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CAMBRIDGE STUDIES
IN MEDIEVAL LIFE AND THOUGHT
Edited by G. G. COULTON, M.A.
Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge
and University Lecturer in English
MEDIEVAL ENGLISH NUNNERIES
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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[Illustration: PLATE I
PAGE FROM _LA SAINTE ABBAYE_
(At the top of the picture a priest with two acolytes prepares the
sacrament; behind them stand the abbess, holding her staff, her chaplain
and the sacristan, who rings the bell; behind them a group of four nuns,
including the cellaress with her keys. At the bottom is a procession of
priest, acolytes and nuns in the quire.)]
MEDIEVAL ENGLISH NUNNERIES
c. 1275 to 1535
BY EILEEN POWER
SOMETIME FELLOW AND LECTURER
OF GIRTON COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE
[Illustration: MADAME EGLENTYNE (From the Ellesmere MS.)]
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1922
TO M. G. J.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
GENERAL PREFACE
There is only too much truth in the frequent complaint that history, as
compared with the physical sciences, is neglected by the modern public.
But historians have the remedy in their own hands; choosing problems of
equal importance to those of the scientist, and treating them with equal
accuracy, they will command equal attention. Those who insist that the
proportion of accurately ascertainable facts is smaller in history, and
therefore the room for speculation wider, do not thereby establish any
essential distinction between truth-seeking in history and truth-seeking
in chemistry. The historian, whatever be his subject, is as definitely
bound as the chemist "to proclaim certainties as certain, falsehoods as
false, and uncertainties as dubious." Those are the words, not of a modern
scientist, but of the seventeenth century monk, Jean Mabillon; they sum up
his literary profession of faith. Men will follow us in history as
implicitly as they follow the chemist, if only we will form the chemist's
habit of marking clearly where our facts end and our inferences begin.
Then the public, so far from discouraging our speculations, will most
heartily encourage them; for the most positive man of science is always
grateful to anyone who, by putting forward a working theory, stimulates
further discussion.
The present series, therefore, appeals directly to that craving for
clearer facts which has been bred in these times of storm and stress. No
care can save us altogether from error; but, for our own sake and the
public's, we have elected to adopt a safeguard dictated by ordinary
business commonsense. Whatever errors of fact are pointed out by reviewers
or correspondents shall be publicly corrected with the least possible
delay. After a year of publication, all copies shall be provided with such
an erratum-slip without waiting for the chance of a second edition; and
each fresh volume in this series shall contain a full list of the errata
noted in its immediate predecessor. After the lapse of a year from the
first publication of any volume, and at any time during the ensuing twelve
months, any possessor of that volume who will send a stamped and addressed
envelope to the Cambridge University Press, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street,
London, E.C. 4, shall receive, in due course, a free copy of the _errata_
in that volume. Thus, with the help of our critics, we may reasonably hope
to put forward these monographs as roughly representing the most accurate
information obtainable under present conditions. Our facts being thus
secured, the reader will judge our inferences on their own merits; and
something will have been done to dissipate that cloud of suspicion which
hangs over too many important chapters in the social and religious history
of the Middle Ages.
G. G. C.
_October, 1922._
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The monastic ideal and the development of the monastic rule and orders
have been studied in many admirable books. The purpose of the present work
is not to describe and analyse once again that ideal, but to give a
general picture of English nunnery life during a definite period, the
three centuries before the Dissolution. It is derived entirely from
pre-Reformation sources, and the tainted evidence of Henry VIII's
commissioners has not been used; nor has the story of the suppression of
the English nunneries been told. The nunneries dealt with are drawn from
all the monastic orders, except the Gilbertine order, which has been
omitted, both because it differed from others in containing double houses
of men and women and because it has already been the subject of an
excellent monograph by Miss Rose Graham.
It remains for me to record my deep gratitude to two scholars, in whose
debt students of medieval monastic history must always lie, Mr G. G.
Coulton and Mr A. Hamilton Thompson. I owe more than I can say to their
unfailing interest and readiness to discuss, to help and to criticise. To
Mr Hamilton Thompson I am specially indebted for the loan of his
transcripts and translations of Alnwick's Register, now in course of
publication, for reading and criticising my manuscript and finally for
undertaking the arduous work of reading my proofs. I gratefully
acknowledge suggestions received at different times from Mr Hubert Hall,
Miss Rose Graham and Canon Foster, and faithful criticism from my friend
Miss M. G. Jones. I have also to thank Mr H. S. Bennett for kindly
preparing the index, and Mr Sydney Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam
Museum, for assistance in the choice of illustrations.
EILEEN POWER.
GIRTON COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE.
_September 1922_
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I. THE NOVICE
Situation, income and size of the English nunneries 1
Nuns drawn from (1) the nobles and gentry 4
(2) the middle class 9
Nunneries in medieval wills 14
The dowry system 16
Motives for taking the veil:
(1) a career and a vocation for girls 25
(2) a 'dumping ground' for political prisoners 29
(3) for illegitimate, deformed or half-witted girls 30
(4) nuns forced unwillingly to profess by their relations 33
(5) a refuge for widows and occasionally for wives 38
CHAPTER II. THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE
Superiors usually women of social standing 42
Elections and election disputes 43
Resignations 56
Special temptations of a superior:
(1) excessive independence and comfort 59
(2) autocratic government 64
(3) favouritism 66
The superior a great lady in the country side 68
Journeys 69
Luxurious clothes and entertainments 73
Picture of heads of houses in Bishop Alnwick's Lincoln
visitations (1436-49) 80
Wicked prioresses 82
Good prioresses 89
General conclusion: Chaucer's picture borne out by the records 94
CHAPTER III. WORLDLY GOODS
Evidence as to monastic property in
(1) the _Valor Ecclesiasticus_ 96
(2) monastic account rolls 97
Variation of size and income among houses 98
Methods of administration of estates 99
Sources of income:
(1) rents from land and houses 100
(2) manorial perquisites and grants 103
(3) issues of the manor 109
(4) miscellaneous payments 112
(5) spiritualities 113
Expenses 117
(1) internal expenses of the convent 119
(2) divers expenses 123
(3) repairs 123
(4) the home farm 125
(5) the wages sheet 129
CHAPTER IV. MONASTIC HOUSEWIVES
The obedientiaries 131
Allocation of income and obedientiaries' accounts 134
Chambresses' accounts (clothes) 137
Cellaresses' accounts (food) 137
Servants 143
(1) chaplain 144
(2) administrative officials 146
(3) household staff 150
(4) farm labourers 150
Nunnery households 151
Relations between nuns and servants 154
Occasional hired labour 157
Villages occasionally dependent upon nunneries for work 158
CHAPTER V. FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES
Poverty of nunneries 161
(1) prevalence of debt 162
(2) insufficient food and clothing 164
(3) ruinous buildings 168
(4) nuns begging alms 172
Reasons for poverty:
(1) natural disasters 176
(2) ecclesiastical exactions and royal taxes 183
(3) feudal and other services 185
(4) right of patrons to take temporalities during voidance 186
(5) right of bishop and king to nominate nuns on certain
occasions 188
(6) pensions, corrodies, grants and liveries 194
(7) hospitality 200
(8) litigation 201
(9) bad management 203
(10) extravagance 211
(11) overcrowding with nuns 212
Methods adopted by bishops to remedy financial distress:
(1) devices to safeguard expenditure by the head of the house 217
(2) episcopal licence required for business transactions 225
(3) appointment of a _custos_ 228
CHAPTER VI. EDUCATION
The education of the nuns:
Learning of Anglo-Saxon nuns, and of German nuns at a later
date 237
Little learning in English nunneries during the later middle
ages 238
Nunnery libraries and nuns' books 240
Education of nuns 244
Latin in nunneries 246
Translations for the use of nuns 251
Needlework 255
Simple forms of medicine 258
Nunneries as schools for children:
The education of novices 260
The education of secular children 261
Boys 263
Limitations:
(1) not all nunneries took children 264
(2) only gentlefolk taken 265
(3) disapproval and restriction of nunnery schools by the
ecclesiastical authorities 270
What did the nuns teach? 274
Life of school children in nunneries 279
'Piety and breeding' 281
CHAPTER VII. ROUTINE AND REACTION
Division of the day by the Benedictine Rule 285
The Benedictine combination of prayer, study and labour breaks
down 288
Dead routine 289
The reaction from routine 290
(1) carelessness in singing the services 291
(2) _accidia_ 293
(3) quarrels 297
(4) gay clothes 303
(5) pet animals 305
(6) dancing, minstrels and merry-making 309
CHAPTER VIII. PRIVATE LIFE AND PRIVATE PROPERTY
The monastic obligation to (1) communal life, (2) personal
poverty 315
The breakdown of communal life: division into _familiae_ with
private rooms 316
The breakdown of personal poverty 322
(1) the annual _peculium_ 323
(2) money pittances 323
(3) gifts in money and kind 324
(4) legacies 325
(5) proceeds of a nun's own labour 330
Private life and private property in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries 331
Attitude of ecclesiastical authorities 336
CHAPTER IX. FISH OUT OF WATER
Enclosure in the Benedictine Rule 341
The movement for the enclosure of nuns 343
The Bull _Periculoso_ 344
Attempts to enforce enclosure in England 346
Attempts to regulate and restrict the emergence of nuns from
their houses 353
The usual pretexts for breaking enclosure:
(1) illness 361
(2) to enter a stricter rule 363
(3) convent business 367
(4) ceremonies, processions, funerals 368
(5) pilgrimages 371
(6) visits to friends 376
(7) short walks, field work 381
The nuns wander freely about in the world 385
Conclusion 391
CHAPTER X. THE WORLD IN THE CLOISTER
Visitors in the cloister are another side of the enclosure
problem 394
The scholars of Oxford and Cambridge and the neighbouring
nunneries 395
Regulations to govern the entrance of seculars into nunneries:
(1) certain persons not to be admitted 401
(2) certain parts of the house and certain hours forbidden 402
(3) unsuccessful attempts to regulate the reception of
boarders 409
The nuns and political movements 419
Robbery and violence 422
Border raids in Durham and Yorkshire 425
The strange tale of Sir John Arundel's outrage on a nunnery 429
The sack of Origny in _Raoul de Cambrai_ 432
CHAPTER XI. THE OLDE DAUNCE
Nuns and the celibate ideal 436
Sources of evidence for the moral state of the English nunneries 439
Apostate nuns 440
Nuns' lovers 446
Nuns' children 450
Disorder in two small houses, Cannington (1351) and Easebourne
(1478) 452
Disorder in the great abbeys of Amesbury and Godstow 454
Moral state of the nunneries in the diocese of Lincoln at two
periods 456
Attempted statistical estimate of cases of immorality in
Lincoln (1430-50), Norwich (1514) and Chichester (1478, 1524)
dioceses 460
Punishment of offenders 462
General conclusions 471
CHAPTER XII. THE MACHINERY OF REFORM
The chapter meeting 475
Reform by external authorities:
(1) a parent house 478
(2) the chapter general of the order 481
(3) the bishop of the diocese 482
The episcopal visitation and injunctions 483
How far was this control adequate?
