EDUCATION
Abstinence the abbesse myn a. b. c. me taughte.
_Piers Plowman._
The Benedictine ideal set study together with prayer and labour as the
three bases of monastic life and in the short golden age of English
monasticism women as well as men loved books and learning. The tale of the
Anglo-Saxon nuns who corresponded with St Boniface has often been told.
Eadburg, Abbess of Thanet, wrote the Epistles of St Peter for him in
letters of gold and sent books to him in the wilds of Germany. Bugga,
Abbess of a Kentish house, exchanged books with him. The charming Lioba,
educated by the nuns of Wimborne, sent him verses which she had composed
in Latin, which "divine art" the nun Eadburg had taught her, and begged
him to correct the rusticity of her style. Afterwards she came into
Germany to help him and became Abbess of Bischofsheim and her biographer
tells how
she was so bent on reading that she never laid aside her book except
to pray or to strengthen her slight frame with food and sleep. From
childhood upwards she had studied grammar and the other liberal arts,
and hoped by perseverance to attain a perfect knowledge of religion,
for she was well aware that the gifts of nature are doubled by study.
She zealously read the books of the Old and New Testaments and
committed their divine precepts to memory; but she further added to
the rich store of her knowledge by reading the writings of the holy
Fathers, the canonical decrees and the laws of the Church.
So also an anonymous Anglo-Saxon nun of Heidenheim wrote the lives of
Willibald and Wunebald[794].
The Anglo-Saxon period seems, however, to have been the only one during
which English nuns were at all conspicuous for learning. There is indeed
very scant material for writing their history between the Norman Conquest
and the last years of the thirteenth century, when Bishops' Registers
begin. It is never safe to argue from silence and some nuns may still
have busied themselves over books; but two facts are significant: we have
no trace of women occupying themselves with the copying and illumination
of manuscripts and no nunnery produced a chronicle. The chronicles are the
most notable contribution of the monastic houses to learning from the
eleventh to the fourteenth centuries; and some of the larger nunneries,
such as Romsey, Lacock, and Shaftesbury, received many visitors and must
have heard much that was worth recording, besides the humbler annals of
their own houses. But they recorded nothing. The whole trend of medieval
thought was against learned women and even in Benedictine nunneries, for
which a period of study was enjoined by the rule, it was evidently
considered altogether outside the scope of women to concern themselves
with writing. While the monks composed chronicles, the nuns embroidered
copes; and those who sought the gift of a manuscript from the monasteries,
sought only the gift of needlework from the nunneries.
It is not, perhaps, surprising that the nuns should have written no
chronicles and copied few, if any, books. But it is surprising that
England should after the eighth century be able to show so little record
of gifted individuals. Even if the rule of a professedly learned order
were unlikely to prevail against the general trend of civilisation and to
produce learned women, still it might have been expected that here and
there a genius, or a woman of some talent for authorship, might have
flourished in that favourable soil; or even that a whole house might have
enjoyed for a brief halcyon period the zest for learning, when "alle was
buxomnesse there and bokes to rede and to lerne." In Germany, at various
periods of the middle ages, this did happen. The Abbey of Gandersheim in
Saxony was renowned for learning in the tenth century and here lived and
flourished the nun Roswitha, who not only wrote religious legends in Latin
verse, but even composed seven dramas in the style of Terence, a poem on
the Emperor Otto the Great and a history of her own nunnery. From the
internal evidence of her works it has been thought that this nun was
directly familiar with the works of Virgil, Lucan, Horace, Ovid, Terence
and perhaps Plautus, Prudentius, Sedulius, Fortunatus, Martianus Capella
and Boethius; but apart from this evidence of learning, her plays show
her to have been a woman of originality and some genius; they are strange
productions to have emanated from a tenth century convent[795]. It was in
Germany again, at Hohenburg in Alsace, that the Abbess Herrad in the
twelfth century compiled and decorated with exquisite illuminations the
great encyclopedia known as the _Hortus Deliciarum_. This book, one of the
finest manuscripts which had survived from the middle ages and a most
invaluable source of information for the manners and appearance of the
people of Herrad's day, was destroyed in the German bombardment of
Strasburg in 1870[796]. The same century saw the lives of the two great
nun-mystics, St Hildegard of Bingen and St Elisabeth of Schoenau, who saw
visions, dreamed dreams and wrote them down[797]. In the next century the
convent of Helfta in Saxony was the home of several literary nuns and
mystics and was distinguished for culture; its nuns collected books,
copied them, illuminated them, learned and wrote Latin, and three of them,
the beguine Mechthild, the nun Saint Mechthild von Hackeborn and the nun
Gertrud the Great, have won considerable fame by their mystic
writings[798]. Even in the decadent fifteenth century examples are not
wanting of German nuns who were keenly interested in learning; and in the
early sixteenth century Charitas Pirckheimer, nun of St Clare at Nuremberg
and sister of the humanist Wilibald Pirckheimer, was in close relations
with her brother and with many of his friends and full of enthusiasm for
the new learning[799].
