FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen,
six; result, happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual
expenditure twenty pounds, ought and six; result, misery.
_Mr Micawber._
In the history of the medieval nunneries of England there is nothing more
striking than the constant financial straits to which they were reduced.
Professor Savine's analysis of the _Valor Ecclesiasticus_ has shown that
in 1535 the nunneries were on an average only half as rich as the men's
houses, while the average number of religious persons in them was
larger[442]; and yet it is clear from the evidence of visitation documents
that even the men's houses were continually in debt. It is therefore not
to be wondered at that there was hardly a nunnery in England, which did
not at one time or another complain of poverty. These financial
difficulties had already begun before the end of the thirteenth century
and they grew steadily worse until the moment of the Dissolution. The
worst sufferers of all were the nunneries of Yorkshire and the North, a
prey to the inroads of the Scots, who time after time pillaged their lands
and sometimes dispersed their inmates; Yorkshire was full of nunneries and
almost all of them were miserably poor. But in other parts of the country,
without any such special cause, the position was little better. When
Bishop Alnwick visited the diocese of Lincoln in the first half of the
fifteenth century, fourteen out of the twenty-five houses which he
examined were in financial difficulties. Moreover not only is this true of
small houses, inadequately endowed from their foundation and less likely
to weather bad times, but the largest and richest houses frequently
complained of insufficient means. It is easy to understand the distress of
the poor nuns of Rothwell; their founder Richard, Earl of Gloucester, had
died before properly endowing the house, and the prioress and convent
could expend for their food and clothing only four marks and the produce
of four fields of land, in one of which the house was situated[443]. But
it is less easy to account for the constant straits of the great Abbey of
Shaftesbury, which had such vast endowments that a popular saying had
arisen: "If the Abbot of Glastonbury could marry the Abbess of
Shaftesbury, their heir would hold more land than the King of
England"[444]. It is comprehensible that the small houses of Lincolnshire
and the dangerously situated houses of Yorkshire should be in
difficulties; but their complaints are not more piteous than those of
Romsey, Godstow and Barking, richly endowed nunneries, to which the
greatest ladies of the land did not disdain to retire.
The poverty of the nunneries was manifested in many ways. One of these was
the extreme prevalence of debt. On the occasion of Bishop Alnwick's
visitations, to which reference has been made above, no less than eleven
houses were found to be in debt[445]. At Ankerwyke the debts amounted to
L40, at Langley to L50, at Stixwould to 80 marks, at Harrold to 20 marks,
at Rothwell to 6 marks. Markyate was "indebted to divers creditors for a
great sum." Heynings was in debt owing to costly repairs and to several
bad harvests, and about the same time a petition from the nuns stated that
they had "mortgaged for no short time their possessions and rents and thus
remain irrecoverably pledged, have incurred various very heavy debts and
are much depressed and brought to great and manifest poverty"[446]. In
some cases the prioresses claimed to have reduced an initial debt; the
Prioress of St Michael's, Stamford, said that on her installation twelve
years previously the debts stood at L20 and that they were now only 20
marks; the Prioress of Gracedieu said that she had reduced debts from L48
to L38; the Prioress of Legbourne said that the debts were now only L14
instead of L63[447]. But from the miserable poverty of some of these
houses (for instance Gokewell, where the income in rents was said to be
L10 yearly and Langley, where it was L20, less than half the amount of the
debts) it may be inferred that the struggle to repay creditors out of an
already insufficient income was a hopeless one; and the effort to do so
out of capital was often more disastrous still. Nothing is more striking
than the lists of debts which figure in the account rolls of medieval
nunneries. In thirteen out of seventeen account rolls belonging to St
Michael's Stamford[448] and ranging between 1304 and 1410, the nuns end
the year with a deficit; and in fourteen cases there is a schedule of
debts added to the account. Sometimes the amount owed is small, but
occasionally it is very large. In the first roll which has survived
(1304-5) the deficit on the account is some L5 odd; the debts are entered
as L23. 1_s._ 11_d._ on the present year (which were apparently afterwards
paid, because the items were marked "vacat pour ceo ke le deners sount
paye") and fifteen items amounting to L52. 3_s._ 8_d._ and described as
"nos auncienes dettes estre cest aan"; in fact the debts amount to
considerably more than the income entered in the roll[449]. Similarly in
1346-47 the debts amount to L51 odd and in 1376-77 to L53 odd, and in
other years to smaller sums. In some cases a list of debts due to the
convent is also entered in the account, but in only four of these does the
money owed to the house exceed the amount owing by it; and "argent
aprompte" or "money borrowed" is a regular item in the credit account.
Similarly the treasuresses' accounts of Gracedieu end with long schedules
of debts due by the house[450]. Nor was it only the small houses which got
into debt. Tarrant Keynes was quite well off, but as early as 1292 the
nuns asked the royal leave to sell forty oaks to pay their debts[451].
Godstow was rich, but in 1316 the King had to take it under his protection
and appoint keepers to discharge its debts, "on account of its poverty and
miserable state," and in 1335 the profits during vacancy were remitted to
the convent by the King "because of its poverty and misfortunes"[452]. St
Mary's, Winchester, was a famous house, but it also was in debt early in
the fourteenth century[453]. It should be noticed that the last cases (and
that of St Michael's Stamford, 1304-5) are anterior to the Black Death, to
whose account it has been customary to lay all the financial misfortunes
of the religious houses. It is undeniable that the Black Death completed
the ruin of many of the smaller houses, and that matters grew steadily
worse during the last half of the fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth
century; but there is ample evidence that the finances of many religious
houses, both of men and of women, had been in an unsatisfactory condition
at an earlier date; and even the golden thirteenth century can show cases
of heavy debt[454].
In the smaller houses the constant struggle with poverty must have
entailed no little degree of discomfort and discouragement. Sometimes the
nuns seem actually to have lacked food and clothes, and it seems clear
that in many cases the revenues of these convents were insufficient for
their support and that they were dependent upon the charity of friends. A
typical case is that of Legbourne, where one of the nuns informed Bishop
Alnwick (1440) that since the revenues of the house did not exceed L40 and
since there were thirteen nuns and one novice, it was impossible for so
many of them to have sufficient food and clothing from such inadequate
rents, unless they received assistance from secular friends[455]. Fosse
in 1341 was said to be so slenderly endowed that the nuns had not enough
to live on without external aid[456]; and in 1440 Alnwick noted "all the
nuns complain ever of the poverty of the house and they receive nothing
from it save only food and drink"[457]. Of Buckland it was stated that
"its possessions cannot suffice for the sustenance of the said sisters
with their household, for the emendation of their building, for their
clothes and for their other necessities without the help of friends and
the offering of alms"[458]. Cokehill in 1336 was excused a tax because it
was so inadequately endowed that the nuns had not enough to live upon
without outside aid[459]. Davington in 1344 was in the same position;
although the nuns were reduced to half their former number, they could not
live upon their revenues without the charity of friends[460]. Alnwick's
visitations, indeed, show quite clearly that in poor houses the nuns were
often expected to provide either clothes or (on certain days) food for
themselves, out of the gift of their friends[461]. At Sinningthwaite, in
the diocese of York, the position appears even more clearly; in 1319 it
was declared that the nuns who had no elders, relatives or friends, lacked
the necessary clothes and were therefore afflicted with cold, whereupon
the Archbishop ordered them to have clothes provided out of the means of
the house[462]. The clause of the Council of Oxford which permitted poor
houses to receive a sum sufficient for the vesture of a new member was
evidently stretched to include the perpetual provision of clothing by
external friends, and this is sometimes indicated in the wording of
legacies. Thus Roger de Noreton, citizen and mercer of York, left the
following bequest in 1390:
I bequeath to Isabel, my daughter, a nun of St Clement's, York, to buy
her black flannels (_pro flannelis suis nigris emendis_), according to
the arrangement of my wife Agnes and of my other executors, at fitting
times, according to her needs, four marks of silver[463].
Sir Thomas Cumberworth, dying in 1451, specifically directed that "ye blak
Curteyne of lawne be cut in vailes and gyfyn to pore nones"[464].