(1) concealment of faults 488
(2) visitation too infrequent 490
(3) difficulty of enforcing injunctions 492
Value of visitation documents to the historian 493
CHAPTER XIII. THE NUN IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Value of literary evidence 499
Autobiographies and biographies of nuns 500
Popular poetry (_chansons de nonnes_) 502
Popular stories (_fabliaux_, _exempla_) 515
Didactic works addressed to nuns 523
Satires and moral treatises 533
Secular literature in general 555
APPENDICES
I. ADDITIONAL NOTES TO THE TEXT:
A. The daily fare of Barking Abbey 563
B. School children in nunneries 568
C. Nunnery disputes 581
D. Gay clothes 585
E. Convent pets in literature 588
F. The moral state of Littlemore Priory in the sixteenth
century 595
G. The moral state of the Yorkshire nunneries in the first
half of the fourteenth century 597
H. The disappearance or suppression of eight nunneries prior
to 1535 602
I. _Chansons de Nonnes_ 604
J. The theme of the nun in love in medieval popular
literature 622
K. Nuns in the _Dialogus Miraculorum_ of Caesarius of
Heisterbach 627
II. VISITATIONS OF NUNNERIES IN THE DIOCESE OF ROUEN BY
ARCHBISHOP EUDES RIGAUD (1248-1269) 634
III. FIFTEENTH CENTURY SAXON VISITATIONS BY JOHANN BUSCH 670
IV. LIST OF ENGLISH NUNNERIES, C. 1275-1535 685
BIBLIOGRAPHY 693
INDEX 704
LIST OF PLATES
PLATE
I Page from _La Sainte Abbaye_ FRONTISPIECE
(Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 39843. Folio 6vº.)
TO FACE PAGE
II Abbess receiving the pastoral staff from a bishop 44
(From _The Metz Pontifical_, 82(b)vº and 90vº,
in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.)
III Page from _La Sainte Abbaye_ 144
(Folio 29.)
IV Brass of Ela Buttry, the stingy Prioress of Campsey
([dagger] 1546), in St Stephen's Church, Norwich 168
(From _Norfolk Archaeology_, Vol. VI; Norf. and
Norwich Archaeol. Soc. 1864.)
V Page from _La Sainte Abbaye_ 260
(Folio 1vº.)
VI Dominican nuns in quire 286
(From Brit. Mus. Cott. MSS. Dom. A XII f.)
VII The nun who loved the world 388
(From _Queen Mary's Psalter_, Brit. Mus. Royal MS.
2 B. VII.)
VIII Plan of Lacock Abbey 403
(From _Archaeologia_, LVII, by permission of the
Society of Antiquaries and Mr Harold Brakspear.)
MAP
Map showing the English Nunneries in the later middle ages AT END
MEDIEVAL ENGLISH NUNNERIES
CHAPTER I
THE NOVICE
Then, fair virgin, hear my spell,
For I must your duty tell.
First a-mornings take your book,
The glass wherein yourself must look;
Your young thoughts so proud and jolly
Must be turn'd to motions holy;
For your busk, attires and toys,
Have your thoughts on heavenly joys:
And for all your follies past,
You must do penance, pray and fast.
You shall ring your sacring bell,
Keep your hours and tell your knell,
Rise at midnight to your matins,
Read your psalter, sing your Latins;
And when your blood shall kindle pleasure,
Scourge yourself in plenteous measure.
You must read the morning mass,
You must creep unto the cross,
Put cold ashes on your head,
Have a hair cloth for your bed,
Bind your beads, and tell your needs,
Your holy Aves and your Creeds;
Holy maid, this must be done,
If you mean to live a nun.
_The Merry Devil of Edmonton._
There were in England during the later middle ages (c. 1270-1536) some 138
nunneries, excluding double houses of the Gilbertine order, which
contained brothers as well as nuns. Of these over one half belonged to the
Benedictine order and about a quarter (localised almost entirely in
Lincolnshire and Yorkshire) to the Cistercian order. The rest were
distributed as follows: 17 to the order of St Augustine and one (Minchin
Buckland), which belonged to the order of St John of Jerusalem and
followed the Austin rule, four to the Franciscan order, two to the Cluniac
order, two to the Premonstratensian order and one to the Dominican order.
There was also founded in the fifteenth century a very famous double house
of the Brigittine order, Syon Abbey. Twenty-one of these houses had the
status of abbeys; the rest were priories. They were distributed all over
the country, Surrey, Lancashire, Westmorland and Cornwall being the only
counties without one, but they were more thickly spread over the eastern
than over the western half of the island. They were most numerous in the
North, East and East Midlands, to wit, in the dioceses of York, Lincoln
(which was then very large and included Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire,
Rutland, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Leicestershire, Buckinghamshire,
Oxfordshire and part of Hertfordshire) and Norwich; there were 27 houses
in the diocese of York, 31 in the diocese of Lincoln, ten in the diocese
of Norwich and in London and its suburbs there were seven. On the other
hand if nunneries were most plentiful in the North and East Midlands it
was there that they were smallest and poorest. The wealthiest and most
famous nunneries in England were all south of the Thames. Apart from the
new foundation at Syon, which very soon became the largest and richest of
all, the greatest houses were the old established abbeys of Wessex,
Shaftesbury, Wilton, St Mary's Winchester, Romsey and Wherwell, which,
together with Barking in Essex were all of Anglo-Saxon foundation; and
Dartford in Kent, founded by Edward III. The only houses north of the
Thames which approached these in importance were Godstow and Elstow
Abbeys, in Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire respectively; the majority were
small priories with small incomes.
An analysis of the incomes and numerical size of English nunneries at the
dissolution gives interesting and somewhat startling results. Out of 106
houses for which information is available only seven had in 1535 a gross
annual income of over L450 a year. The richest were Syon and Shaftesbury
with L1943 and L1324 respectively; then came Barking with L862, Wilton
with L674, Amesbury with L595, Romsey with L528 and Dartford with L488.
Five others (St Helen's Bishopsgate, Haliwell and the Minories all in
London, Elstow and Godstow) had from L300 to L400; nine others (Nuneaton,
Clerkenwell, Malling, St Mary's Winchester, Tarrant Keynes, Canonsleigh,
Campsey, Minchin Buckland and Lacock) had from L200 to L300. Twelve had
between L100 and L200 and no less than 73 houses had under L100, of which
39 actually had under L50; and it must be remembered that the net annual
income, after the deduction of certain annual charges, was less still[1].
An analysis of the numerical size of nunneries presents more difficulties,
for the number of nuns given sometimes differs in the reports referring to
the same house and it is doubtful whether commissioners or receivers
always set down the total number of nuns present at the visitation or
dissolution of a house; while lists of pensions paid by the crown to
ex-inmates after dissolution are still more incomplete as evidence. A
rough analysis, however, leaves very much the same impression as an
analysis of incomes[2]. Out of 111 houses, for which some sort of
numerical estimate is possible, only four have over thirty inmates, viz.
Syon (51), Amesbury (33), Wilton (32) and Barking (30). Eight (Elstow, the
Minories, Nuneaton, Denny, Romsey, Wherwell, Dartford and St Mary's
Winchester) have from 20 to 30; thirty-six have from 10 to 20 and
sixty-three have under 10. These statistics permit of certain large
generalisations. First, that the majority of English nunneries were small
and poor. Secondly, that, as has already been pointed out, the largest and
richest houses were all in London and south of the Thames; only four
houses north of that river had gross incomes of over L200 and only three
could boast of more than 20 inmates. Thirdly, the nunneries during this
period owned land and rents to the annual value of over L15,500 and
contained perhaps between 1500 and 2000 nuns.
To understand the history of the English nunneries during the later middle
ages it is necessary not only to understand the smallness and poverty of
many of the houses and the high repute of others; it is necessary also to
understand what manner of women took the veil in them. From what social
classes were the nuns drawn, and for what reason did they enter religion?
What function did monasticism, so far as it concerned women, fulfil in
the life of medieval society?