It is strange that in England there is no record of any house which can
compare with Gandersheim, Hohenburg or Helfta; no record of any nun to
compare with the learned women and great mystics who have been mentioned.
The air of the English nunneries would seem to have been unfavourable to
learning. The sole works ascribed to monastic authoresses are a _Life of
St Catherine_, written in Norman-French by Clemence, a nun of Barking, in
the late twelfth century[800], and _The Boke of St Albans_, a treatise on
hawking, hunting and coat armour, printed in 1486, by one Dame Juliana
Berners, whom a vague and unsubstantiated tradition declares to have been
Prioress of Sopwell. Nor do nuns seem to have been more active in copying
manuscripts. Several beautiful books, which have come down to our own day,
can be traced to nunneries, but there is no evidence that they were
written there and all other evidence makes it highly improbable that they
were. It is true that in 1335 we find this entry among the issues of the
Exchequer:
To Isabella de Lancaster, a nun of Amesbury, in money paid to her by
the hands of John de Gynewell for payment of 100 marks, which the lord
the King commanded to be paid her for a book of romance purchased from
her for the King's use, which remains in the chamber of the lord the
King, 66 l. 13 s. 4 d[801],
but it is unlikely that the book thus purchased by the King from his noble
kinswoman was her own work.
This period of the later ages was, indeed, unfavourable to learning among
monks as well as among nuns. As the universities grew, so the monasteries
declined in lustre; learning had no longer need to seek refuge behind
cloister walls, and the most promising monks now went to the universities,
instead of studying at home in their own houses. The standard of the
chronicles rapidly declined and the best chronicler of the fourteenth
century was not a monk like Matthew Paris, but a secular, a wanderer, a
hanger-on of princes, Froissart. As the fifteenth century passed learning
declined still further; and it is evident from the visitations of the time
that the monks, whatever else they might be, were not scholars. We should
expect the decline in learning to be more marked still among the nuns,
considering how little they had possessed in preceding centuries; and the
matter is worth some study, because it concerns not only the education of
the nuns themselves, but the education which they were qualified to give
to the children who were sent to school with them.
A word may first be said on the subject of nunnery libraries. Concerning
these we have very little information; and, such as it is, it does not
leave the impression that nunneries were rich in books. No catalogue of a
nunnery library[802] has come down to us and such references to libraries
as occur in inventories show great poverty in this respect, the books
being few and chiefly service-books. An inventory of the small and poor
convent of Easebourne, taken in 1450, shows what was doubtless quite a
large library for a house of its size. It contained two missals, two
_portiforia_ (breviaries), four antiphoners, one large _Legenda_, eight
psalters, one book of collects, one tropary, one French Bible, two
_ordinalia_ in French, one book of the Gospels and one martyrology[803].
The inventories of Henry VIII's commissioners give very little information
as to books and seem to have found few that were of any value. The books
found at Sheppey are thus described: "ij bokes with ij sylver clapses the
pece, and vj bokes with one sylver clasp a pec, l bokes good and bad" (in
the church), "vij bokes, whereof one goodly mase boke of parchement and
dyvers other good bokes" (in the vestry), and "an olde presse full of old
boks of no valew" (in a chapel in the churchyard) and "a boke of Saynts
lyfes" (in the parlour)[804]. At Kilburn were found "two books of _Legenda
Aurea_, one in print, the other written, both English, 4_d._"; the one in
print must have been Caxton's edition, thus valued, together with a
manuscript, at something like 6_s._ 8_d._ in present money for the pair!
