monastic founders led lives or committed acts unworthy of a
Christian layman, and their retirement to a monastery when their
powers were failing seems to us, from a modern standpoint, a rather
cowardly proceeding. Thus Hugh d’Avranches, made by the Conqueror
Count Palatine of Chester, whose active military life was disgraced
by many excesses, entered the monastery of St. Werburgh of Chester,
of his own foundation, there to end his days; but his religious life
was of brief duration, for he died on the fourth day of his retirement
from the world. Others beyond doubt entered the monastery, without
any expectation of early death, after particular excesses or special
crimes, with the idea of doing a something by way of satisfaction for
the expiation of their sins, and perchance to put hindrances in the way
of their re-occurrence. Those, however, who are ready to draw large
conclusions from such cases are quite forgetful of the terms under
which those who sought some share in the religious life far on in their
earthly career were admitted. No doubt, in several cases, such as that
of Count Hugh and other founders who entered their monasteries with
the hand of death already on them, the chapter would permit the dying
knight to be clad in a professed monk’s habit--and who can blame their
charity? But such a line of action was an acknowledged irregularity,
and quite at variance with the ordinary custom. Those who study
English monastic terms, and know that in the Cistercian abbeys, and
not infrequently in other religious houses, such as those of the White
Canons, the lay-brothers were termed _conversi_ or converts, sometimes
wonder how it came to pass that those who were not quire-monks, who
wore a different habit, whose hours for manual labour were far more
and for offices and meditation far less, came to be distinguished
by such a title as ‘converts.’ It was indeed a special triumph of
the established religious life that knights and other unruly men of
violent passions should be moved to lead a docile and humble life
within the abbey’s precincts, or working in the fields around; and
such men when they joined a community and proved themselves amenable
to discipline, occasionally joined the _conversi_, or converts, who
were thus originally styled to distinguish them from those who from
their youth had been dedicated to the cloister. It was but very rarely
that such as these were admitted to the priesthood or became chapter
or quire-monks; they only found entrance to the more menial position,
and hence by degrees the term _conversi_ or converts became equivalent
to lay-brothers. Just the same story is true of the quire-nuns and
the working sisters of the other sex. It therefore follows that those
jaundiced minds of Mr. Wishart’s cataloguing would after all, if they
succeeded in gaining admission, find the way open to nought save the
inferior position, and would not become, in any real sense of the term,
either monks or nuns.
Saving for the very few that were directly founded by kings or queens,
every monastic house in England, from the eighth to the thirteenth
century, was founded by men of large landed property, and, after
the Conquest, by those of feudal power. It was in this way, from the
very necessity of the case, that the religious houses obtained the
endowments of land or tithe that were essential for their support.
Not only did such as these found the monasteries, but they largely
helped to fill them. There is not a single old feudal family known
in English history but several of its members can be proved to have
entered the ranks of the religious. Nor were such as these only drawn
from the cadets of families of position or substance. Those who have
tried to study the earlier history of the county families of any of
our English shires will be quite familiar with cases in which the
ordinary succession of primogeniture in manorial or landed descent is
interrupted, because the eldest son had taken monastic vows.
The idea current among certain superficial writers, that there was
a perpetual warfare between the monastic and feudal system, cannot
be maintained by true historical students either in Christendom at
large or in England in particular. It is too often forgotten that the
monasteries were very largely recruited from those who were themselves
members of the feudal aristocracy. Particularly was this the case in
the eleventh century, when the influence of Hugh the Abbot of Cluny,
who was himself of high feudal birth, was so great. Lists or isolated
names of the members of the priories or cells of Cluniac foundation in
our own country of this period prove that these monks who settled on
our shores were, many of them, members of the French aristocracy.
Though it was the glory of the English Church in the most stringent
times of feudal tyranny to call to Holy Orders those who were specially
freed from among her own villeins for the purpose, and though many
of the lowliest birth attained to, then as now, high and responsible
position in the hierarchy, the other side of the shield must not be
forgotten. Columns might readily be filled with the names of those
in England who were members of good families, and did distinguished
service for the Church, though trained in cloistered seclusion. It may
suffice here to mention two or three of considerable mark in early
days. Winfrid of Crediton, who, after years of careful seclusion in
the Hampshire monastery of Nursling, became the renowned apostle of
Germany, under the title of Boniface, was the eldest child of wealthy
and noble parents. Biscop, who at the age of twenty-five gave himself
up to the monastic life, and became the celebrated abbot of the North
of England, so well known as St. Benedict Biscop, was of good birth and
position, and the owner of a considerable estate. “He despised,” says
Bede, “a temporal wealth that he might obtain that which is eternal;
he refused to be the father of mortal children, being fore-ordained of
Christ to educate for Him in spiritual doctrine immortal children in
Heaven.” St. Alphege, the saintly Archbishop martyred by the Danes in
1011, was born to high position and wealth, the only son of a family
of distinction; but he forsook all in favour of a Benedictine monastery.