It has been shown that the proportion of women who became nuns was very
small in comparison with the total female population. It has indeed been
insufficiently recognised that the medieval nunneries were recruited
almost entirely from among the upper classes. They were essentially
aristocratic institutions, the refuge of the gently born. At Romsey Abbey
a list of 91 sisters at the election of an abbess in 1333 is full of
well-known county names[3]. The names of Bassett, Sackville, Covert,
Hussey, Tawke and Farnfold occur at Easebourne[4]; Lewknor, St John,
Okehurst, Michelgrove and Sidney at Rusper[5], the two small and poor
nunneries in Sussex. The return of the subsidy in 1377 enumerates the
sisters of Minchin Barrow and, as their historian points out, "among the
family names of these ladies are some of the best that the western
counties could produce"[6]. The other Somerset houses were equally
aristocratic, and an examination of the roll of prioresses for almost any
medieval convent in any part of England will give the same result, even in
the smallest and poorest nunneries, the inmates of which were reduced to
begging alms[7]. These ladies appear sometimes to have had the spirit of
their race, as they often had its manners and its tastes. For 21 years
Isabel Stanley, Prioress of King's Mead, Derby, refused to pay a rent due
from her house to the Abbot of Burton; at last the Abbot sent his bailiff
to distrain for it and she spoke her mind in good set terms. "Wenes these
churles to overlede me," cried this worthy daughter of a knightly family,
"or sue the lawe agayne me? They shall not be so hardy but they shall avye
upon their bodies and be nailed with arrows; for I am a gentlewoman, comen
of the greatest of Lancashire and Cheshire, and that they shall know right
well"[8]. A tacit recognition of the aristocratic character of the
convents is to be found in the fact that bishops were often at pains to
mention the good birth of the girls whom, in accordance with a general
right, they nominated to certain houses on certain occasions. Thus Wykeham
wrote to the Abbess of St Mary's Winchester, bidding her admit Joan
Bleden, "quest de bone et honeste condition, come nous sumes enformes"[9].
More frequently still the candidates were described as "domicella" or
"damoysele"[10]. At least one instance is extant of a bishop ordering that
all the nuns of a house were to be of noble condition[11].
The fact that the greater portion of the female population was unaffected
by the existence of the outlet provided by conventual life for women's
energies is a significant one. The reason for it--paradoxical as this may
sound--lies in the very narrowness of the sphere to which women of gentle
birth were confined. The disadvantage of rank is that so many honest
occupations are not, in its eyes, honourable occupations. In the lowest
ranks of society the poor labourer upon the land had no need to get rid of
his daughter, if he could not find her a husband, nor would it have been
to his interest to do so; for, working in the fields among his sons, or
spinning and brewing with his wife at home, she could earn a supplementary
if not a living wage. The tradesman or artisan in the town was in a
similar position. He recognised that the ideal course was to find a
husband for his growing girl, but the alternative was in no sense that she
should eat out her heart and his income during long years at home; and if
he were too poor to provide her with a sufficient dower, he could and
often did apprentice her to a trade. The number of industries which were
carried on by women in the middle ages shows that for the burgess and
lower classes there were other outlets besides marriage; and then, as now,
domestic service provided for many. But the case of the well-born lady was
different. The knight or the county gentleman could not apprentice his
superfluous daughters to a pursemaker or a weaver in the town; not from
them were drawn the regrateresses in the market place and the harvest
gatherers in the field; nor was it theirs to make the parti-coloured bed
and shake the coverlet, worked with grapes and unicorns, in some rich
vintner's house. There remained for him, if he did not wish or could not
afford to keep them at home and for them, if they desired some scope for
their young energies, only marriage or else a convent, where they might go
with a smaller dower than a husband of their own rank would demand.
To say that the convents were the refuge of the gently born is not to say
that there was no admixture of classes within them. The term gentleman was
becoming more comprehensive in the later middle ages. It included the
upper class proper, the families of noble birth; and it included also the
country gentry. The convents were probably at first recruited almost
entirely from these two ranks of society, and a study of any collection of
medieval wills shows how large a proportion of such families took
advantage of this opening for women. A phrase will sometimes occur which
shows that it was regarded as the natural and obvious alternative to
marriage. Sir John Daubriggecourt in 1415 left his daughter Margery 40
marks, "if she be wedded to a worldly husband, and if she be caused to
receive the sacred veil of the order of holy nuns" ten pounds and twenty
shillings rent[12], and Sir John le Blund in 1312 bequeathed an annuity to
his daughter Ann, "till she marry or enter a religious house"[13]. The
anxiety of the upper classes to secure a place for their children in
nunneries sometimes even led to overcrowding. At Carrow the Prioress was
forced to complain that "certain lords of England whom she was unable to
resist because of their power" forced their daughters upon the priory as
nuns, and in 1273 a papal bull forbade the reception of more inmates than
the revenues would support[14]. Archbishop William Wickwane addressed a
similar mandate to two Yorkshire houses, Wilberfoss and Nunkeeling, which
public rumour had informed him to be overburdened with nuns and with
secular boarders "at the instance of nobles"[15]; and in 1327 Bishop
Stratford wrote to Romsey Abbey that the house was notoriously burdened
with ladies beyond the established number, and that he had heard that the
nuns were being forced to receive more "damoyseles" as novices, which he
forbade without special licence[16]. A very strong personal connection
must in time have been established between a nunnery and certain families
from which, in each generation, it received a daughter or a niece and her
dower. Such was the connection between Shouldham and the Beauchamps[17]
and between Nunmonkton and the Fairfaxes[18]. A close link bound each
nunnery to the family of its patron. Thus we find a Clinton at Wroxall and
a Darcy at Heynings; nor is it unlikely that these noble ladies sometimes
expected privileges and homage more than the strict equality of convent
life would allow, if it be permissible to generalise from the behaviour of
Isabel Clinton[19] and from the fact that Margaret Darcy received a rather
severe penance from Bishop Gynewell in 1351 and a special warning against
going beyond the claustral precincts or speaking to strangers[20], while
in 1393 there occurs the significant injunction by Bishop Bokyngham that
no sister was to have a room to herself except Dame Margaret Darcy
(doubtless the same woman now grown elderly and ailing) "on account of the
nobility of her race"; an old lady of firm will and (despite his careful
mention of extra pittances and of tolerating for a while) a somewhat
sycophantic prelate[21].
It is worthy of notice that Chaucer has drawn an unmistakable "lady" in
his typical prioress. There is her delicate behaviour at meals:
At mete wel ytaught was she with-alle;
She leet no morsel from her lippes falle,
Ne wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe.
Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
That no drope ne fille upon hir brest.
In curteisye was set ful muche hir lest.
Hir over lippe wyped she so clene,
That in hir coppe was no ferthing sene
Of grece, whan she drunken hadde hir draughte.
Ful semely after hir mete she raughte[22].
This was the _ne plus ultra_ of feudal table manners; Chaucer might have
been writing one of those books of deportment for the guidance of
aristocratic young women, which were so numerous in France. So the _Clef
d'Amors_ counsels ladies who would win them lovers[23], and even so Robert
de Blois depicts the perfect diner. Robert de Blois' ideal, the
chivalrous, frivolous, sensuous ideal of "courtesy," which underlay the
whole aristocratic conception of life and the attainment of which was the
criterion of polite society, is the ideal of the Prioress also:
"Gardez vous, Dames, bien acertes,"
"Qu'au mengier soiez bien apertes;
C'est une chose c'on moult prise
Que la soit dame bien aprise.
Tel chose torne a vilonie
Que toutes genz ne sevent mie;
Se puet cil tost avoir mespris
Qui n'est cortoisement apris[24]."
Later he warns against the greedy selection of the finest and largest
titbit for oneself, on the ground that "n'est pas _cortoisie_." The same
consideration preoccupies Madame Eglentyne at her supper: "in _curteisye_
was set ful muche hir lest." Good manners, elegant deportment, the polish
of the court, all that we mean by nurture, these are her aim:
And sikerly she was of greet disport,
And ful plesaunt, and amiable of port,
And peyned her to countrefete chere
Of court, and been estatlich of manere,
And to be holden digne of reverence.
Her pets are the pets of ladies in metrical romances and in illuminated
borders; "smale houndes," delicately fed with "rosted flesh, or milk and
wastel-bread." Her very beauty
(Hir nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas,
Hir mouth ful smal, and ther-to soft and reed;
But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed;
It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe;
For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe)
conforms to the courtly standard. Only the mention of her chanting of
divine service (through the tretys nose) differentiates her from any other
well-born lady of the day; and if Chaucer had not told us whom he was
describing, we might never have known that she was a nun. It was in these
ideals and traditions that most of the inmates of English convents were
born and bred.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, another class rose
into prominence and, perhaps because it was originally drawn to a great
extent from the younger sons of the country gentry, found amalgamation
with the gentry easy. The development of trade and the new openings for
the employment of capital had brought about the rise of the English
merchant class. Hitherto foreigners had financed the English crown, but
during the first four years of the Hundred Years' War it became clear that
English merchants were now rich and powerful enough to take their place;
and the triumph of the native was complete when, in 1345, Edward III
repudiated his debts to the Italian merchants and the Bardi and Peruzzi
failed. Henceforth the English merchants were supreme; on the one hand
their trading ventures enriched them; on the other they made vast sums out
of farming the customs and the war subsidies in return for loans of ready
money, and out of all sorts of government contracts. The successful
campaigns of Crecy and Poitiers were entirely financed by these English
capitalists. Not only trade but industry swelled the ranks of the
_nouveaux riches_ and the clothiers of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries grew rich and prospered. Evidences of the wealth and importance
of this middle class are to be found on all sides. The taxation of
movables, which from 1334 became an important and in time the main source
of national revenue, indicates the discovery on the part of the government
that the wealth of the nation no longer lay in land, but in trade. The
frequent sumptuary acts, the luxury of daily life, bear witness to the
wealth of the _nouveaux riches_; and so also do their philanthropic
enterprises, the beautiful churches which they built, the bridges which
they repaired, the gifts which they gave to religious and to civic
corporations. And it was in the fourteenth century that there began that
steady fusion between the country gentry and the rich burgesses, which was
accomplished before the end of the middle ages and which resulted in the
formation of a solid and powerful middle class. The political amalgamation
of the two classes in the lower house of Parliament corresponded to a
social amalgamation in the world outside. The country knights and squires
saw in business a career for their younger sons; they saw in marriage with
the daughters of the mercantile class a way to mend their fortunes; the
city merchants, on the other hand, saw in such alliances a road to the
attainment of that social prestige which went with land and blood, and
were not loath to pay the price. "Merchants or new gentlemen I deem will
proffer large," wrote Edmund Paston, concerning the marriage of one of his
family. "Well I wot if ye depart to London ye shall have proffers
large"[25].