The nuns were not always able to obtain adequate help from external
friends in the matter of food and clothes; and evidence given at episcopal
visitations shows that they sometimes went cold and hungry. Complaints are
common that the allowance paid to the nuns (in defiance of canon law) for
the provision of food and of garments had been reduced or withdrawn; and
so also are complaints that the quality of beer provided by the convent
was poor, though here the propensity of all communities to grumble at
their food has to be taken into account[465]. But more specific
information is often given; and though it is clear that financial
mismanagement was often as much to blame as poverty, the sufferings of the
nuns were not for that reason any less real. The Yorkshire nunnery of
Swine is a case in point. It was never rich, but at Archbishop Giffard's
visitation in 1268 the nuns complained that the maladministration of their
fellow canons[466] had made their position intolerable. Although the means
of the house, if discreetly managed, sufficed to maintain them, they
nevertheless had nothing but bread and cheese and ale for meals and were
even served with water instead of ale twice a week, while the canons and
their friends were provided for "abundantly and sumptuously enough"; the
nuns were moreover insufficiently provided with shoes and clothes; they
had only one pair of shoes each year[467] and barely a tunic in every
three and a cloak in every six years, unless they managed to beg more from
relatives and secular friends[468]. Fifty years later there was still
scarcity at Swine, for the Prioress was ordered to see that the house was
reasonably served with bread, ale and other necessities[469]. At Ankerwyke
(1441) the frivolous and incompetent Prioress, Clemence Medforde, reduced
her nuns to similar discomfort. Margery Kirkby, whose tongue nothing
could stop, announced that "she furnishes not nor for three years' space
has furnished fitting habits to the nuns, insomuch that the nuns go about
in patched clothes. The threadbareness of the nuns" added the bishop's
clerk "was apparent to my lord. (_Patebat domino nuditas monialium._)"
Three of the younger nuns also made complaints; Thomasine Talbot had no
bedclothes "insomuch that she lies in the straw," Agnes Dychere "asks that
sufficient provision be made to her in clothing for her bed and body, that
she may be covered from the cold, and also in eatables, that she may have
strength to undergo the burden of religious observance and divine service,
for these hitherto had not been supplied to her"; and Margaret Smith also
complained of insufficient bedclothes. Poor little sister Thomasine also
remarked sadly that she had no kirtle provided for her use[470].
The history of Romsey shows that even the rich houses suffered from
similar inconveniences. In 1284 Peckham speaks of a scarcity of food in
the house and forbids the Abbess to fare sumptuously in her chamber, while
the convent went short[471]; in 1311 it was ordered that the bread should
be brought back to the weight, quantity and quality hitherto used[472];
and in 1387 William of Wykeham rather severely commanded the Abbess and
officiaries to provide for the nuns bread, beer and other fit and proper
victuals, according to ancient custom and to the means of the house[473].
Campsey was another flourishing house, but in 1532 a chorus of complaint
greeted the ears of the visitor, and (as in so many cases) the ills were
all put down to the mismanagement of the Prioress, Ela Buttry. She was not
too luxurious, but too stingy; Katherine Symon said that noble guests,
coming to the priory, complained of the very great parsimony of the
Prioress; Margaret Harmer said that the sisters were sometimes served with
very unwholesome food; Isabel Norwich said that the friends of the nuns,
coming to the house, were not properly provided for; Margaret Bacton said
that dinner was late through the fault of the cook and that the meat was
burnt to a cinder; Katherine Grome said that the beef and mutton with
which the nuns were served were sometimes bad and unwholesome and that
within the past month a sick ox, which would otherwise have died, had been
killed for food, and that the Prioress was very sparing both in her own
meals and in those with which she provided the nuns; and four other
sisters gave evidence to the same effect[474]. One has the impression that
the nuns were elderly and fussy, but there was evidently a basis for their
unanimous complaint, and it is easy to imagine that food may sometimes
have been very bad in convents which (unlike Campsey) were burdened with
real poverty[475].
Another sign of the financial distress of the nunneries was the ruinous
condition of their buildings. The remark written by a shivering monk in a
set of nonsense verses may well stand as the plaint of half the nunneries
of England:
Haec abbathia ruit, hoc notum sit tibi, Christe,
Intus et extra pluit, terribilis est locus iste.
("This abbey falleth in ruins, Christ mark this well! It raineth within
and without; how fearful is this place!")[476]. Time after time
visitations revealed houses badly in need of repair and roofs letting in
rain or even tumbling about the ears of the nuns; time after time
indulgences were granted to Christians who would help the poor nuns to
rebuild church or frater or infirmary. The thatched roofs especially were
continually needing repairs. It will be remembered how the Abbess Euphemia
of Wherwell rebuilt the bell tower above the dorter,
which fell down through decay one night, about the hour of mattins,
when by an obvious miracle from heaven, though the nuns were in the
dorter, some in bed and some in prayer before their beds, all escaped
not only death but any bodily injury[477].
[Illustration: PLATE IV
Brass of Ela Buttry, the stingy Prioress of Campsey ([dagger] 1546), in St
Stephen's Church, Norwich. Stingy even in death, she has appropriated to
her own use the brass of a 14th century laywoman.]
At Crabhouse in the time of Joan Wiggenhall
the dortour that than was, as fer forthe as we knowe, the furste that
was set up on the place, was at so grete mischeef and, at the
gate-downe, the Prioresse dredyinge perisschyng of her sistres whiche
lay thereinne took it doune for drede of more hermys,
and next year "sche began the grounde of the same dortoure that now
stondith and wrought thereupon fulli vij yere betymes as God wolde sende
hir good[478]." The Prioress of Swine was ordered in 1318 to have the
dorter covered without delay, so that the nuns might quietly and in
silence enter it, without annoyance from storms, and to have the roofs of
the other buildings repaired as soon as might be[479]. At St Radegund's
Cambridge, in 1373, the Prioress was charged with suffering the frater to
remain unroofed, so that in rainy weather the sisters were unable to take
their meals there, to which she replied that the nunnery was so burdened
with debts, subsidies and contributions, that she had so far been unable
to carry out repairs, but would do so as quickly as possible[480]. At
Littlemore in 1445 the nuns did not sleep in the dorter for fear it should
fall[481]. At Romsey in 1502 the wicked Abbess Elizabeth Broke had allowed
the roofs of the chancel and dorter to become defective, "so that if it
happened to rain the nuns were unable to remain either in the quire in
time of divine service or in their beds and the funds that the abbess
ought to have expended on these matters were being squandered on Master
Bryce"; the fabric of the monastery in stone walls was also going to decay
through her neglect, and so were various tenements belonging to the house
in the town of Romsey[482]. Over a hundred and twenty years before,
William of Wykeham had found Romsey hardly less dilapidated, with its
church, infirmary and nuns' rooms "full of many enormous and notable
defects," and the buildings of the monastery itself and of its different
manors in need of repair[483]. Of the unfortunate houses within the area
of Scottish inroads, Arden, Thicket, Keldholme, Rosedale, Swine, Wykeham,
Arthington and Moxby were all ruinous at the beginning of the fourteenth
century; the monotonous list includes the church, frater and chapter house
of Arden, the cloister of Rosedale, the bakehouse and brewhouse of Moxby,
the dorter and frater of Arthington[484].
In the sixteenth century the distress was, as usual, at its worst. At the
visitation of the Chichester diocese by Bishop Sherburn in 1521 the
cloister of Easebourne needed roofing and Rusper was "in magno decasu";
six years later Rusper was still "aliqualiter ruinosa"[485]. At the
Norwich visitations of Bishop Nykke the church of Blackborough was in
ruins, and the roofs of cloister and frater at Flixton were defective;
while at Crabhouse buildings were in need of repair and the roof of the
Lady chapel was ruinous[486]; Joan Wiggenhall must have turned in her
grave. Bishop Longland's visitations of the diocese of Lincoln show a
similar state of affairs. In 1531 he commanded the Abbess of Elstow "that
suche reparacons as be necessarye in and upon the buildinges within the
said monasterye, and other houses, tenements and fearmes thereto
belonging, be suffycyently doon and made within the space of oon yere,"
and the Prioress of Nuncoton, "that ye cause your firmary, your chirche
and all other your houses that be in ruyne and dekaye within your
monastery to be suffycyently repayred within this yere if itt possible
may"; and reminded the nuns of Studley that they "muste bestowe lardge
money upon suche reparacons as are to be doon upon your churche, quere,
dortor and other places whiche ar in grete decaye"[487]. At Goring, also,
the nuns all complained that the buildings were utterly out of repair,
especially the choir, cloister and dorter[488].