Also "two mass books, one old written, the other in print, 20_d._, four
processions in parchment (3_s._) and paper (10_d._), two Legends in
parchment and paper, 8_d._, and two chests, with divers books pertaining
to the church, of no value"[805]. It will be noted that the books are
almost always connected with the church services. It is perhaps
significant that in only one list of the inmates of a house is a nun
specifically described as librarian[806].
Something may be gleaned also from the legacies of books left to nuns in
medieval wills. These again are nearly always psalters or service books of
one kind or another; and indeed the average layman was more likely to
possess these than other books, for all alike attended the services of the
church. Thus Sir Robert de Roos in 1392 leaves his daughter, a nun, "a
little psalter, that was her mother's"[807]; Sir William de Thorp in 1391
leaves his sister-in-law, a nun of Greenfield, a psalter[808]; William
Stow of Ripon in 1430 leaves the Prioress of Nunmonkton a small
psalter[809], William Overton of Helmsley in 1481 leaves his niece Elena,
a nun of Arden, "one great Primer with a cover of red damask"[810], and so
on. There may be some significance in the fact that John Burn, chaplain at
York Cathedral, leaves the Prioress and Convent of Nunmonkton "an English
book of Pater Noster"[811]. It strikes a strange and pleasant note when
Thomas Reymound in 1418 leaves the Prioress and Convent of Polsloe 20_s._
and the _Liber Gestorum Karoli, Regis Francie_[812], and when Eleanor Roos
of York in 1438 leaves Dame Joan Courtenay "unum librum vocatum
Mauldebuke," whatever that mysterious tome may have contained[813].
Some light is also thrown backward upon their possessors by isolated books
which have come down to our own day and are known to have belonged to
nuns. These come mostly, as might be expected, from the great abbeys of
the south, where the nuns were rich and of good birth, from Syon and
Barking, Amesbury, Wilton and Shaftesbury, St Mary's Winchester, and
Wherwell[814]. Sometimes the MS. records the name of the nun owner. Wright
and Halliwell quote from a Latin breviary, in which is an inscription to
the effect that it belonged to Alice Champnys, nun of Shaftesbury, who
bought it for the sum of 10_s._ from Sir Richard Marshall, rector of the
parish church of St Rumbold of Shaftesbury. There follows this prayer for
the use of the nun:
Trium puerorum cantemus himnum quem cantabant in camino ignis
benedicentes dominum. O swete Jhesu, the sonne of God, the endles
swetnesse of hevyn and of erthe and of all the worlde, be in my herte,
in my mynde, in my wytt, in my wylle, now and ever more, Amen. Jhesu
mercy, Jhesu gramercy, Jhesu for thy mercy, Jhesu as I trust to thy
mercy, Jhesu as thow art fulle of mercy, Jhesu have mercy on me and
alle mankynde redemyd with thy precyouse blode. Jhesu, Amen[815].
A manuscript of Capgrave's _Life of St Katharine of Alexandria_, which
belonged to Katherine Babyngton, subprioress of Campsey in Suffolk, has a
very different inscription:
Iste liber est ex dono Kateryne Babyngton quondam subpriorisse de
Campseye et si quis illum alienauerit sine licencia vna cum consensu
dictarum [sanctimonialium] conuentus, malediccionem dei omnipotentis
incurrat et anathema sit[816].
Sometimes the owner of a manuscript is known to us from other sources.
There is a splendid psalter, now in St John's College, Cambridge, which
belonged to the saintly Euphemia, Abbess of Wherwell from 1226 to 1257,
whose good deeds were celebrated in the chartulary of the house[817]. In
the Hunterian Library at Glasgow there is a copy of the first English
translation of Thomas a Kempis's _Imitatio Christi_, which belonged to
Elizabeth Gibbs, Abbess of Syon from 1497 to 1518; it is inscribed
O vos omnes sorores et ffratres presentes et futuri, orate queso pro
venerabili matre nostra Elizabeth Gibbis, huius almi Monasterii
Abbessa [_sic_], necnon pro deuoto ac religioso viro Dompno Willielmo
Darker, in artibus Magistro de domo Bethleem prope sheen ordinis
Cartuciensis, qui pro eadem domina Abbessa hunc librum conscripsit;
the date 1502 is given[818].