This social amalgamation between the country gentry and the "new
gentlemen," who had made their money in trade, was naturally reflected in
the nunneries. The wills of London burgesses, which were enrolled in the
Court of Husting, show that the daughters of these well-to-do citizens
were in the habit of taking the veil. There is even more than one trace of
the aristocratic view of religion as the sole alternative to marriage.
Langland, enumerating the good deeds which will win pardon for the
merchant, bids him "marie maydens or maken hem nonnes"[26]. At Ludlow the
gild of Palmers provided that:
If any good girl of the gild of marriageable age, cannot have the
means found by her father, either to go into a religious house or to
marry, whichever she wishes to do, friendly and right help shall be
given her out of our common chest, towards enabling her to do
whichever of the two she wishes[27].
Similarly at Berwick-on-Tweed the gild "ordained by the pleasure of the
burgesses" had a provision entitled, "Of the bringing up of daughters of
the gild," which ran: "If any brother die leaving a daughter true and
worthy and of good repute, but undowered, the gild shall find her a dower,
either on marriage or on going into a religious house"[28]. So also John
Syward, "stockfisshmongere" of London, whose will was proved at the Court
of Husting in 1349, left, "To Dionisia his daughter forty pounds for her
advancement, so that she either marry therewith or become a religious at
her election, within one year after his decease"[29]; and William Wyght,
of the same trade, bequeathed "to each of his daughters Agnes, Margaret,
Beatrix and Alice fifty pounds sterling for their marriage or for entering
a religious house" (1393)[30]; while William Marowe in 1504 bequeathed to
"Elizabeth and Katherine his daughters forty pounds each, to be paid at
their marriage or profession"[31]. Sometimes, however, the sound burgess
sense prevailed, as when Walter Constantyn endowed his wife with "the
residue of his goods, so that she assist Amicia, his niece, ... towards
her marriage or to some trade befitting her position"[32].
The mixture of classes must have been more frequent in convents which were
situate in or near a large town, while the country gentry had those lying
in rural districts more or less to themselves. The nunnery of Carrow, for
instance, was a favourite resort for girls of noble and of gentle birth,
but it was also recruited from the daughters of prosperous Norwich
citizens; among nuns with well-known county names there were also ladies
such as Isabel Barbour, daughter of Thomas Welan, barber, and Joan his
wife, Margery Folcard, daughter of John Folcard, alderman of Norwich, and
Catherine Segryme, daughter of Ralph Segryme, another alderman; the latter
attained the position of prioress at the end of the fifteenth century[33].
These citizens, wealthy and powerful men in days when Norwich was one of
the most important towns in England, probably met on equal terms with the
country gentlemen of Norfolk, and both sent their daughters with handsome
dowries to Carrow. The nunneries of London and of the surrounding district
contained a similar mixture of classes, ranging from some of the noblest
ladies in the land to the daughters of city magnates, men enriched by
honourable trade or by the less honourable capitalistic ventures of the
king's merchants. The famous house of Minoresses without Aldgate
illustrates the situation very clearly. It was always a special favourite
of royalty; and the storm bird, Isabella, mother of Edward III, is by some
supposed to have died in the order. She was certainly its constant
benefactress[34] as were Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester and his
wife, whose daughter Isabel was placed in the nunnery while only a child
and eventually became its abbess[35]. Katherine, widow of John de Ingham,
and Eleanor Lady Scrope were other aristocratic women who took the veil at
the Minories[36]. But this noble connection did not prevent the house from
containing Alice, sister of Richard Hale, fishmonger[37], Elizabeth,
daughter of Thomas Padyngton, fishmonger[38], Marion, daughter of John
Charteseye, baker[39], and Frideswida, daughter of John Reynewell,
alderman of the City of London[40], girls drawn from the _elite_ of the
burgess class. An investigation of the wills enrolled in the Court of
Husting shows the relative popularity of different convents among the
citizens of London. Between the years 1258 and the Dissolution, 52 wills
contain references to one or more nuns related to the testators[41]. From
these it appears that the most popular house was Clerkenwell in Middlesex,
which is mentioned in nine wills[42]. Barking in Essex comes next with
eight references[43], and St Helen's Bishopsgate with seven[44]; the house
of Minoresses without Aldgate is five times mentioned[45], Haliwell[46] in
London and Stratford-atte-Bowe[47] outside, having five and four
references respectively, Kilburn in Middlesex three[48], Sopwell in
Hertfordshire two[49], Malling[50] and Sheppey[51] in Kent two each. Other
convents are mentioned once only and in some cases a testator leaves
legacies to nuns by name, without mentioning where they are professed. All
these houses were in the diocese of London and either in or near the
capital itself; they lay in the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Essex,
Hertford and Bedford[52]. It was but rarely that city girls went as far
afield as Denny in Cambridgeshire, where the famous fishmonger and mayor
of London, John Philpott, had a daughter Thomasina.
Thus the nobles, the gentry and the superior rank of burgess--the upper
and the upper-middle classes--sent their daughters to nunneries. But nuns
were drawn from no lower class; poor girls of the lowest rank--whether the
daughters of artisans or of country labourers--seem never to have taken
the veil. A certain degree of education was demanded in a nun before her
admission and the poor man's daughter would have neither the money, the
opportunity, nor the leisure to acquire it. The manorial fine paid by a
villein when he wished to put his son to school and make a religious of
him, had no counterpart in the case of girls[53]; the taking of the veil
by a villein's daughter was apparently not contemplated. The chief barrier
which shut out the poor from the nunneries was doubtless the dower which,
in spite of the strict prohibition of the rule, was certainly required
from a novice in almost every convent. The lay sisters of those nunneries
which had lay sisters attached were probably drawn mainly from the lower
class[54], but it must have been in the highest degree exceptional for a
poor or low-born girl to become a nun.
Medieval wills (our most trusty source of information for the _personnel_
of the nunneries) make it possible to gauge the extent to which the upper
and middle classes used the nunneries as receptacles for superfluous
daughters. In these wills, in which the medieval paterfamilias laboriously
catalogues his offspring and divides his wealth between them, it is easy
to guess at the embarrassments of a father too well-blessed with female
progeny. What was poor Simon the Chamberlain of the diocese of Worcester
to do, with six strapping girls upon his hands and sons Robert and Henry
to provide for too? Fortunately he had a generous patron in Sir Nicholas
de Mitton and it was perhaps Sir Nicholas who provided the dowers, when
two of them were packed off to Nuneaton; let us hope that Christiana,
Cecilia, Matilda and Joan married themselves out of the legacies which he
left them in his will, when he died in 1290[55]. William de Percehay, lord
of Ryton, who made his will in 1344, had to provide for five sons and one
is therefore not surprised to find that two of his three daughters were
nuns[56]. It is the same with the rich citizens of London and elsewhere;
Sir Richard de la Pole, of a great Hull merchant house (soon to be
ennobled), mentions in his will two sons and two daughters, one of whom
was a nun at Barking while the other received a legacy towards her
marriage[57]; Hugh de Waltham, town clerk, mentions three daughters, one
at St Helen's[58]; John de Croydon, fishmonger, leaves bequests to one son
and four daughters, one at Clerkenwell[59]; William de Chayham kept Lucy,
Agnes and Johanna with him, but made Juliana a nun[60]. The will of Joan
Lady Clinton illustrates the proportion in which a large family of girls
might be divided between the convent and the world; in 1457 she left
certain sums of money to Margaret, Isabel and Cecily Francyes, on
condition that they should pay four pounds annually to their sisters Joan
and Elizabeth, nuns[61]. It was not infrequent for several members of a
family to enter the same convent, as the lists of inmates given in
visitation records, or in the reports of Henry VIII's commissioners, as
well as the evidence of the wills, bear witness[62]. The case of
Shouldham, already quoted, shows that different generations of a family
might be represented at the same time in a convent[63], but it was perhaps
not usual for so many sisters to become nuns as in the Fairfax family; in
1393 their brother's will introduces us to Mary and Alice, nuns of
Sempringham, and Margaret and Eleanor, respectively prioress and nun of
Nunmonkton[64]. Margaret (of whom more anon) took convent life easily; it
is to be feared that she had all too little vocation for it. Sometimes
these family parties in a nunnery led to quarrels; the sisters
foregathered in cliques, or else they continued in the cloister the
domestic arguments of the hearth; there was an amusing case of the kind at
Swine in 1268[65], and some years later (in 1318) an Archbishop of York
had to forbid the admission of more than two or three nuns of one family
to Nunappleton, without special licence, for fear of discord[66].
Probably the real factor in determining the social class from which the
convents were recruited, was not one of rank, but one of money. The
practice of demanding dowries from those who wished to become nuns was
strictly forbidden by the monastic rule and by canon law[67]. To spiritual
minds any taint of commerce was repugnant; Christ asked no dowry with his
bride. The didactic and mystical writers of the period often draw a
contrast between the earthly and the heavenly groom in this matter. The
author of _Hali Meidenhad_ in the thirteenth century, urging the convent
life upon his spiritual daughter, sets against his picture of Christ's
virgin-brides that of the well-born girl, married with disparagement
through lack of dower:
What thinkest thou of the poor, that are indifferently dowered and
ill-provided for, as almost all gentlewomen now are in the world, that
have not wherewith to buy themselves a bridegroom of their own rank
and give themselves into servitude to a man of low esteem, with all
that they have? Wellaway! Jesu! what unworthy chaffer[68].