The frequency of fires in the middle ages was probably often to blame for
the ruin of buildings. There were then no contrivances for extinguishing
flames, and the thatched and wooden houses must have burned like stubble.
Thus it was that "thorow the negligens of woman[489] with fyre brent up a
good malt-house with a soler and alle her malt there" at Crabhouse, and
Joan Wiggenhall had to repair it at a cost of five pounds[490]. There is a
piteous appeal to Edward I from the nuns of Cheshunt, who had been
impoverished by a fire and sought "help from the King of his special grace
and for God's sake"; but "_Nihil fiat hac vice_," replied red tape[491];
an undated petition in the Record Office says that the house, church and
goods of the nuns had twice been burned and their charters destroyed[492].
In 1299 the Abbess of Wilton received permission to fell fifty oaks in the
forest of Savernake "in order to rebuild therewith certain houses in the
abbey lately burnt by mischance"[493]. At Wykeham, in Edward III's reign,
the priory church, cloisters and twenty-four other buildings were
accidentally burned down and all the books, vestments and chalices of the
nuns were destroyed[494]. Similarly the nuns of St Radegund's, Cambridge,
lost their house and all their substance by fire at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, and in 1376 their buildings were again said to have
been burned; either they had never recovered from their first disaster or
a second fire had broken out[495]. The nuns of St Leonard's, Grimsby,
apparently lost their granaries in 1311, for they sought licence to beg on
the ground that their houses and corn had been consumed by fire, and in
1459 they asked for a similar licence, because their buildings had been
burnt, and their land inundated[496]. The convent of St Bartholomew's,
Newcastle, gave misfortune by fire as one reason for wishing to
appropriate the hospital or chapel of St Edmund the King in
Gateshead[497].
Sometimes poverty, misfortune and mismanagement reduced the nuns to
begging alms. About 1253 the convent of St Mary of Chester wrote to Queen
Eleanor, begging her to confirm the election of a prioress "to our
miserable convent amidst its multiplied desolations; for so greatly are we
reduced that we are compelled every day to beg abroad our food, slight as
it is"[498]. Similarly the starving nuns of Whitehall, Ilchester, were
reduced to "begging miserably," after the _regime_ of a wicked prioress
at the beginning of the fourteenth century[499]. In 1308 the subprioress
and convent of Whiston mentioned, in asking for permission to elect Alice
de la Flagge, that the smallness of their possessions had compelled the
nuns formerly to beg, "to the scandal of womanhood and the discredit of
religion"[500]. In 1351 Bishop Edyndon of Winchester "counted it a
merciful thing," to come to the assistance of the great Abbeys of Romsey
and St Mary's Winchester, "when overwhelmed with poverty, and when in
these days of increasing illdoing and social deterioration they were
brought to the necessity of secret begging"[501]. At Cheshunt in 1367 the
nuns declared that they often had to beg in the highways[502]. At Rothwell
in 1392 the extreme poverty of the nuns compelled some of them "to incur
the opprobrium of mendicity and beg alms after the fashion of the
mendicant friars"[503]. In all these cases it is evident that objection
was taken to personal begging by the nuns, and it is clear that such a
practice, which took the nuns out into the streets and into private
houses, was likely to be subversive of discipline. The custom of begging
through a proctor was open to no such objection; and it was common for
bishops to give to the poorer houses licences, allowing them to collect
alms in this manner. Early in the fifteenth century the nuns of Rowney in
Hertfordshire petitioned the Chancellor for letters patent for a proctor
to go about the country and collect alms for them, and their request was
granted[504]. Many such licences to beg occur in episcopal registers;
Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln granted them to Little Marlow (1300 and
1311)[505], St Leonard's Grimsby (1311)[506], and Rothwell (1318)[507];
and St Michael's Stamford (1359) and Sewardsley (1366) received similar
licences from his successors[508]. The distinction between begging by the
nuns and begging by a proctor is clearly drawn in the licence granted by
Bishop Dalderby to Rothwell. Addressing the clergy in the Archidiaconates
of Northampton and Buckingham he writes:
Pitying, with paternal affection, the want of the poor nuns of
Rothwell in our diocese, who are oppressed by such scarcity that they
are obliged to beg the necessities of life, we command and straitly
enjoin you, that when there shall come to you suitable and honest
secular proctors or messengers of the same nuns (not the nuns
themselves, that they may have no occasion for wandering thereby), to
seek and receive the alms of the faithful for their necessities, ye
shall receive them kindly and expound the cause of the said nuns to
the people in your churches, on Sundays, and feast days during the
solemnisation of mass, and promote the same by precept and by example
once every year for the next three years, delivering the whole of
whatever shall be collected to these proctors and messengers[509].
The Bishops sought to relieve necessitous convents by offering particular
inducements to the faithful to give alms, when they were thus requested.
Along with mending roads and bridges, ransoming captives, dowering poor
maidens, building churches and endowing hospitals, the assistance of
impecunious nunneries was generally recognised as a work of Christian
charity, and indulgences were often offered to those who would aid a
particular house[510]. The same Bishop Dalderby, for instance, granted
indulgences for the assistance of Cheshunt, Flamstead[511], Sewardsley,
Catesby, Delapre[512], Ivinghoe[513], Fosse[514], St James' outside
Huntingdon and St Radegund's, Cambridge[515]. Archbishop Kemp of York
granted an indulgence of a hundred days valid for two years to all who
should assist towards the repair of Arden (1440) and of Esholt (1445), and
Archbishop William Booth (1456) granted an indulgence of forty days to
penitents contributing to the repair of Yedingham[516]; indeed it is
probable that the money for the much needed work of roofing a building
could be collected only by means of such special appeals. The Popes also
sometimes granted indulgences; Boniface IX did so to penitents who on the
feasts of dedication visited and gave alms towards the conservation of the
churches and priories of Wilberfoss, St Clement's, York, and Handale[517].
The history of St Radegund's, Cambridge, will serve to illustrate the
method by which the Church thus organised the work of poor-relief in the
middle ages; and it will be noticed that this nunnery was an object of
care to Bishops of other dioceses beside that of Ely[518]. In 1254 Walter
de Suffield, Bishop of Norwich, granted a relaxation of penance for
twenty-five days to persons contributing to the aid of the nuns; in 1268
Richard de Gravesend, Bishop of Lincoln, ordered collections to be made in
the churches of the Archidiaconates of Northampton and Huntingdon on their
behalf; in 1277 Roger de Skerning, Bishop of Norwich, ordered collections
to be made in his diocese for the repair of the church; in 1313 the
Official of the Archdeacon of Ely wrote to the parochial clergy of the
diocese recommending the nuns to them as objects of charity, having lost
their house and goods by fire, and in the same year Bishop Dalderby
granted an indulgence on their behalf for this reason[519]; while in 1314
John de Ketene, Bishop of Ely, confirmed the grants of indulgence made by
his brother bishops to persons contributing to their relief and to the
rebuilding of the house. The next indulgence mentioned is one of forty
days granted by Thomas Arundel, Bishop of Ely, in 1376, also on the
occasion of a fire; in 1389 Bishop Fordham of Ely granted another forty
days indulgence for the repair of the church and cloister and for the
relief of the nuns[520], and in 1390 William Courtenay, Archbishop of
Canterbury, made a similar grant, mentioning that the buildings had been
ruined by violent storms; finally in 1457 Bishop Grey of Ely granted a
forty days indulgence for the repair of the bell-tower and for the
maintenance of books, vestments and other church ornaments[521]. There is
no need to suppose that St Radegund's was in any way a particularly
favoured house; and such a list of grants shows that the Church fulfilled
conscientiously the duty of organising poor-relief and that the objects
for which indulgences were granted were not always as unworthy as has
sometimes been supposed[522].