The books known to have been in the possession of nuns throw, as will be
seen, but a dim light upon the educational attainments of their owners.
More specific evidence must be sought in bishops' registers, and in such
references to the state of learning in nunneries as occur in the works of
contemporary writers. It is clear that nuns were expected to be
"literate"; bishops sending new inmates to convents occasionally assure
their prospective heads that the girls are able to undertake the duties of
their new state[819]. What to be sufficiently lettered meant, from the
convent point of view, appears in injunctions sent to the
Premonstratensian house of Irford, forbidding the reception of any nun
"save after such fashion as they are received at Irford and Brodholme, to
wit that they be able to read and to sing, as is contained in the statute
of the order"[820]; and again in injunctions sent by Bishop Gray to Elstow
about 1432:
We enjoin and charge you the abbess and who so shall succeed you ...
that henceforward you admit no one to be a nun of the said monastery
... unless she be taught in song and reading and the other things
requisite herein, or probably may be easily instructed within a short
time[821].
Further light is thrown on the question by an episode in the life of
Thomas de la Mare, Abbot of St Albans from 1349 to 1396. At that time the
subordinate nunnery of St Mary de Pre consisted of two grades of inmates,
nuns and sisters, who were never on good terms. The Abbot accordingly
transformed the sisters into nuns and ordained that no more sisters should
be received, but only "literate nuns." But hitherto the nuns also had been
illiterate; "they said no service, but in the place of the Hours they said
certain Lord's Prayers and Angelic Salutations." The Abbot therefore
ordered that they should be taught the service and that in future they
should observe the canonical hours, saying them without chanting, but
singing the offices for the dead at certain times. Since they had
apparently no books, from which to read the services, he gave them six or
seven ordinals, belonging to the Abbey of St Albans, which caused not a
little annoyance among the monks. In order that nuns should not be rashly
and easily admitted, he ordered that henceforth all who entered the house
were to profess the rule of St Benedict in writing[822].
The requirements seem to be that the nun should be able to take part in
the daily offices in the quire, for which reading and singing were
essential. It was not, it should be noted, essential to write, though
Abbot Thomas de la Mare required the nuns of St Mary de Pre to profess the
rule in writing and about 1330 the nuns of Sopwell (another dependency of
St Albans) were enjoined by the commissary of a previous Abbot to give
their votes for a new Prioress in writing[823]. Nevertheless, strange as
this may appear to many who are wont to credit the nuns with teaching
reading, writing, arithmetic and a number of other accomplishments to
their pupils, it is probable that some of the nuns of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries were unable to write. The form of profession of three
novices at Rusper in 1484 has survived and ends with the note "Et quelibet
earum fecit tale signum crucis manu sua propria [Maltese cross]"[824]
which might possibly imply that these nuns could not write their names. It
is significant that the official business of convents, their annual
accounts and any certificates which they might have to draw up, were done
by professional clerks, or sometimes by their chaplains. Payment to the
clerk who made the account occurs regularly in their account rolls; and
the Visitations of Bishop Alnwick, to which reference will be made below,
show that they were often completely at a loss, when writing had to be
done and there was no clerk to do it.
Again it would seem clear that the nun who was fully qualified to "bear
the burden of the choir" ought to be able to understand what she read, as
well as to read it, and this raises at once the study of Latin in
nunneries. Here again the nuns do not emerge very well from inquiry. Some
there were no doubt who knew a little Latin, even in the fourteenth,
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but the more the inquirer studies
contemporary records, the more he is driven to conclude that the majority
of nuns during this period knew no Latin; they must have sung the offices
by rote and though they may have understood, it is to be feared that the
majority of them could not construe even a _Pater Noster_, an _Ave_ or a
_Credo_. Let us take the evidence for the different centuries in turn. The
language of visitation injunctions affords some clue to the knowledge of
the nuns. It must be remembered that throughout the whole period Latin was
always the learned and ecclesiastical language; and the communications
addressed by a bishop to the monastic houses of his district, notices of
visitation, mandates and injunctions would normally be in Latin; and when
he was addressing monks they were in fact almost always in this tongue.