Thomas of Hales' mystical poem _A Luue Ron_, in the same century, also
lays stress upon this point, half in ecstatic praise of the celibate
ideal, half as a material inducement[69], and the same idea is repeated at
the end of the next century in _Clene Maydenhod_:
He asketh with the nouther lond ne leode,
Gold ne selver ne precious stone.
To such thinges hath he no neode,
Al that is good is with hym one,
Gif thou with him thi lyf wolt lede
And graunte to ben his owne lemman[70].
In ecclesiastical language the same sentiment is expressed by the
injunction of Archbishop Greenfield of York, who forbade the nuns of Arden
to receive any one as a nun by compact, since that involved guilt of
simony, but only to receive her "from promptings of love"[71].
This sentiment was, however, set aside in practice from early times; and a
glance at any conventual register, such as the famous Register of Godstow
Abbey, shows something like a regular system of dowries, dating certainly
from the twelfth century. The Godstow Register contains 19 deeds, ranging
between 1139 and 1278, by which grants are made to the nunnery on the
entrance of a relative of the grantor, the usual phrase being that such
and such a man gave such and such rent-charges, pasture-rights, lands or
messuages, "with" his mother or sister or daughter "to be a nun"[72]. One
very curious deed dated 1259, shows that the reception of a girl at
Godstow was definitely a pecuniary matter. Ralph and Agnes Chondut sold to
the nunnery a piece of land called Anfric,
for thys quite claime and reles, the seyd abbas and holy mynchons of
Godstowe gafe to the seyde raph and Agnes hys wyfe liiiº marke, and
made Katherine the sustur of the seyd Agnes (wyfe of the seyd raph)
Mynchon in the monasteri of Godstowe, with the costys of the hows, ...
and the seyd holy mynchons of Godstowe shold pay to the seyd raph and
Agnes hys wyfe xxv marke of the forseyd liii marke in that day in
whyche the foreseyd Katerine should be delyuerd to hem to be norysshed
and to be mad mynchon in the same place and in the whyche the seyd
penyes shold be payd,
and a second instalment at a place to be agreed upon when confirmation of
the grant is obtained[73]. That is to say the price of the land was L35.
6_s._ 8_d._ together with the cost of receiving Katherine, which was
equivalent to a further sum of money, unfortunately not specified.
Any collection of wills provides ample evidence of this dowry system. Not
only do they frequently contain legacies for the support of some
particular nun during the term of her life, but bequests also occur for
the specific purpose of paying for the admission of a girl to a nunnery,
in exactly the same way as other girls are provided with dowries for their
marriage. The Countess of Warwick, in 1439, left a will directing "that
Iane Newmarch have cc mark in gold, And I to bere all Costes as for her
bryngynge yn-to seynt Katrens, or where-ever she woll be elles"[74]. Even
the clergy, who should have been the last to recognise a system so
flagrantly contrary to canon law, followed the general custom; William
Peke, rector of Scrivelsby, left one Isabella ten marks to make her a nun
in the Gilbertine house of Catley[75] and Robert de Playce, rector of the
church of Brompton, made the following bequest:
Item I bequeath to the daughter of John de Playce my brother 100_s._
in silver, for an aid towards making her a nun in one of the houses of
Wickham, Yedingham or Muncton, if her friends are willing to give her
sufficient aid to accomplish this, but if, through lack of assistance
from friends, she be not made a nun,
she was to have none of this bequest (1345)[76]. Sometimes, as has already
been noted, the money is left alternatively to marry the girl or to make
her a nun, which brings out very clearly the dower-like nature of such
bequests[77]. The accounts of great folk often tell the same tale. When
Elizabeth Chaucy--probably a relative of the poet Chaucer--became a nun at
Barking Abbey in 1381, John of Gaunt paid L51. 8_s._ 2_d._ in expenses and
gifts on the occasion of her admission[78], and the privy purse expenses
of Elizabeth of York contain the item, "Delivered to thabbesse of
Elnestowe by thands of John Duffyn for the costes and charges of litle
Anne Loveday at the making of her nonne there L6. 13_s._ 4_d._"[79].
It is possible to determine the exact nature of these costs and charges
from an account of the expenses of the executors of Elizabeth Sewardby,
who died in 1468. This lady, the widow of William Sewardby of Sewardby,
had left a legacy of L6. 13_s._ 4_d._ to her namesake, little Elizabeth
Sewardby, to be given her if she should become a nun. The executors record
certain payments made to the Prioress of Nunmonkton during the period when
Elizabeth was a boarder there, before taking the vows, and then follows a
list of "expenses made for and concerning Elizabeth Sewardby when she was
made a nun at Monkton":
They say that they paid and gave to the Prioress and Convent of
Monkton, for a certain fee which the said Prioress and Convent _claim
by custom to have and are wont to have from each nun at her entrance_
L3. And in money paid for the habit of the said Elizabeth Sewardby and
for other attire of her body and for a fitting bed, L3. 13_s._
6-1/2_d._ And in expenditure made in connection with the aforesaid
Prioress and Convent and with the friends of the aforesaid Elizabeth
coming together on the Sunday next after the feast of the Nativity of
the Blessed Virgin Mary A.D. 1460, L3. 11_s._ 4_d._ In a gratuity
given to brother John Hamilton, preaching a sermon at the aforesaid
Monkton on the aforesaid Sunday, 2_s._ And in a certain remuneration
given to Thomas Clerk of York for his wise counsel concerning the
recovery of the debts due to the said dame Elizabeth Sewardby,
deceased, 12_d._ Total L10. 7_s._ 10-1/2_d._[80]
It will be noticed that Elizabeth took with her not only a lump sum of
money, but also clothes and a bed, the cost of which more than doubled the
dowry. Canon law specifically allowed the provision of a habit by friends,
when the poverty of a house rendered this necessary; and it is clear from
other sources that it was not unusual for a novice to be provided also
with furniture. The inventory of the goods belonging to the priory of
Minster in Sheppey, at the Dissolution, contains, under the heading of
"the greate Chamber in the Dorter," a note of
stuff in the same chamber belonging to Dame Agnes Davye, _which she
browghte with her_; a square sparver of payntyd clothe and iiij peces
hangyng of the same, iij payre of shets, a cownterpoynt of corse
verder and i square cofer of ashe, a cabord of waynscott carved, ij
awndyrons, a payre of tonges and a fyer panne.
And under "Dame Agnes Browne's Chamber" is the entry:
_Stuff given her by her frends_:--A fetherbed, a bolster, ij pyllowys,
a payre of blankatts, ij corse coverleds, iiij pare of shets good and
badde, an olde tester and selar of paynted clothes and ij peces of
hangyng to the same; a square cofer carvyd, with ij bad clothes upon
the cofer, and in the wyndow a lytill cobard of waynscott carvyd and
ij lytill chestes; a small goblet with a cover of sylver parcel gylt,
a lytill maser with a bryme of sylver and gylt, a lytyll pece of
sylver and a spone of sylver, ij lytyll latyn candellstyks, a fire
panne and a pare of tonges, ij small aundyrons, iiij pewter dysshes, a
porrenger, a pewter bason, ij skyllots, a lytill brasse pot, a
cawdyron and a drynkyng pot of pewter.
She had apparently been sent into the house with a complete equipment in
furniture and implements[81].
Throughout the middle ages a struggle went on between the Church, which
forbade the exaction of dowries, and the convents which persisted in
demanding them, sometimes in so flagrant a manner as to incur the charge
of simony. The earliest prohibition of dowries in English canon law
occurred at the Council of Westminster in 1175[82] and was repeated at the
Council of London in 1200[83] and at the Council of Oxford in 1222[84];
this last had been anticipated by a decree of the fourth Lateran Council.
The history of the struggle to apply it is to be gathered from
visitational records. Archbishop Walter Giffard, visiting Swine in 1268,
finds that Alicia Brun and Alicia de Adeburn were simoniacally veiled[85];
Bishop Norbury has to rebuke the Prioress of Chester for the simoniacal
receipt of bribes to admit nuns[86]; Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury has heard
that the Prioress of Cannington received four women as sisters of that
house for L20 each, falling into the pravity of simony[87]; William of
Wykeham writes to the nuns of Romsey in 1387 that
in our said visitations it was discovered and declared that, on
account of the reception of certain persons as nuns of your said
monastery, several sums of money were received by the Abbess and
Convent by way of covenant, reward and compact, not without stain of
the pravity of simony and, if it were so, to the peril of your souls,
and he proceeds to forbid the exaction of a dowry "on pretext of any
custom (_consuetudinis_) whatsoever, which is rather to be esteemed a
corruption (_corruptela_)," a significant phrase, which shows that the
practice was well established[88]. Bishop Buckingham of Lincoln warns the
nuns of Heynings against "the reception or extortion of money or of
anything else by compact for the reception of anyone into religion"
(1392)[89]; and Bishop Flemyng enjoins at Elstow in 1422
that hereafter fit persons be received as nuns; for whose reception or
entrance let no money or aught else be demanded; but without any
simoniacal bargain and covenant of any sum of money or other thing
whatsoever, which were accustomed to be made by the crime of simony,
let them henceforth be admitted to your religion purely, simply and
for nothing[90].
But the most detailed information as to the prevalence of the dowry-system
is contained in the records of Bishop Alnwick's visitations of religious
houses in the diocese of Lincoln in 1440[91]. When the Bishop came to
Heynings (which had already been in trouble under Bokyngham) one of the
nuns, Dame Agnes Sutton, gave evidence to the effect that
her friends came to the Prioress and covenanted that she should be
received as a nun for twelve marks and the said money was paid down
before she was admitted, and she says that no one is admitted before
the sum agreed upon for her reception is paid.