The financial straits to which the smaller convents were continually and
the greater convents sometimes reduced grew out of a number of causes; and
it is interesting to inquire what brought the nuns to debt or to begging
and why they were so often in difficulties. A study of monastic documents
makes it clear that a great deal of this poverty was in no sense the fault
of the nuns. Apart from obvious cases of insufficient endowment, the
medieval monasteries suffered from natural disasters, which were the lot
of all men, and from certain exactions at the hands of men, which fell
exclusively upon themselves. Of natural disasters the frequency of fires
has already been mentioned. Another danger, from which houses situated in
low lying land near a river or the sea were never free, was that of
floods. The inundation of their lands was declared one of the reasons for
appropriating the church of Bradford-on-Avon to Shaftesbury in 1343; and
in 1380 the nuns were allowed to appropriate another church, in
consideration of damage done to their lands by encroachments of the sea
and losses of sheep and cattle[523]. In 1377 Barking suffered the
devastation by flood of a large part of its possessions along the Thames
and never recovered its former prosperity[524]; and in 1394 Bishop
Fordham of Ely granted an indulgence for the nuns of Ankerwyke, whose
goods had been destroyed by floods[525]. In the north the lands of St
Leonard's, Grimsby, were flooded in 1459[526]; in 1445 the nuns of Esholt
suffered heavy losses from the flooding of their lands near the river
Aire, which had been cultivated at great cost and from which they derived
their maintenance[527]; and in 1434 Archbishop Rotherham appealed for help
for the nuns of Thicket, whose fields and pasturages had been inundated
and who had suffered much loss by the death of their cattle[528]. Heavy
storms are mentioned as contributing to the distress of Shaftesbury in
1365[529] and of St Radegund's, Cambridge, in 1390[530]. Moreover some
houses suffered by their situation in barren and unproductive lands.
Easebourne in 1411 complained of "the sterility of the lands, meadows and
other property of the priory, which is situated in a solitary, waste and
thorny place"[531]; Heynings put forward the same plea in 1401[532]; and
Flamstead in 1380[533].
But far more terrible than fire and flood were those two other scourges,
with which nature afflicted the men of the middle ages, famine and
pestilence. The Black Death of 1348-9 was only one among the pestilences
of the fourteenth century; it had the result of "domesticating the bubonic
plague upon the soil of England"; for more than three centuries afterwards
it continued to break out at short intervals, first in one part of the
country and then in another[534]. The epidemics of the fourteenth century
were so violent that in forty years the chroniclers count up five great
plagues, beginning with the Black Death, and Langland, in a metaphor of
terrible vividness, describes the pestilence as "the rain that raineth
where we rest should." The Black Death was preceded by a famine pestilence
in 1317-8, when there was "a grievous mortalitie of people so that the
sicke might vnneath burie the dead." It was followed in 1361 by the Second
Plague, which was especially fatal among the upper classes and among the
young. The Third Plague in 1368-9 was probably primarily a famine
sickness, mixed with plague. The Fourth plague broke out in 1375; and the
Fifth, in 1390-1 was so prolonged and so severe as to be considered
comparable with the Black Death itself. Moreover these are only the great
landmarks, and scattered between them were smaller outbreaks of sickness,
due to scarcity or to spoiled grain and fruit. The pestilences continued
in the fifteenth century (more than twenty-one are recorded in the
chronicles), but, except perhaps for the great plague of 1439, they were
seldom universal and came by degrees to be confined to the towns, so that
all who could used to flee to the country when the summer heat brought out
the disease in crowded and insanitary streets. But if country convents
escaped the worst disease, those situated in borough towns ran a heavy
risk.
Often enough these plagues were preceded and accompanied by famines,
sometimes local and sometimes general. The English famines had long been
notorious and were enshrined in a popular proverb: "Tres plagae tribus
regionibus appropriari solent, Anglorum fames, Gallorum ignis, Normannorum
lepra"[535]. The three greatest outbreaks took place in 1194-6, in 1257-9
and in 1315-6 (before the plague of 1318-9). The dearth which culminated
in the last of these famines had begun as early as 1289; and the misery in
1315 was acute:
"The beastes and cattell also," says Stow, translating from Trokelowe,
"by the corrupt grane whereof they fed, dyed, whereby it came to passe
that the eating of flesh was suspected of all men, for flesh of beasts
not corrupted was hard to finde. Horse-flesh was counted great
delicates the poore stole fatte dogges to eate; some (as it was sayde)
compelled through famine, in hidden places did eate the flesh of their
owne children, and some stole others, which they devoured. Theeves
that were in prisons did plucke in peeces those that were newly
brought among them and greedily devoured them halfe alive."
There was another severe famine in 1322, and in 1325 a great drought, so
that the cattle died for lack of water. Famine accompanied the pestilences
of 1361, 1369, 1391 and 1439; and these are only the more outstanding
instances. Here again, however, the fourteenth century was on the whole
worse off than the fifteenth; almost every year was a year of scarcity and
the average price of wheat during the period 1261 to 1400 was nearly six
shillings (i.e. nearly six pounds of modern money)[536]. Moreover the
ravages of murrain among cattle and sheep were hardly intermittent from
the end of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century[537]. The
fatal years 1315-9 included not only a famine and a plague but also
(1318-9) a murrain among the cattle, which was so bad that dogs and
ravens, eating the dead bodies, were poisoned and died, and no man dared
eat any beef. In the year of the Black Death also there was "a great
plague of sheep in the realm, so that in one place there died in pasturage
more than five thousand sheep and so rotted that neither beast nor bird
would touch them"; and murrains accompanied the four other great plagues
of the century. Indeed dearth, murrain and pestilence went hand in hand,
in that unhappy time we call the "good old days."
These natural disasters could not but have an adverse effect upon the
fortunes of the monastic houses; and many charters and petitions contain
clauses which specifically attribute the distress of this or that nunnery
to one of the three causes described above. During the famine years of
1314-5 Walter Reynolds, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to the Bishop of
Winchester, urging him to take some steps for the relief of the nuns of
Wintney, who were dispersing themselves in the world, because no proper
provision was made for their food[538], and about the same time the
convent of Clerkenwell addressed a petition to Queen Isabel, stating that
they were "moet enpouerees par les durs annez" and begging her to procure
for them the King's leave to accept certain lands and rents to the value
of twenty pounds[539]. In 1326 (after the great drought) the nuns of
King's Mead, Derby, begged the King to take them under his special
protection, granting the custody of the house to two _custodes_, on the
ground that, owing to the badness of past years and the unusually heavy
mortality among cattle their revenues were reduced and they were unable to
meet the claims made by guests upon their hospitality[540]. The ravages of
the Black Death were most severe of all and many houses never recovered
from it[541]. In the diocese of Lincoln the nunnery of Wothorpe lost all
its members save one, whom the Bishop made Prioress; and in 1354 it was
annexed to St Michael's Stamford[542]. Greenfield Priory, when he visited
it in 1350, "per tres menses stetit et stat priorisse solacio
destituta"[543]; and other houses in this large diocese which lost their
heads were Fosse, Markyate, Hinchinbrooke, Gracedieu, Rothwell, Delapre,
Catesby, Sewardsley, Littlemore and Godstow[544]. In the diocese of York
the prioresses of Arthington, Kirklees, Wallingwells and St Stephen's
Foukeholm died; the latter house, like Wothorpe, failed to recover and is
never heard of again[545]. Other parts of the country suffered in the same
way. At Malling Abbey in Kent the Bishop made two abbesses in succession,
but both died and only four professed nuns and four novices remained, to
one of whom the Bishop committed the custody of the temporalities and to
another that of the spiritualities, because there was no fit person to be
made Abbess[546]. At Henwood, in August 1349, there was no Prioress, "and
of the fifteen nuns who were lately there, three only remain"[547].