When the time of the Conquest is passed, the evidence of those of
high birth seeking the cloister is fully maintained. The first two
Archbishops of Canterbury who ruled in the earlier Norman days,
Lanfranc and Anselm, men of great wealth and culture, the one of
senatorial rank and the other of noble origin, made considerable
temporal sacrifices to follow the Benedictine rule. Or once again, the
founder of the remarkable Order of the Gilbertines--who did so good and
pure a work right up to their dissolution, the only Order founded by
an Englishman--was Gilbert of Sempringham, the eldest son of a wealthy
Norman knight, who sacrificed his considerable estates to further his
conception of the monastic ideal. Now all these men, and many others
almost equally distinguished, entered the religious life without any
idea of afterwards emerging from the cloister and attaining to high
spiritual rule or administration; they were but examples of hundreds of
others of equal birth and self-sacrifice, who served God as faithfully
in their limited circles, though their acts remain unwritten on the
annals of mere human records.
Equally is all this true of the other sex. Re-Christianised England
of the pre-Norman days stands out in bold relief from the rest of
Christendom for the readiness, nay, the eagerness, with which gentle
ladies of royal blood and the proudest estate adopted the monastic
life, discarding all outward pomp and circumstance. Rapin, the French
historian, sneered at the number of royal saints produced by Saxon
England, who knew, as he thought, no suffering; but a much greater
Frenchman, the academician Montalembert, has amply justified their
memory in a chapter of singular beauty of language blended with careful
historical research. Nothing but the fact that the grace of God led
these Saxon ladies of high degree to see the beauty of the sacred life
can account for the way in which, throughout the seventh and early
part of the eighth century, they gave up worldly ease for cloistered
stillness. It was the same in nearly all the petty principalities--in
Kent there were the saints, Eadburg of Lyminge, Eanswith, Sexberga,
and Mildred; in East Anglia, Etheldreda, Wendreda, and Wimburga; in
Mercia, Kyneburga, Kyneswith, Pega, Werburga, and Millburga; among the
East Saxons, Ethelburga of Barking and Osyth; in Wessex, Frideswide,
Everilda, Sidwell and Cuthburga; and in Northumbria, Ebba and Hilda. In
the tenth century, also, there were the Saints Eadburga of Pershore,
Edith of Polesworth, Edith of Wilton, and Wilfrida.
Judged from the mere human standpoint, or even from the common-place
platform of average modern Christianity, conduct of this kind seems
mere foolishness; and worldlings have, forsooth, to imagine that all
such had been crossed in love, and soured with disappointment, or were
merely filled with a narrow-minded and tearful anxiety to save their
own souls. But, after all, the example set by these Christian Saxon
ladies has never died out, and never will, so long as the love of the
heavenly Bridegroom endures. England from the seventh century downwards
has never lacked delicately nurtured ladies, ready to forego worldly
distinction, domestic ease, or intellectual ambition, in favour of a
heart-whole sacrifice to the religious life. When Henry VIII. crushed
out the nunneries in England, a large number of the Sisters belonged to
the best of the nation’s blood; and ladies of the noble and high-born
families who clung to the unreformed faith at once established and
maintained English nunneries across the seas in Belgium or in France.
With the blessed revival of Catholic life within the English Church,
in the middle of the last century, there came about a re-establishment
of vowed Sisterhood life, which has of late made a wondrous growth.
Those best qualified to judge know well how these English sisterhoods
and nunneries have been guided and endowed by those of the gentlest
blood, whose names in religion hide those by which the world might have
recognised them. And what was true of their origin is true of their
present-day life; wealth, position, comfort, and intellect are still
placed by many of these Sisters at the feet of Christ.
There was naturally great anxiety on the part of monasteries to do
their best with the lands bestowed on them, and the monks and religious
canons became almost proverbially the best farmers. Nor was the land
cleared, the cattle tended, the sheep pastured, and the wood thinned
simply with the idea of producing a good revenue to support themselves,
to maintain their church and buildings, and, above all, to minister
to the poor and needy; for it was keenly felt that there must be work
for the hands as well as the head, and that in doing their very best
in manual toil, as well as in worship in quire, they were giving glory
to the Creator. “Idleness,” says St. Benedict in his rule, “is the
enemy of the soul; therefore let the brothers devote certain hours to
work with their hands, and at other times occupy themselves in sacred
reading.” Then the great founder of the religious rule proceeded to lay
down the hours, according to the seasons, during which such work was to
be performed. Nor were his brethren, as he plainly told them, whatever
had been their position, to be disconcerted if the necessity arose for
getting in the harvest or doing agricultural labours with their own
hands. The way in which the monks of England triumphed over nature,
drained the swamps, and brought barren tracts of land into cultivation,
was beyond all praise; thus they found abundant employment for their
tenants and neighbours as well as for themselves, and materially
increased the food supplies for the country at large. Visitors to the
sites of ruined abbeys, such as the Yorkshire houses of Fountains,
Riveaulx, or Byland, are apt hastily to praise the cunning of the
monks in obtaining settlements in such pleasant and well-cultivated
sites, forgetful that it was these very monks who turned comparatively
barren and desolate lands into pasture, plantation, and tillage.