After Latin the language next in estimation was French. This had been the
universal language of the upper class and up till the middle of the
fourteenth century it was still _par excellence_ the courtly tongue. But
it was rapidly ceasing to be a language in general use and the
turning-point is marked by a statute of 1362, which ordains that
henceforth all pleas in the law courts shall be conducted in English,
since the French language "is too unknown in the said realm." At the close
of the century even the upper classes were ceasing to speak French and the
English ambassadors to France in 1404 had to beseech the Grand Council of
France to answer them in Latin, French being "like Hebrew" to them[825].
In the fifteenth century French was a mere educational adornment, which
could be acquired by those who could get teachers.
The linguistic learning of English nuns at different periods was similar
to that of the gentry outside the convent. It was not possible after the
beginning of the fourteenth century (perhaps even during the last half of
the thirteenth century) to assume in them that acquaintance with Latin,
the learned and ecclesiastical tongue, which was generally assumed in
their brothers the monks. Their learning was similar to that of
contemporary laymen of their class, rather than of contemporary monks; and
it went through exactly the same phases as did the coronation oath. About
1311 the King's oath occurs in Latin among the State documents, with the
note appended that "if the King were illiterate" he was to swear in
French, as Edward II did in 1307; but in 1399 when Henry IV claimed the
throne, he claimed it in English, "In the name of the Fadir, Son and Holy
Gost, I Henry of Lancastre, chalenge şis Rewme of Yngland"[826]. Similarly
towards the close of the thirteenth century the English bishops begin to
write to their nuns in French, because they are no longer "literate," in
the sense of understanding Latin. Throughout this century the nuns are
able to speak the courtly tongue; they use it for their petitions; and
Chaucer's Prioress boasts it among her accomplishments at the close of the
century,
And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For French of Paris was to her unknowe.
But French, like Latin, is beginning to die away. It hardly ever occurs in
petitions after the end of the century; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries the Bishops almost invariably send their injunctions to the nuns
in English. The majority of nuns during these two centuries would seem to
have understood neither French nor Latin[827].
The evidence of the bishops' registers is worth considering in more
detail. The bishops were genuinely anxious that the reforms set forth in
their injunctions should be carried out by the nuns, and they were
therefore at considerable pains to send the injunctions in language which
the nuns could understand. There are few surviving injunctions belonging
to the thirteenth century; and their evidence is missed. Archbishop Walter
Giffard in 1268[828] and Archbishop Newark in 1298[829] write to the nuns
of Swine in Latin, a language which they seem to have employed habitually
when writing to nunneries. Archbishop Peckham sometimes writes to the
Godstow nuns in Latin (1279) and sometimes in French (1284)[830]; it is to
be noted that his French letter is of a more familiar type. Bishop
Cantilupe of Hereford writes about 1277 to the nuns of Lymbrook in Latin,
but his closing words raise considerable doubt as to whether an
understanding of Latin can be generally assumed in nunneries at this
period, for he says "you are to cause this our letter to be expounded to
you several times in the year by your penancers, in the French or English
tongue, whichever you know best"[831].
The evidence for the next century is even less ambiguous, for nearly all
injunctions are in French and sometimes it is specifically mentioned that
the nuns do not understand Latin. Bishop Norbury in 1331 translates his
injunctions to Fairwell into French[832], because the nuns do not
understand the original in Latin, and Bishop Robert de Stretton, writing
to the same house in 1367, orders his decree to be "read and explained in
the vulgar tongue by some literate ecclesiastical person on the day after
its receipt"[833]. Bishop Stapeldon's interesting injunctions to Polsloe
and Canonsleigh in 1319 are in French, but he seems to assume some
knowledge of Latin in the nuns, for he orders that if it be necessary to
break silence in places where silence is ordained, speech should be held
in Latin, though not in grammatically constructed sentences, but in
isolated words[834]. In 1311 Bishop Woodlock sending a set of Latin
injunctions to the great Abbey of Romsey, announces that he has caused
them to be translated into French, that the nuns may more easily
understand them[835]; but Wykeham writes to them in Latin in 1387[836]. In
the Lincoln diocese during this century the custom of the bishops varies.