She added that nothing was exacted save what was a free offering, but from
her previous words it is obvious that no nuns were received at Heynings
without a dowry. Similarly at Langley Dame Cecily Folgeham said that her
friends gave ten marks to the house "when she was tonsured, but not by
covenant." The most interesting case of all was that of Nuncoton. The
Subprioress, Dame Ellen Frost, said "that it was the custom in time past
to take twenty pounds or less for the admission of nuns, otherwise they
would not be received." The Bishop proceeded to examine other members of
the house; Dame Maud Saltmershe confirmed what the Subprioress had said
about the price for the reception of nuns; two other ladies, who had been
in religion for fifteen and eight years respectively, deposed to having
paid twenty pounds on their entrance and Dame Alice Skotte said that she
did not know how much she had paid, but that she thought it was twenty
pounds. Clearly there was a fixed entrance fee to this nunnery and it was
impossible to become a nun without it; all pretence of free-will
offerings had been dropped. When it is considered that this entrance fee
was twenty pounds (i.e. about L200 of modern money) it is easy to see why
poor girls belonging to the lower orders never found their way into
convents; such a luxury was far beyond their means.
In each of these cases and at two other houses (St Michael's Stamford, and
Legbourne) Alnwick entered a stern prohibition, on pain of
excommunication, against the reception of anything except free gifts from
the friends of a novice. His injunction to Heynings may be quoted as
typical of those made by medieval bishops on such occasions:
For as mykelle as we founde that many has been receyvede here afore
into nunne and sustre in your sayde pryory by covenaunt and paccyons
made be fore thair receyvyng of certeyn moneys to be payed to the
howse, the whiche is dampnede by alle lawe, we charge yowe under the
payn of the sentence of cursyng obove wrytene that fro hense forthe ye
receyve none persons in to nunne ne sustre in your sayde pryore by no
suche couenant, ne pactes or bargaines made before. Whan thai are
receyvede and professede, if thaire frendes of thaire almesse wylle
any gyfe to the place, we suffre wele, commende and conferme hit to be
receyvede[92].
But the efforts at reform made by Alnwick and other visitors were never
very successful; Nuncoton evidently continued to demand its entrance fee,
for in 1531 the practice was once more forbidden by Bishop Longland[93].
Moreover it is easy to see that the distinction between the reception of
what was willingly offered by friends (which was specifically permitted by
the rule of St Benedict and by synods and visitors throughout the middle
ages), and what was given by agreement as payment for the entry of a
novice (which was always forbidden) might become a distinction without a
difference, as it clearly was in the case of Heynings quoted above. The
Prioress of Gokewell, who declared to Alnwick that "they take nothing for
the admission of nuns, save that which the friends of her who is to be
created offer of their free-will and not by agreement"[94], may have acted
in reality not very differently from her erring sisters of Heynings,
Nuncoton and Langley. The temptation was in fact too great. The clause of
the Oxford decree, which permitted poor houses if necessary to receive a
sum sufficient for the vesture of a new member and no more, broadened the
way already opened by the permission of free-will offerings. The
concluding words of Bishop Flemyng's prohibition of dowries at Elstow in
1422 show that this permission had been abused; "if they must be clothed
at their own or their friends' expense, let nothing at all be in any sort
exacted or required, beyond their garments or the just price of their
garments"[95]. Throughout the later middle ages an increase in the cost of
living went side by side with a decrease in the monastic ideal of poverty,
showing itself on the one hand in the constant breach of the rule against
private property, on the other in the exaction of money with novices,
until the dowry system (although never during the middle ages recognised
by law) became in practice a matter of course.
Lest it should seem that everyone who had enough money could become a nun,
it must, however, be added that the bishops took some pains that the
persons who were received as novices should be suitable and pleasing to
their sisters. They seldom exercised their right of nomination without
some assurance that their nominee was of honest life and station,
"Mulierem honestam, ut credimus"[96], "bonae indolis, ut credimus,
juvenculam"[97], "jeovene damoisele et de bone condicion, come nous sumez
enformez"[98], "competeter ad hujusmodi officii debitum litterate"[99].
They were always ready to hear complaints if unsuitable persons had been
admitted by the prioress; and they sometimes made special injunctions upon
the matter. Bokyngham at Heynings in 1392 ordered "that they receive no
one to the habit, nor even to profession, unless she be first found by
diligent inquisition and approbation to be useful, teachable, capable, of
legitimate age, discreet and honest"[100]. At Elstow Bishop Gray made a
very comprehensive injunction:
Furthermore we enjoin and charge you the Abbess ... that henceforward
you admit no one to be a nun of the said monastery, unless with the
express consent of the greater and sounder part of the same convent;
and no one in that case, unless she be taught in song and reading and
the other things requisite herein, or probably may be easily
instructed within short time, and be such that she shall be able to
bear the burdens of the quire (with) the rest that pertain to
religion[101].
Nevertheless, for all their precautions, some strange inmates found their
way into the medieval nunneries.
The novice who entered a nunnery, to live there as a nun for the rest of
her natural life, might do so for very various reasons. For those who
entered young and of their own will, religion was either a profession or a
vocation. They might take the veil because it offered an honourable career
for superfluous girls, who were unwilling or unable to marry; or they
might take it in a real spirit of devotion, with a real call to the
religious life. For other girls the nunnery might be a prison, into which
they were thrust, unwilling but often afraid to resist, by elders who
wished to be rid of them; and many nunneries contained also another class
of inmates, older women, often widows, who had retired thither to end
their days in peace. A career, a vocation, a prison, a refuge; to its
different inmates the medieval nunnery was all these things.
The nunnery as a career and as a vocation does not need separate
treatment. It has already been shown that in large families it was a very
usual custom to make one or more of the daughters nuns. Indeed the youth
of many of the girls who took the veil is in itself proof that anything
like a vocation, or even a free choice, was seldom possible and was hardly
anticipated, even in theory. The age of profession was sixteen, but much
younger children were received as novices and prepared for the veil; they
could withdraw if they found the life distasteful, but as a rule, being
brought up from early childhood for this career, they entered upon it as a
matter of course; moreover the Church was rather apt to regard the
withdrawal of novices as apostasy. Sir Guy de Beauchamp in his will (dated
1359) describes his daughter Katherine as a nun of Shouldham and Dugdale
notes that Katherine, aged seven years, and Elizabeth, aged about one
year, were found to be daughters and heirs of the said Guy, who died in
the following year[102]. It might be supposed that this child of seven was
being brought up as a lay boarder in the convent, but legacies left to
Katherine "a nun at Shouldham" by her grandfather and by her uncle, in
1369 and in 1400 respectively, show that she had been thus vowed in
infancy to a religious life[103]. One of the daughters of Thomas of
Woodstock Duke of Gloucester, was "in infancy placed in the monastery (of
the Minoresses without Aldgate) and clad in the monastic habit" and in
1401 the Pope gave her permission to leave it if she wished, but she
remained and became its abbess[104]. Bishops' registers constantly give
evidence of the presence of mere children in nunneries. When Alnwick
visited Ankerwyke in 1441, three of the younger nuns complained that they
lacked a teacher (_informatrix_) to teach them "reading, song, or
religious observance"; and at the end of the visitation the Bishop noted
that he had examined all the nuns save three, whom he had omitted "on
account of the heedlessness of their age and the simplicity of their
discretion, since the eldest of them is not older than thirteen
years"[105]. At Studley in 1445 he found a girl who had been in religion
for two years and was then thirteen; she complained that one of the
maid-servants had slapped a fellow nun (doubtless also a child) in
church![106] At Littlemore there was a certain Agnes Marcham, who had
entered at the age of thirteen, and had remained there unprofessed for
thirteen years; she now refused to take the full vows[107]. Some of the
nuns at Romsey in 1534 were very young, two being fourteen and one
fifteen[108]. Indeed the reception of girls at a tender age was rather
encouraged than otherwise by the Church. Archbishop Greenfield gave a
licence to the Prioress of Hampole to receive Elena, daughter of the late
Reyner Sperri, citizen of York, who was eight years old, and (he added
solemnly) "of good conversation and life"[109], and Archbishop John le
Romeyn described Margaret de la Batayle, whom he sent to Sinningthwaite,
as "_juvencula_"[110]. The great Peckham went out of his way to make a
specific defence of the practice in 1282, when the Prioress and Convent of
Stratford sought to excuse themselves from veiling a little girl called
Isabel Bret, by reason of her youth, "since on account of this minority
she is the more able and capable to learn and receive those things which
concern the discipline of your order"[111].
It is impossible to make the generalisation that even children professed
at such an early age could have had no consciousness of a vocation for the
religious life; the history of some of the women saints of the middle ages
would be enough to disprove this[112]. The German monk Caesarius of
Heisterbach, who is to be equalled as a gossip only by the less pious
Salimbene, has some delightful stories of youthful enthusiasts in the
_Dialogus Miraculorum_, which he wrote between 1220 and 1235 for the
instruction of the novices in his own Cistercian house. One child,
destined for a worldly match, protests daily that she will wed Christ
only; and, when forced to wear rich garments, asserts "even if you turn me
to gold you cannot make me change my mind," until her parents, worn out by
her prayers, allow her to enter a nunnery where, although very young, she
is soon made governess of the novices. Her sister, given to an earthly
husband while yet a child, is widowed and, "_ipsa adhuc adolescentula_"
enters the same house. Another girl, fired by their example, escapes to a
nunnery in man's clothes; her sister, trying to follow, is caught by her
parents and married, "but I hope," says the appreciative Caesarius, "that
God may not leave unrewarded so fervent a desire to enter religion"[113].
But the most charming tale of all is that of the conversion of Helswindis,
Abbess of Burtscheid[114].
She, although the daughter of a powerful and wealthy man ... burned so
from her earliest childhood with zeal to be converted (i.e. to become
a nun), that she used often to say to her mother: "Mother, make me a
nun." Now she was accustomed with her mother to ascend Mount St.