The death of the nuns themselves was, moreover, the least disastrous
effect of the pestilence; it left a legacy of neglected lands, poverty and
labour troubles which lasted for long after a new generation of sisters
had forgotten the fate of their predecessors. The value of Flixton
dwindled after the Black Death to half its former income, and the house
was never prosperous again[548]. In 1351 the nuns of Romsey petitioned for
leave to annex certain lands and advowsons and gave as one of the reasons
for their impoverishment "the diminution or loss of due and appointed
rents, because of the death of tenants, carried off by the unheard of and
unwonted pestilence"[549], and in 1352 the house of St Mary's Winchester
made special mention, in petitioning for the appropriation of a church, of
the reduction of its rents and of the cattle plague[550]. The other great
plagues of the century aggravated the distress. St Mary's Winchester and
Shaftesbury mentioned the pestilence (of 1361) in petitions to the King
three years later[551]. Four of the sixteen nuns of Carrow died in the
year of the third pestilence (1369)[552], and in 1378, three years after
the fourth pestilence, the licence allowing Sewardsley to appropriate the
church of Easton Neston, recites that the value of its lands had been so
diminished by the pestilence that they no longer sufficed to maintain the
statutory numbers[553]. In 1381 (mentioned as a plague and famine year in
some of the chronicles) a bull of Urban IV, appropriating a church to
Flamstead, after recapitulating the slender endowments of the house,
repeats the complaint that
the servants of the said priory are for the most part dead, and its
houses and tenants and beasts are so destroyed that its lands and
possessions remain as it were sterile, waste and uncultivated,
wherefore, unless the said Prioress and Convent be by some remedy
succoured, they will be obliged to beg for the necessities of life
from door to door[554].
In 1395, four years after the "Fifth" pestilence and itself a year of bad
plague and famine, the nuns of Legbourne complained that their lands and
tenements were uncultivated, "on account of the dearth of cultivators and
rarity of men, arising out of unwonted pestilences and epidemics"[555].
The outbreak of 1405-7 was followed by a petition from Easebourne for
licence to appropriate two churches, on the ground of "epidemics, death of
men and of servants," and because
the lands and tenements of the Prioress and Convent notoriously suffer
so great ruin that few tenants can be found willing to occupy the
lands in these days, and the said lands, ever falling into a worse
state, are so poor that they cannot supply the religious women with
sufficient support for themselves or for the repair of their ruinous
buildings.[556]
The worst of these natural disasters was not the actual damage done by
each outbreak, but the fact that famine, murrain and pestilence followed
upon pestilence, murrain and famine with such rapidity, that the poorer
houses had no chance of recovery from the initial blow dealt them by the
Black Death. The nuns of Thetford, for instance, were excused from the
taxation of religious houses under Henry VI, on the ground that their
revenues in Norfolk and in Suffolk were much decreased by the recent
mortality and had so continued since 1349[557]. Even the well-endowed
houses found recovery difficult, and the history of the great abbey of
Shaftesbury illustrates the situation very clearly. In 1365, shortly after
the _pestis secunda_, the nuns received a grant of the custody of their
temporalities on the next voidance, and losses by pestilence were
mentioned as one reason for the decline in their fortunes. In 1380 their
lands were flooded and they suffered heavy losses in sheep and cattle. In
1382 (the year of the fifth plague) they were obliged to petition once
again for help, representing that although their house was well-endowed,
toutes voies voz dites oratrices sont einsi arreriz a jour de huy,
quoy par les pestilences en queles lours tenantz sont trez toutz a poy
mortz, et par murryne de lour bestaille a grant nombre et value,
_nemye tant seulement a une place et a une foitz, einz a diverses
foitz en toutes leurs places_, quoy par autres grandes charges quelles
lour convient a fine force de jour en autre porter et sustenir, q'eles
ne purront, sinoun qe a moelt grant peine, sanz lour endangerer al
diverses bones gentz lours Creditours, mesner l'an a bon fyn[558].
Again towards the middle of the fifteenth century Bishop Ayscough
sanctioned the appropriation of a church to the abbey, which had pleaded
its great impoverishment through pestilence, failure of crops, want of
labourers, and through the excessive demands of such labourers as could
be obtained[559]. If Shaftesbury found recovery so difficult, it may
easily be imagined what was the effect of the natural disasters of the
fourteenth century upon smaller and less wealthy houses.
The revenues of the nunneries, often scant to begin with and liable to
constant diminution from the ravages of nature, were still more heavily
burdened by a variety of exactions on the part of the authorities of
Church and State. The procurations payable to the Bishop on his visitation
fell heavily upon the smaller houses; hence such a notice as that which
occurs in Bishop Nykke's Register under the year 1520: "Item the reverend
father with his colleagues came down to the house of nuns that afternoon,
and having seen the priory he dissolved his visitation there, on account
of the poverty of the house"[560]. St Mary Magdalen's, Bristol, was on
account of its poverty exempt from the payment of such procurations[561]
and the Bishops doubtless often exercised their charity upon such
occasions[562]. Papal exactions were even more oppressive; John of
Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, pleaded with the papal nuncio in 1285 that
he would forbear to exact procurations from the poor nuns of Wintney, whom
the Bishop himself excused from all charges in view of their deep
poverty[563]; and in 1300 Bishop Swinfield of Hereford made a similar
appeal to the commissary of the nuncio, and secured the remission of
procurations due from the nuns of Lingbrook and the relaxation of the
sentence of excommunication, which they had incurred through
non-payment[564]. The obligation to pay tithes also fell heavily upon the
poorer houses; it was for this reason that Archbishop John le Romeyn
appealed to the Prior of Newburgh in 1286 not to exact tithes from the
food of animals in Nether Sutton, belonging to the poor nuns of
Arden[565]; and in 1301 the Prior of Worcester desired his commissary to
spare the poverty of the nuns of Westwood and not to exact tithes or any
other things due to him from them or from their churches[566]. Added to
ecclesiastical exactions were the taxes due to the Crown. In 1344 the nuns
of Davington addressed a petition to Edward III, representing that, owing
to their great poverty, they were unable to satisfy the King's public aids
without depriving themselves of their necessary subsistence, a plea which
was found to be true[567]. The frequency with which such petitions for
exemption from the payment of taxes were made and granted, is in itself a
proof that the burden of taxation was a real one, for the Crown would not
have excused its dues, unless the need for such an act of charity had been
great[568]; and it is obvious that the sheer impossibility of collecting
the money from a poverty-stricken house must often have left little
alternative. The houses that did contribute were not slow to complain.
"The unwonted exactions and tallages with which their house and the whole
of the English Church has been burdened" were pleaded by the nuns of
Heynings as in part responsible for their poverty in 1401[569]; similarly
"the necessary and very costly exactions of tenths and other taxes and
unsupportable burdens" occurs in a complaint by Romsey in 1351; and the
Abbess and Convent of St Mary's, Winchester, stated in 1468, that they
were so burdened with the repair of their buildings and with the payment
of imposts, that they could not fulfil the obligations of their order as
to hospitality[570].
Nor was taxation for public purposes the only demand made upon the
religious houses. Abbeys holding of the King in chief had to perform many
services appertaining to tenants in chief, which seem oddly incongruous in
the case of nunneries. The Abbesses of Shaftesbury, St Mary's Winchester,
Wilton and Barking, were baronesses in their own right; the privilege of
being summoned to parliament was omitted on account of their sex; but the
duty of sending a quota of knights and soldiers to serve the King in his
wars was regularly exacted[571]. In 1257 Agnes Ferrar, Abbess of
Shaftesbury, was summoned to Chester to attend the expedition against
Llewelyn ap Griffith, and her successor, Juliana Bauceyn, was also
summoned in 1277 to attack that intrepid prince[572]. The Abbess of Romsey
had to find a certain number of men-at-arms with their armour for the
custody of the maritime land in the county of Southampton; she resisted
when an attempt was made to exact an archer as well and successfully
showed the King "that she has only two marks' rent in Pudele Bardolveston
in that county"[573]. Less lawful exactions were even more burdensome, and
the nunneries suffered with the rest of the nation under the demand for
loans and the burden of purveyance[574]. In December 1307 the Abbess of
Barking, in common with the heads of ten other religious houses, was
requested to lend the King
two carts and horses to be at Westminster early on the day of St
Stephen to carry vessels and equipments of the King's household to
Dover, the King having sent a great part of his carts and sumpter
horses to sea, so that he may find them ready when he arrives[575];
it is true that he engaged to pay out of his wardrobe the costs of the men
leading the carts and of the horses going and returning, but meanwhile the
Abbey lost their services, and carts and horses were very necessary on a
manor; moreover it was common complaint that the tallies given by the
King's servants for what they took were sometimes of no more value than
the wood whereof they were made:
I had catell, now have I none;
They take my beasts and done them slon,
And payen but a stick of tree.