The marvellous drainage works accomplished in the Holderness by the
Cistercian monks of Meaux Abbey, or by the Gilbertine Canons of Watton
Priory, whereby hundreds of acres were rendered capable of tillage,
bear their fruits to the present day. It is difficult now to estimate
the drudgery, toil, and skill required in days comparatively destitute
of mechanical appliances to produce such results.
Perhaps the one spot in all England more than another that would
cure the man who talks flippantly of the lazy, indulgent life of our
mediæval monks in their comfortable quarters is the rarely-visited
site of the once great mitred Benedictine Abbey of St. Benet of Holme,
amid the Norfolk Broads. To visit such a place, particularly in wet or
lowering weather, with the waters swirling round the still well-defined
precincts, the wide dykes filled to the brim, the land oozing with
moisture over hundreds of acres all round--and then to picture the
courage necessary to enable scores of men to give their lives and
pass their days in a continuous round of worship and of battling with
the elements in such a desolate spot as this--cannot fail to shatter
any honest man’s belief in the ease-seeking nature of an English
Benedictine of mediæval days. Such a man, after visiting St. Benet’s,
Holme, might say, “What a fool,” but he could no longer sneer at the
monk as a poor, lazy beggar.
More particularly, too, would this be the case did he know some of the
stories, as yet unknown to print, of the monks of this swamp. How,
for instance, on one occasion (in the winter of 1287-8) the waters
overflowed the lands and outbuildings to such an extent that only the
church, on the highest ground, was unflooded; and how, within the nave,
after much anxious thought, it was considered true charity to stable
the horses to save them from drowning. Or if perchance the thought
should arise that these monks were sustained by good fare against
the damp and chills of their surroundings, the truth as to their
usual meagre dietary, with exact details, can be learnt from various
obedientiary rolls that are still preserved among the stores of the
Bodleian. But more anon as to monastic fare.
We are accustomed to acknowledge that literature was sustained in
the cloister, and to recognise the beauty of the illuminated missals
therein written and painted with such consummate skill; but that the
monastery, particularly the Cistercian House, was the centre of so
many crafts is often unknown or forgotten. Within the large precincts
of such a house would be not only the various storehouses, but the
workshops of the smith, the carpenter, the mason, the shoemaker, the
weaver, the candlemaker, and the winepress. Everything that could be
required for the church and house and its inmates was, if possible,
made on the premises. If anyone is desirous of understanding, by ocular
proof, to what use many of the outbuildings still standing around the
grand ruins of Fountains, Kirkstall, or Furness were put, he cannot do
better than visit the old Cistercian abbey of Maulbraun, in Würtemberg,
within easy reach by train of Heidelberg; for he will there find nearly
the whole of the necessary mediæval buildings of the community still
standing, and in fairly good condition. It was, doubtless, the frequent
communication of the English Cistercian monks with their fellows on the
Continent that moved them successfully to attempt and carry on such
forms of culture as vine-growing, that seem ill-adapted to our climate
and have long since been abandoned. But that vines were grown and wine
made at Beaulieu, and various other monastic centres in England is
beyond a doubt.
[Illustration: THE CHOIR OF RIEVAULX ABBEY (Cistercian)]
It was this very desire after agricultural completeness, and the
thorough farming of all entrusted to their care, that brought about
in England that curious admixture of the two sexes that prevailed in
most of the houses of the Gilbertine order. Houses for Sisters was the
first idea of St. Gilbert, and always remained paramount in his mind;
but in order to secure effective administration of their lands, certain
religious Canons were attached to them, in absolutely separate
buildings, to serve as chaplains, and to superintend or personally
carry out all the agricultural details, on the due sustaining of which
the whole convent depended. This, too, was doubtless the main reason
why we also find two or three canons attached to those great houses
of Hampshire Benedictine nuns of pre-Norman foundation, Nunnaminster,
Wherwell, and Romsey. A like cause was probably the reason why priors,
masters, or wardens, were in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
associated to some extent with the prioresses of such nunneries as
Nuneaton, Warwickshire; Kingsmead, Derbyshire; or Catesby, Wyrthorp,
and Stamford, Northamptonshire--a fact not hitherto, so far as we are
aware, noted or commented upon by any writers on English monasticism.