Saviour, whereon stood at that time the convent of the sisters of
Burtscheid. One day she climbed secretly in through the kitchen
window, went up to the dorter and putting on the habit of one of the
maidens, entered the choir with the others. When the Abbess told this
to her mother, who wanted to go, she, thinking that it was a joke,
replied "Call the child; we must go." Then the child came from within
to the window, saying: "I am a nun; I will not go with thee." But the
mother, fearing her husband, replied: "Only come with me now, and I
will beg thy father to make thee a nun." And so she went forth. It
happened that the mother (who had held her peace) once more went up
the mountain, leaving her daughter asleep. And when the latter rose
and sought her mother in vain in the church, she suspected her to be
at the convent, followed her alone, and, getting in by the same
window, once more put on the habit. When her mother besought her to
come away she replied: "Thou shalt not deceive me again," repeating
the promise that had been made to her. Then indeed her mother went
home in great fear, and her father came up full of rage, together with
her brothers, broke open the doors and carried off his screaming
daughter, whom he committed to the care of relatives, that they might
dissuade her. But she, being (as I believe) not yet nine years of age,
answered them so wisely that they marvelled. What more? The Bishop of
Liege having excommunicated her father and those by whom she had been
taken away, she was restored to the place and after a few years was
elected Abbess there[115].
After these examples of infant zeal it is impossible to assert that even
the extreme youth of many novices made a real vocation for religious life
impossible. But there is no doubt that such a vocation was less probable,
than in cases when a girl of more mature years entered a convent. And it
is also certain that the tendency to regard monasticism as the natural
career for superfluous girls and as the natural alternative to marriage,
was capable of grave abuse. When medieval convents are compared
unfavourably with those of the present day, and when the increasing laxity
with which the rule was kept in the later middle ages is condemned, it has
always to be remembered that the majority of girls in those days (unlike
those of today) entered the nunneries as a career, without any particular
spiritual qualification, because there was nothing else for them to do.
Even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries monasticism produced
saintly women and great mystics (especially in Germany); but it is
remarkable that in England, although there must have been many good
abbesses like Euphemia of Wherwell, there are no outstanding names.
Monasticism was pre-eminently a respectable career.
It has been said that this tendency to regard monasticism as a career was
capable of abuse; and there were not wanting men to abuse it and to use
the nunnery as a "dumping ground" for unwanted and often unwilling girls,
whom it was desirable to put out of the world, by a means as sure as death
itself and without the risk attaching to murder. Kings themselves were
wont thus to immure the wives and daughters of defeated rebels. Wencilian
(Gwenllian) daughter of Llewelyn was sent to Sempringham as a child, after
her father's death in 1283, and died a nun there in 1337, and the two
daughters of Hugh Despenser the elder were forced to take the veil at the
same convent after their father's fall[116]. The nunnery must often have
served the purpose of lesser men, desirous of shaking off an encumbrance.
The guilty wife of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, unhappily married for eight years
and ruined by an intrigue with her father's servant, was sent to
Crabhouse, where she lived for some forty years; and none thought kindly
of her save--strangely enough--her husband's sister[117]. Sir Peter de
Montfort, dying in 1367, left ten shillings to the lady Lora Astley, a nun
at Pinley, called by Dugdale "his old concubine"[118]. Illegitimate
children too were sometimes sent to convents. One remembers Langland's
nunnery, where
Dame Iohanne was a bastard,
And dame Clarice a knightes doughter . ac a kokewolde was hire syre.
Nor were the clergy loath to embrace this opportunity of removing the
fruit of a lapse from grace. Hugh de Tunstede, rector of Catton, left ten
shillings and a bed to his daughter Joan, a nun of Wilberfoss[119], and at
the time of the Dissolution there was a child of Wolsey himself at
Shaftesbury[120]. It is significant that it was sometimes necessary to
procure the papal dispensation of an abbess- or prioress-elect for
illegitimacy, before she could hold office. The dispensation in 1472 of
Joan Ward, a nun of Esholt, who afterwards became prioress, is
interesting, for the Wards were patrons of the house and her presence
illustrates one of the uses to which such patronage could be put[121]. The
diocese of York affords other instances (they were common enough in the
case of priests) of dispensation "_super defectu natalium_"; in 1474 one
was granted to Cecily Conyers, a nun at Ellerton, "born of a married man
and a single woman"[122] and in 1432 Alice Etton received one four days
before her confirmation as Prioress of Sinningthwaite[123]. At St Mary's
Neasham in 1437, the Bishop of Durham appointed Agnes Tudowe prioress and
issued a mandate for her dispensation for illegitimacy and her
installation on the same day[124].
Less defensible from the point of view of the house was the practice,
which certainly existed, of placing in nunneries girls in some way
deformed, or suffering from an incurable defect.
Now earth to earth in convent walls,
To earth in churchyard sod.
I was not good enough for man,
And so am given to God.
It will be remembered that the practice roused the disapprobation of
Gargantua, whose abbey of Theleme contained only beautiful and amiable
persons.
Item, parcequ'en icelluy temps on ne mettoit en religion des femmes,
sinon celles qu'estoyent borgnes, boiteuses, bossues, laides,
deffaictes, folles, insensees, maleficiees et tarees, ... ("a propos,
dist li moyne, une femme qui n'est ny belle, ny bonne, a quoi vault
elle?--A mettre en religion, dist Gargantua.--Voyre, dist le moine, et
a faire des chemises.") ... feut ordonne que la (i.e. a Theleme) ne
seroyent receues, sinon les belles, bien formees et bien naturees, et
les beaux, bien formez et bien naturez[125].
Occasionally the nuns seem to have resented or resisted these attempts to
foist the deformed and the half-witted upon them. One of the reasons urged
by the obstinate inmates of Stratford against receiving little Isabel Bret
was that she was deformed in her person[126]. It was complained against
the Prioress of Ankerwyke at Alnwick's visitation in 1441 that she made
_ideotas_ and other unfit persons nuns[127]; and in 1514 the Prioress of
Thetford was similarly charged with intending shortly to receive
illiterate and deformed persons as nuns and especially one Dorothy
Sturges, a deaf and deformed gentlewoman. Her designs were frustrated, but
the nuns of Blackborough were less particular and in 1532 Dorothy answered
among her sisters that nothing was in need of reform in that little
house[128].
At the time of the Dissolution the Commissioners found that one of the
nuns of Langley was "in regard a fool"[129]; and a certain Jane Gowring
(the name of whose convent has not been preserved) sent a petition to
Cromwell, demanding whether two girls of twelve and thirteen, the one deaf
and dumb and the other an idiot, should depart or not[130]. At Nuncoton
in 1440 a nun informed Bishop Alnwick that two old nuns lay in the fermery
and took their meals in the convent's cellar "and likewise the infirm,
_the weak minded_ (_imbecilles_) and they that are in their seynies do eat
in the same cellar"[131]. Complaints of the presence of idiots were fairly
frequent. It is easy to understand the exasperation of Thetford over the
case of Dorothy Sturges, when one finds Dame Katherine Mitford complaining
at the same visitation that Elizabeth Haukeforth is "_aliquando
lunatica_"[132]; but a few years later Agnes Hosey, described as
"_ideota_," gave testimony with her sisters at Easebourne and excited no
adverse comment[133]. In an age when faith and superstition went hand in
hand a mad nun might even bring glory to her house; the tale of Catherine,
nun of Bungay, illustrates this. In 1319 an inquiry was held into the
miracles said to have been performed at the tomb of the saintly Robert of
Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose canonisation was ardently
desired by the English; among these miracles was the following:
Sir Walter Botere, chaplain, having been sworn, says that the miracle
happened thus, to wit that he saw a certain Catherine, who had been
(so they say) a nun of Bungay, in the diocese of Norwich, mad
(_furiosam_) and led to the tomb of the said father; and there she was
cured of the said madness and so departed sane; and he says that there
is public talk and report of this.
Three other witnesses also swore to the tale[134]. Even cases of violent
and dangerous madness seem at times to have occurred, judging from a note
at Alnwick's visitation of Stainfield in 1440, in which it is said that
all the nuns appeared separately before the Bishop, "with the exception of
Alicia Benyntone, who is out of her mind and confined in chains"[135].
Lay and ecclesiastical opinion alike condemned another practice, which
seems to have been fairly widespread in medieval England, that of forcing
into convents children too young to realise their fate, or even girls old
enough to resist, of whom unscrupulous relatives desired to be rid,
generally in order to gain possession of their inheritance; for a nun,
dead in the eyes of the law which governed the world, could claim no share
in her father's estate[136]. It is true that influential people, who could
succeed in proving that a nun was unwillingly professed, might obtain her
release[137]; but many little heiresses and unwanted children must have
remained for ever, without hope of escape, in the convents to which they
had been hurried, for it is evident that the religious houses themselves
did all they could to discourage the presentation of such petitions, or
the escape of unwilling members. The _chanson de nonne_, the song of the
nun unwillingly professed, is a favourite theme in medieval popular
poetry[138]; and dry documents show that it had its foundation in fact. It
is possible to collect from various sources a remarkable series of legal
documents which illustrate the practice of putting girls into nunneries,
so as to secure their inheritance.