Similarly in June 1310 the King sent out a number of letters to the heads
of religious houses, requesting the "loan" of various amounts of victuals
for his Scottish expedition, and among the houses upon whom this call was
made were the nunneries of Catesby, Elstow, St Mary's Winchester, Romsey,
Wherwell, Barking, Nuneaton, Shaftesbury and Wilton[576].
The nunneries also suffered considerable pecuniary loss by the right
possessed in certain cases by the patron of a house, to take the profits
of its temporalities during voidance through the death or resignation of
its superior, sometimes enjoying them himself and sometimes granting the
custody of the house to someone else[577]. It is obvious that serious loss
might be entailed upon the community, if the patron refrained for some
time from granting his _conge d'elire_. It was for this reason that the
Convent of Whiston wrote in 1308 to the Bishop-elect of Worcester, their
patron, praying that "considering the smallness of the possessions of the
nuns of Whiston, in his patronage, which compelled the nuns formerly to
beg, and for the honour of religion and the frailness of the female sex"
he would grant them licence to elect a new prioress and would confirm the
same election; and the Prior of Worcester also addressed a letter to the
commissary-general on their behalf[578]. The King exercised with great
regularity his rights of patronage, and the direct pecuniary loss,
sustained by a house in being deprived of the profits of its
temporalities, seems to have been the least of the evils which resulted,
if the state of affairs described in the petition addressed to the crown
by the Abbess and Convent of Shaftesbury in 1382 was at all common. After
a moving description of the straits to which they were reduced[579], they
begged that the King would, on future occasions of voidance, allow the
community to retain the administration of the Abbey and of its
temporalities, rendering the value thereof to the King while the voidance
lasted, so that no escheator, sheriff or other officer should have power
to meddle with them:
understanding, most redoubtable lord, that by means of your grace in
this matter great relief and amendment, please God, shall come to your
same house, and no damage can ensue to you or to your heirs, nor to
any other, save only to your officers, who in such times of voidance
are wont to make great destructions and wastes and to take therefrom
great and divers profits to their own use, whence nothing cometh to
your use, as long as the said voidance endures, if only for a short
time[580].
St Mary's, Winchester, also pleaded the royal administration of its
temporalities as one reason for its impoverishment, when petitioning the
Pope for leave to appropriate the church of Froyle in 1343 and 1346[581].
Sometimes the abbeys found it cheaper to compound with the King for a
certain sum of money and thus to purchase the right of administering their
own temporalities, saving to the King, as a rule, knights' fees,
advowsons, escheats and sometimes wards and marriages. Romsey Abbey
secured this privilege, after the escheator had already entered, in 1315,
for a fine of forty marks; but in 1333, when there was another voidance,
the convent had to agree to pay L40 for the first two months and _pro
rata_ for such time as the voidance continued, saving to the King knights'
fees, advowsons and escheats[582]. In 1340 the royal escheator was ordered
to let the Prioress and Convent of Wherwell have the custody of their
temporalities, in accordance with a grant made some years previously, by
which the house was to render L230 for a year and _pro rata_[583]. In 1344
a similar order was made in the case of Wilton, whose late Abbess (prudent
woman) had seized the opportunity to purchase the right for L60 from the
King, when he lay at Orwell before crossing the sea[584]. Similarly, the
next year, Shaftesbury received the custody of its temporalities in
consideration of a fine of L100, made with the King by its Abbess, in the
second year of his reign[585]. With four great abbeys falling vacant in
little over ten years, the royal exchequer reaped a good harvest; and
though the payment of a lump sum was better than falling into the hands of
the escheator, and though the nuns would make haste to elect a new abbess
as soon as possible, a voidance was always a costly matter.
But perhaps the most serious tax upon the resources of the nunneries was
the right, possessed by some dignitaries (notably the King and the Bishop
of the diocese), to nominate to houses in their patronage persons whom the
nuns were obliged to receive as members of their community or to support
as corrodians, pensioners or boarders. The right of nominating a nun might
be exercised upon a variety of occasions. The Archbishop might do so to
certain houses in his province on the occasion of his consecration, and
this right was energetically enforced by Peckham, who nominated girls to
Wherwell, Castle Hedingham, Burnham, Stratford, Easebourne and
Catesby[586]. A Bishop possessed, in some cases, a similar right on the
occasion of his consecration. Rigaud d'Assier, Bishop of Winchester, sent
nuns to Romsey, St Mary's Winchester and Wherwell[587]; Ralph of
Shrewsbury, Bishop of Bath and Wells, nominated to Minchin Barrow and to
Cannington[588]; Stephen Gravesend, Bishop of London, sent a girl to
Barking[589]; and the successive bishops of Salisbury exercised the
prerogative of placing an inmate in Shaftesbury Abbey and of appointing
one of the nuns to act as her instructor[590]. The existence of this right
seems to have varied with different dioceses and its exaction with
different bishops, if it is possible to judge from the absence of
commendatory letters in some registers and their presence in others. The
Bishop of a diocese also sometimes had the right of presenting a nun to a
house when a new superior was created there. This was the case at Romsey,
where nuns were thus nominated in 1307, 1333 and 1397[591], and at Romsey
also there occurs one instance (the only one of the kind which search has
yet yielded) of the nomination of a nun by the bishop, because of "a
profession of ladies of that house which he had lately made." Bishop
Stratford thus appointed Jonette de Stretford (perhaps a poor relative)
"en regard de charite" in 1333, a month after having appointed Alice de
Hampton by reason of the Abbess' creation[592].
The King possessed in houses under his patronage rights of nomination
corresponding to those of the Bishop. That of presenting a nun on the
occasion of his coronation was frequently exercised. Edward II sent ladies
to Barking, Wherwell and St Mary's Winchester[593]; Barking received nuns
from Richard II, Henry IV and Henry VI[594] and Shaftesbury from Richard
II, Henry V and Henry VI[595]. He also possessed the right in certain
abbeys of presenting a nun on the occasion of a voidance and there are
many such letters of presentation enrolled upon the Close rolls; for
instance Joan de la Roche was sent to Wilton in 1322[596], Katherine de
Arderne to Romsey in 1333[597] and Agnes Turberville to Shaftesbury in
1345[598].
Sometimes similar rights to these were exercised by private persons, who
held the patronage of a house or with whom it was connected by special
ties; the family of le Rous of Imber, for example, had the right
(resigned in 1313) of presenting two nuns, with a valet, to Romsey
Abbey[599]. But the royal rights were always the most burdensome and,
though such privileges as those described above, and the even more
burdensome right to demand corrodies and pensions, normally affected only
great abbeys such as Barking, Romsey, St Mary's Winchester, and
Shaftesbury, the smaller houses (not under royal patronage) were not
always exempt from sudden demands--witness the case of Polsloe below--and
a wide range of nunneries was affected by archiepiscopal and episcopal
rights. Moreover even the great houses, in spite of their large
endowments, were crippled by the system, as may be gathered from their
constant complaints of poverty and of overcrowding. The obligation to
receive fresh inmates by nomination was especially burdensome when it was
incurred on more than one occasion by the same house and coincided with
other exactions. The case of Shaftesbury is noticeable in this connection;
the King claimed the right to administer its temporalities during
voidance, to nominate a nun on his own coronation and on the election of
an Abbess, to demand a pension for one of the royal clerks on the latter
occasion, and to send boarders or corrodians for maintenance; and the
Bishop of Salisbury could nominate a nun on his own promotion to the see
and could demand a benefice for one of his clerks on the election of an
Abbess. It is, of course, possible that all these prerogatives were not
invariably exercised and that a new inmate was not sent to Shaftesbury
every time a King was crowned, a Bishop consecrated or an Abbess elected;
but it was exercised sufficiently often to be a strain upon the house.
Even when the right of nomination was confined to one occasion, it seems
to have been generally resented and frequently resisted. The reason for
resistance lay in the fact that the house was forced to support another
inmate without the hope of receiving the donation of land or rents, which
medieval fathers gave to the convents in which their daughters took the
veil; and as the dowry system became more and more common, the hardship
of having to receive a nun for nothing would soon appear intolerable. In
some cases a sturdy resistance against this "dumping" of nuns finds an
echo in the bishops' Registers. Four houses out of the six to which
Peckham nominated new inmates attempted a refusal, and the excuses which
they offered are interesting. Two years after his consecration the nuns of
Burnham were still refusing to receive his protegee, Matilda de Weston;
they had begun by trying to question his right to nominate and he seems to
have taken legal action against them, after which they pleaded poverty
(resulting from an unsuccessful lawsuit) and also an obligation to receive
no novice without the consent of Edmund Earl of Cornwall, son of their
founder. The Archbishop directed a stern letter to them, rejecting both
their excuses and announcing his intention of pursuing his right, but the
end of the matter is not known[600]. An equally determined resistance was
offered by the Prioress of Stratford, who had been ordered to receive
Isabel Bret. In 1282 Peckham wrote to her for the third time, declaring
that her excuses were frivolous; she had apparently objected that the girl
was too young and that her house was too heavily burdened with nuns, lay
sisters and debts for another inmate to be received, but the Archbishop
declared the youth of the candidate to be rather a merit than a defect and
pointed out that, so far from being a burden to their house, she would
bring it honour, for by receiving her they would multiply distinguished
friends and benefactors and would be able to rely on his own special
protection in their affairs[601]. A further letter to the Bishop of London
is interesting, because it mentions a third objection made by the
recalcitrant nunnery.
"We have received your letter," writes Peckham, "in favour of the
Prioress and Convent of Stratford, urgently begging us to moderate our
purpose concerning a certain burden which is alleged to be threatening
them from us, on account of the insupportable weight and the poverty
of the house and the deformity of the person, whom we have presented
to them for admission. Concerning which we would have you know that
already in the lifetime of your predecessor of good memory, we had
ordered them to receive that same person and for two years we
continued to believe that they would yield to our wishes in the
matter, yet without burden to themselves, by the provision of the
parents of the said little maid; especially seeing that never yet have
we been burdensome to any monastery making a truthful plea of
indigence. We believe that what they allege about deformity would be
an argument in favour of our proposal; would that not only these women
of Stratford, concerning whom so many scandals abound, but also all
who so immodestly expose themselves to human conversation and company,
were or at least appeared notable for such deformity that they should
tempt no one to crime! We have moreover heard that the greater part of
the convent would willingly consent to the reception of the girl, were
they not hindered by the malice of the prioress; nevertheless, lest we
should seem deaf to your entreaties, we suspend the whole business
until we come to London, to ascertain how our purpose may be carried
out without notable damage to them[602]."
The Archbishop had his way however; for eleven years later the will of
Robert le Bret was enrolled in the Court of Husting and contained a legacy
of rents on Cornhill "to Isabella his daughter, a nun of Stratford"[603].
Peckham also wrote in a tone of strained patience to the nuns of Castle
Hedingham, who had refused to receive Agnes de Beauchamp, warning them
that besides incurring severe punishment at his own hands, further
obstinacy would offend the Queen of England, at whose instance he had
undertaken the promotion of the said Agnes[604]. The Prioress of Catesby
was equally troublesome and as late as 1284 the Archbishop wrote
reprimanding her for her inconstancy and feigned excuses, because, after
promising to receive the daughter of Sir Robert de Caynes and after
repeated requests on his part that they should admit the girl, she and her
nuns had written asking to be allowed to admit another person in her
stead[605].
Real poverty often nerved the nuns to such bold resistance. In the
Register of Bishop Grandisson of Exeter there is a letter from Polsloe
Priory, written in 1329 and addressed to Queen Philippa, on the subject of
a certain Johanete de Tourbevyle[606], whom she had requested the nuns to
receive as a lay sister. Written in the French of their daily speech, with
no attempt at formal phraseology, their naive plea still rings with the
agitation of the "poor and humble maids," torn between anxiety not to
burden their impecunious house, and fear of offending the new-made Queen
of England:
To their very honourable and very powerful and redoubtable lady, my
lady Dame Philippa, by the grace of God queen of England, etc., her
poor and humble maids, the nuns of Polsloe, in all that they may of
reverence and honour; beseeching your sweet pity to have mercy on our
great poverty. Our very noble dame, we have received your letters, by
the which we understand that it is your will that we receive Johanete
de Tourbevyle among us as sister of the house, to take the dress of a
nun in secular habit. Concerning the which matter, most debonair lady,
take pity upon us, if it please you, for the love of God and of His
mother. For certainly never did any queen demand such a thing before
from our little house; though mayhap they be accustomed to do so from
other houses, founded by the kings and holding of them in chief; but
this do not we, wherefore it falls heavily upon us. And if it please
your debonair highness to know our simple estate, we are so poor (God
knows it and all the country) that what we have suffices not to our
small sustenance, who must by day and night do the service of God,
were it not for the aid of friends; nor can we be charged with
seculars without reducing the number of us religious women, to the
diminution of God's service and the perpetual prejudice of our poor
house. And we have firm hope in God and in your great bounty that you
will not take it ill that this thing be not done to the peril of our
souls; for to entertain and to begin such a new charge in such a small
place, a charge which would endure and would be demanded for ever
afterwards, would be too great a danger to your soul, my Lady, in the
sight of God, wherefrom God by His grace defend you! Our most blessed
Lady, may God give you a long and happy life, to His pleasure and to
the aid and solace of ourselves and of other poor servants of God on
earth; and we should have great joy to do your behests, if God had
given us the power[607].
The nuns evidently asked the support of the Bishop (which accounts for the
presence of their letter in his Register) for about the same time
Grandisson also wrote an informal letter in French to the King, begging
him to give up his design to place his cousin Johanete de Tourbevyle at
Polsloe, on the ground that the nuns held all that they possessed in frank
almoign and were so poor that it would be unpardonable to entail upon
them a charge, which would become a precedent for ever:
"Wherefore, dear Sire," he continued, "If it please you, hold us
excused of this thing and put this thought from you. And for love of
you, to whom we are much beholden aforetime, and to show you that we
make no feigned pretence, ordain, if it please you, elsewhere for her
estate, and we will very willingly give somewhat reasonable out of our
own goods towards it; for this we may safely do[608]."
It is not impossible that the disinclination of the nunneries to receive
royal and episcopal nominees was in part due to dislike of taking an
entirely unknown person into the close life of the community, in which so
much depended upon the character and disposition of the individual. The
right seems nearly always to have been exercised in favour of well-born
girls, but though the bishops endeavoured to send only suitable novices,
their knowledge of the character of their protegees would sometimes appear
to have rested upon hearsay rather than upon personal acquaintance--"_ut
credimus_," "_come nous sumez enformez_." On at least one occasion the
nuns who resisted a bishop's nominee were to our knowledge justified by
later events. In 1329 Ralph of Shrewsbury, the new Bishop of Bath and
Wells, wrote to the Prioress and Convent of Cannington, desiring them to
receive Alice, daughter of John de Northlode, to whom he had granted the
right, "par resoun de nostre premiere creacion," on the request of Sir
John Mautravers; four years later he was obliged to repeat the order,
because the convent "had not yet been willing to receive the said Alice."
The end of the story is to be found in the visitation report of 1351[609].
It is impossible to say whether the convent corrupted Alice or Alice the
convent; but it is unfortunate that the Bishop's nominee should have been
implicated.