As early as 1197 there is a case at Ankerwyke, where a nun who had been
fifteen years professed returned to the world and claimed a share of her
father's property, on the ground that she had been forced into the
monastery by a guardian, who wished to secure the whole inheritance. Her
relatives energetically resisted a claim by which they would have been the
losers and appealed to the Pope. The runaway nun was excommunicated and
her case came into the Curia Regis, but the result has not survived and it
is impossible to say whether her story was true[139]. The case of Agnes,
nun of Haverholme, illustrates at once the reason for which an unwilling
girl might be immured in a nunnery and the obstacles which her order would
place in the way of escape. She enters history in a papal mandate of 1304,
by which three ecclesiastics are ordered to take proceedings in the case
of Agnes, whose father and stepmother (how familiar and like a fairy tale
it sounds) in order to deprive her of her heritage, shut her up in the
monastery of Haverholme. "The canons and nuns of Sempringham (to which
order Haverholme belonged) declare," continues the mandate, "that she took
the habit out of devotion, but refuse to confirm their assertion by
oath"[140]. The inference is irresistible. Another case, the memory of
which is preserved in a petition to Chancery, concerns Katherine and Joan,
the two daughters of Thomas Norfolk, whose widow Agnes married a certain
Richard Haldenby. Agnes was seised of certain lands and tenements in
Yorkshire to the value of L40 a year, as the nearest friend of the two
girls, whose share of their father's estate the lands were. But her
remarriage roused the wrath of the Norfolk family and an uncle, John
Norfolk, dispossessed her of the land and took the children out of her
guardianship, "with great force of armed men against the peace of our lord
the king," breaking open their doors and carrying away the deeds of their
possessions. Then, according to the petition of Agnes and her second
husband, "did he make the said Katherine a nun, when she was under the age
of nine years, at a place called Wallingwells, against her will, and the
other daughter of the aforesaid Thomas Norfolk he hath killed, as it is
said." The mother begs for an inquiry to be held[141].
But the most vivid of all these little tragedies of the cloister are those
concerned with Margaret de Prestewych and Clarice Stil. The case of
Margaret de Prestewych has been preserved in the register of Robert de
Stretton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield; and it is satisfactory to know
that one energetic girl at least succeeded in making good her protests and
in escaping from her prison. In her eighth year or thereabouts, according
to her own petition to the Pope, her friends compelled her against her
will to enter the priory of the nuns of Seton, of the order of St
Augustine, and take on her the habit of a novice. She remained there, as
in a prison, for several years, always protesting that she had never made
nor ever would willingly make any profession. And then, seeing that she
must by profession be excluded from her inheritance, she feigned herself
sick and took to her bed. But this did not prevent her being carried to
the church at the instance of her rivals and blessed by a monk, in spite
of her cries and protests that she would not remain in that priory or in
any other order. On the first opportunity she went forth from the priory
without leave and returned to the world, which in heart she had never
left, and married Robert de Holand, publicly after banns, and had issue.
The bishop, to whom the case had been referred by the Pope, found upon
inquiry that these things were true, and in 1383 released her from the
observance of her order[142].
Within a few years of this high spirited lady's escape the case of little
Clarice Stil engaged the attention of the King's court. The dry-as-dust
pages of the medieval law-books hide many jewels for whoever has patience
to seek them, but none brighter than this story. It all arose out of a
writ of wardship sued by one David Carmayngton or Servyngton against
Walter Reynold, whom he declared to have unjustly deforced him of the
wardship of the land and heir of Robert Stil, the heir being Clarice.
Walter, however, said that no action lay against him, because Clarice had
entered into the order of St John of Jerusalem, of which the Prioress of
Buckland was prioress, and had been professed in that order on the very
day of the purchase of the writ. In answer David unfolded a strange story.
He alleged that William Stil, the father of Robert, had married twice; by
his first wife Constance he had one daughter Margaret, who was now the
wife of Walter Reynold; by his second wife Joan he had two children,
Robert and Clarice. William died seised of certain tenements which were
inherited by Robert, who died without an heir of his body; whereupon
(David alleged) Walter, by connivance with the Prioress of Buckland and in
order to disinherit Clarice (in which case his own wife Margaret would be
the next of kin), took Clarice after her brother's death and conveyed her
to Buckland Priory, she being then eight years of age, and kept her there
under guard. David's counsel gave a dramatic account of the proceeding:
Sir, we say that the same Walter by covinage to compel the said
Clarice to be professed, took the said Clarice when she was between
the ages of seven and eight years, to the house of nuns at Buckland,
and in that place were two ladies, nuns, who were of his assent to
cause the infant to be professed, and they told the child that if she
passed the door the devil would carry her away.
It was furthermore pleaded that on the day of purchase of the writ,
Clarice was within the age of twelve years and that she was still within
that age, and that therefore she could not be considered professed by the
law of the land. By this time one's sympathies are all on the side of
David, and of terrified little Clarice, with whom the devil was to run
away. Unfortunately the judges referred the matter to an ecclesiastical
court and ordered a writ to be sent to the Bishop of Bath and Wells. The
Bishop made his return
that the said Clarice on August 1st, 1383, of her own free will, was
taken to the said Prioress of Buckland by Stephen Joseph, rector of
the church of Northeleye, without any connivance on the part of the
said Walter and the said Prioress, and she remained at the said priory
for two years to see if the life would please her. Afterwards, on
October 18th, 1385, she assumed the religious habit and made
profession according to the manners and customs of the said house. And
on the day when Clarice entered the house she was more than eight
years old and on the day of purchase of the writ more than twelve
years old, and at the present time is more than fourteen years old,
and is well contented with the religious life.
The Bishop also found that no guards had been placed over Clarice by
Walter, or by the Prioress. So David lost his suit and was in mercy for a
false claim; and he also lost, upon a technical point, another suit which
he had brought against the Prioress of Buckland. Nevertheless one's
sympathies remain obstinately on his side. That touch about the devil
assuredly never sprang even from the fertile brain of a lawyer[143].
The illegitimate, the deformed, the feeble-minded and the unwilling
represent a not very pleasant side of the conventual system. The nunneries
contained other and less tragic inmates, who may be distinguished from the
majority; for to them went in voluntary retirement a large number of
widows[144]. If the nun unwillingly professed has always been a favourite
theme in popular literature, so also has the broken-hearted wife or lover,
Guinevere hiding her sorrows in the silent cloister.
Many of the widows who took the veil were, however, less romantic figures.
Although their presence as secular boarders was discouraged, because it
brought too much of the world within cloister walls, those who desired to
make regular profession were willingly received, the more so as they often
brought a substantial dower with them. Thus when Margaret, Countess of
Ulster, assumed the habit at Campsey in 1347, she took with her, by
licence of the Crown, the issues of all her lands and rents in England for
a year after her admission, and after that date 200 marks yearly were to
be paid for her sustenance[145]. Such widows often enjoyed a respect
consonant with their former position in society and not infrequently
became heads of their houses. Katherine de Ingham and Eleanor Lady Scrope
both entered the Minories in their widowhood and eventually became
abbesses[146]. But it does not need much imagination, nor an unduly
cynical temperament, to guess that this element of convent life must
occasionally have been a disturbing one. The conventual atmosphere did not
always succeed in killing the profaner passions of the soul; and the
advent of an opinionated widow, ripe in the experience of all those things
which her sisters had never known, with the aplomb of one who had long
enjoyed an honoured position as wife and mother and lady of the manor,
must at times have caused a flutter among the doves; such a situation, for
instance, as Bishop Cobham found at Wroxall when he visited it in
1323[147]. Isabel Lady Clinton of Maxstoke, widow of the patron of the
house, had retired thither and had evidently taken with her a not too
modest opinion of her own importance. She found it impossible to forget
that she was a Clinton and to realise that she, who had in time gone by
given her easy patronage to the nuns and lodged with them when she would,
was now a simple sister among them. Was she to submit to the rule of
Prioress Agnes of Alesbury, she without whose goodwill Prioress Agnes had
never been appointed? Was she to listen meekly to chiding in the dorter,
and in the frater to bear with sulks? Impossible. How she comported
herself we know not, but the bishop "found grave discord existing between
the Prioress and dame Isabel Clinton, some of the sisters adhering to one
and some to the other." Evidently a battle royal. The bishop, poor man,
did his best. He enjoined peace and concord among the inmates; the sisters
were to treat the prioress with reverence and obedience; those who had
rebelled against her were to desist and the prioress was to behave
amicably to all in frater, dorter, and elsewhere. And so my lord went his
way. He may have known the pertinacity of the late patroness; and it was
perhaps with resignation and without surprise that he confirmed her
election as prioress on the death of the harassed Agnes.
The occasional cases in which wives left their husbands to enter a convent
were less likely to provoke discord. Such women as left husband and
children to take the veil must have been moved by a very strong vocation
for religion, or else by excessive weariness. Some may perhaps have found
married life even such an odious tale, "a licking of honey off thorns," as
the misguided realist who wrote _Hali Meidenhad_ sought to depict it. In
any case, whether the mystical faith of a St Bridget drew her thither, or
whether matrimony had not seemed easy to her that had tried it, the
presence of a wedded wife was unlikely to provoke discord in the convent;
the devout and the depressed are quiet bedeswomen. It was necessary for a
wife to obtain her husband's permission before she could take the veil,
since her action entailed celibacy on his part also, during her lifetime.
Sometimes a husband would endow his wife liberally on her entry into the
house which she had selected. There are two such dowers in the Register of
Godstow Nunnery. About 1165 William de Seckworth gave the tithes of two
mills and a grant of five acres of meadow to the convent, "for the helth
of hys sowle and of hys chyldryn and of hys aunceters, with hys wyfe also,
the whyche he toke to kepe to the forseyd holy mynchons to serve
god"[148]; and a quarter of a century later Geoffrey Durant and Molde his
wife, "whan şe same Moole yelded herself to be a mynchon to the same
chirch," granted one mark of rent to be paid annually by their son Peter,
out of certain lands held by him, "which were of the mariage of the said
Moolde"[149]. Nor did Walter Hauteyn, citizen of London, in his solicitude
for his son and three daughters, forget the mother who had left her
husband and children for the service of God; to Alice his wife, a nun of
St Sepulchre's Canterbury, he bequeathed in 1292 his dwelling place and
rents upon Cornhill for life, with remainder to his heirs[150].