The obligation to receive a nun on the nomination of the king or the
bishop was not the only burden upon the finances of the nunneries. Abbeys
in the patronage of the Crown were upon occasion obliged also to find
maintenance for other persons, men as well as women, who never became
members of their community. The right to demand a pension for one of the
royal clerks was sometimes exercised on the occasion of a voidance, and
the money had in most cases to be paid until such time as the young man
was provided with a suitable benefice by the Abbey. The Abbess of Romsey
was ordered to give a pension to William de Dereham in 1315 by reason of
her new election[610]; John de St Paul was sent to the same house in
1333[611], William de Tydeswell in 1349[612]. The right is also found in
exercise at Wherwell[613], St Mary's, Winchester[614], Shaftesbury[615],
Wilton[616], Delapre (Northampton)[617], Barking[618] and Elstow[619]. In
certain cases the Bishop possessed a similar right on the occasion of his
own consecration; for instance John of Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester,
wrote to the Abbess of St Mary's, Winchester, in 1283, complaining
that whereas his predecessors had by a laudable custom presented their
own clerks to the first benefice in the patronage of a religious house
vacant after their establishment in the bishopric, they (the nuns) had
recently presented a nominee of their own to a benefice then vacant.
Two years later the Abbess and Convent of Wherwell wrote to him,
voluntarily offering him the next vacant benefice in their patronage for
one of his clerks; and in 1293 he reminded the nuns of Romsey that they
were bound by agreement to do likewise[620]. Similarly Simon of Ghent,
Bishop of Salisbury, directed the Abbess of Shaftesbury to provide for
Humphrey Wace in 1297[621]. The demand to pension a clerk, like the demand
to receive a nun, was sometimes resisted by the convents. In the early
part of his reign Edward II ordered the Sheriff of Bedford
to distrain the Abbess of Elstow by all her lands and chattels in his
bailiwick and to answer to the King for the issues and to have her
body before the King at the octaves of Hilary next, to answer why,
whereas she and her convent, by reason of the new creation of an
Abbess, were bound to give a pension to a clerk, to be named by the
King and he had transferred the option to his sister Elizabeth
Countess of Hereford and had asked the Abbess to give it to her
nominee they had neglected to do so[622].
The end of the story is contained in a petition printed in the _Rolls of
Parliament_, wherein the Abbess and Convent of "Dunestowe" (Elstow)
informed the King in 1320
que, come il les demaunde par son Brief devant Sire H. le Scrop et ses
compaignons une enpensione pur un de ses clerks par reson de la novele
Creacion la dite Abbesse et tiel enpensione unqs devant ces temps ne
fust demaunde ne donee de la dite meson, fors tant soulement que la
dereyn predecessere dona a la requeste nostre Seigneur le Roy a la
Dameysele la Countesse de Hereford, un enpension de c s. Par qi eles
prient que nostre Seigneur le Roy voet, si lui plest, comander de
soursere de execucion faire de la dite demaunde, que la dite Abbay est
foundee de Judit, jadis Countess de Huntingdon, et la dite enpension
unques autrement done[623].
The reference to the Countess of Hereford's "dameysele" shows that the
pension was not invariably given to a clerk, and it appears that the King
tried to substitute corrodies, pensions and reception as a nun for each
other according to the exigencies of the moment. In 1318 he sent Simon de
Tyrelton to the Abbess and Convent of Barking,
they being bound to grant a pension to one of the King's clerks, by
reason of the new creation of an abbess, and the King having requested
them to grant in lieu of such pension the allowance of one of their
nuns to Ellen, daughter of Alice de Leygrave, to be received by her
for life, to which they replied that they could not do so, for certain
reasons[624].
In 1313, in pursuance of his right to nominate a nun on the new creation
of an abbess, he had sent Juliana de Leygrave "niece of the King's
foster-mother, who suckled him in his youth," to St Mary's, Winchester, in
order that she might be given a nun's corrody for life (the value of which
was to be given her wherever she might be) and a suitable chamber within
the nunnery for her residence, whenever she might wish to stay
there[625].
The obligation to provide corrodies for royal nominees pressed more
heavily than the duty of pensioning royal clerks. A corrody was originally
a livery of food and drink given to monks and nuns, but the term was
extended to denote a daily livery of food given to some person not of the
community and frequently accompanied by suitable clothing and a room in
which to live. Hence corrodians were often completely kept in board and
lodging, having the right to everything that a nun of the house would have
(a "nun's corrody") and sometimes allowed to keep a private servant, who
had the right to the same provision as the regular domestics of the house
(a "servant's corrody"). The King, indeed, looked upon the monastic houses
of his realm as a sort of vast Chelsea Hospital, in which his broken-down
servants, yeomen and officials and men-at-arms, might end their days. Thus
he obtained their grateful prayers without putting his hand into his
purse. There must have been hundreds of such old pensioners scattered up
and down the country, and judging from the number of cases in which one
man is sent to receive the maintenance lately given to another, deceased,
some houses had at least one of them permanently on the premises. Many a
hoary veteran found his way into the quiet precincts of a nunnery:
His helmet now shall make a hive for bees;
And, lovers' sonnets turn'd to holy psalms,
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms.
In the intervals between feeding on prayers he must have been vastly
disturbing and enthralling to the minds of round-eyed novices, with his
tales of court and camp, of life in London town or long campaigns in
France, or of how John Copeland had the King of Scots prisoner and what
profit he got thereby.
In the last three months of 1316 Edward II sent seventeen old servants to
various religious houses, and among them Henry de Oldyngton of the avenary
was sent to Barking, to receive such maintenance as William de Chygwell,
deceased, had in that house[626]. In 1328 Roger atte Bedde, the King's
yeoman, who served the King and his father, was sent to St Mary's,
Winchester, instead of James le Porter, deceased[627]; and in 1329 the
Abbess and Convent of Shaftesbury were requested to admit to their house
Richard Knight, spigurnel of the King's chancery, who had long served the
King and his father in that office, and to administer to him for his life
such maintenance in all things as Robert le Poleter, deceased, had in
their house[628]. The unlucky convent of Wilton apparently had to support
two pensioners, for in 1328 Roger Liseway was sent there in place of Roger
Danne and the next year John de Odiham, yeoman of the chamber of Queen
Philippa, took the place of John de Asshe[629].
It was doubtless even more common for the widows of the King's dependents
to be sent to nunneries, and he must often have received such a petition
as was addressed by Agnes de Vylers to Edward III:
A nostre Seigneur le Roi et a son Conseil, prie vostre poure veve
Agneys, qi fut la femme Fraunceys de Vylers, jaditz Bachiler vostre
piere, qe vous pleise de vostre grace avoir regard du graunt service
qe le dit Fraunceys ad fait a vostre dit piere et ed vostre ayel, en
la Terre Seinte, Gascoigne, Gales, Escoce, Flaundres et en Engleterre,
et graunter au dit Agneys une garisoun en l'Abbeye de Berkyng, c'est
assaver une mesoun & la droite de une Noneyme pour la sustinaunce de
lui et de sa file a terme de lour vie, en allegaunce de l'alme vostre
dit piere, qi promist al dit Fraunceys eide pour lui, sa femme et ses
enfaunz.
"Il semble a conseil q'il est almoigne de lui mander ou aillours, s'il
plest a Roi," was the reply; so Agnes and her daughter might end their
days in peace, and Barking be the poorer for their appetites[630]. At
Barking the King had the right to claim a corrody at each new election of
an abbess, as Agnes de Vylers doubtless knew; as early as 1253 its Abbess
was exempted from being charged with _conversi_ and others, because she
had granted food and vesture for life to Philippa de Rading and her
daughter[631]. Other nunneries in the royal patronage were under a similar
obligation. In 1310 Juliana la Despenser was sent to Romsey, to be
provided with fitting maintenance for herself and for her maid during her
lifetime[632] and in 1319 Mary Ridel was sent to Stainfield to be
maintained for life[633]. There were the usual attempts to escape from a
costly and burdensome obligation; Romsey seems to have been successful in
repelling Juliana la Despenser, for in the following month the King sent
her to Shaftesbury, requesting the nuns to "find her for life the
necessities of life according to the requirements of her estate, for
herself and for the damsel serving her, and to assign her a chamber to
dwell in, making letters patent of the grant"[634]. Stainfield was less
successful in the matter of Mary Ridel; the usual plea of poverty was
considered insufficient and the convent was ordered to receive her, to
supply her with food, clothing and other necessities and to make letters
patent, specifying what was due to her[635].