Gynewell writes to Heynings and to Godstow in French, but to Elstow in
Latin[837]; Bokyngham writes to both Heynings and Elstow in Latin, but in
ordering the nuns of Elstow in 1387 to keep silence at due times, he adds
"Et vulgare gallicum addiscentes inter se eo utantur colloquentes"[838], a
significant contrast to Stapeldon's recommendation of Latin in similar
circumstances some seventy years earlier.
When we pass from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century it is clear that
even French was becoming an unknown tongue to the nuns; nearly all
injunctions are from this time forward written in English. At Redlingfield
in 1427, the seven nuns and two novices were assembled in the chapter
house, where the deputy visitor read his commission, first in Latin and
then in the vulgar tongue, in order that the nuns might better understand
it[839]. It is true that Bishops Flemyng and Gray send Latin injunctions
to Elstow and Delapre Abbeys in 1422 and 1433 respectively; but Flemyng
orders "that the premises, all and sundry, be published and read openly
and in the vulgar mother tongue eight times a year"[840], and Gray writes
that his injunctions are to be translated into the mother tongue and
fastened in some conspicuous place[841]. The best evidence of all for the
state of learning in nunneries during the first half of the fifteenth
century is to be found in the invaluable records of Alnwick's visitations
of the Lincoln diocese. Now it should be noted that when Alnwick visited
houses of monks or canons, the sermon, which was generally preached on
such occasions by one of the learned clerics who accompanied him, was
invariably preached in Latin. Moreover, all injunctions sent to male
houses after visitation were sent in Latin also. The assumption still was
that these monasteries were homes of learning and acquainted with the
language of learning. With the nunneries it was otherwise. The sermons
were always preached "in the vulgar tongue" and the injunctions were
always sent in English. It was not even pretended that the nuns would
understand Latin. Moreover it is quite plain that when the preliminary
notices of visitation had been sent in Latin, they had been very
imperfectly understood; and that when it was necessary for a Prioress
herself to draw up a certificate in writing, she was often quite unable to
do so.
A few extracts from Alnwick's records will illustrate the complete
ignorance of Latin and general illiteracy in these houses. At Ankerwyke
(1441) it is noted:
And then when request had been made of the prioress by the reverend
father for the certificate of his mandate conveyed to the said
prioress for such visitation, the same prioress, instead of the
certificate delivered the original mandate itself to the said reverend
father, affirming that she did not understand the mandate itself, nor
had she any man of skill or other lettered person to instruct what she
should do in this behalf[842].
At Markyate (1442), when the same certificate was asked for, the Prioress
said that she had not a clerk who was equipped for writing such a
certificate, on the which head she submitted herself to my lord's
favour and then showed my lord in lieu of a certificate the original
mandate itself and the names of the nuns who had been summoned[843].
Similarly the Prioress of Fosse showed the original mandate in place of
the certificate, and the Prioresses of St Michael's Stamford and Rothwell
had failed to draw up the certificate[844]. The Prioress of Gokewell
(1440) was said to be "exceedingly simple," all the temporalities of the
house being ruled by a steward; she also declared that "she knows not how
to compose a formal certificate, in that she has no lettered persons of
her counsel who are skilled in this case," and she had been unable to find
the document reciting the confirmation of her election[845]. The poor
convent of Langley seems to have been reduced to complete confusion by the
episcopal mandate. The Prioress
says that she received my lord's mandate on the feast of St Denis
last. Interrogated whether she has a certificate touching execution
thereof, she says no, because she did not understand it, nor did her
chaplain also, to whom she showed it; concerning the which she
surrendered herself to my lord's favour. Wherefore, when the original
mandate had been delivered to my lord and read through in the vulgar
tongue, my lord asked her if she had executed it. She says yes, as
regards the summons of herself and her sisters.... Interrogated if she
has the foundation charter of the house and who is the founder, she
says that Sir William Pantolfe founded the house, but because they are
unversed in letters they cannot understand the writings[846].
It is unnecessary to multiply the evidence of visitation records for the
rest of the fifteenth and for the early sixteenth century: the general
effect is to show us nuns who know only the English language[847]. Let us
turn to the interesting corroborative evidence provided by those who were
at pains to make translations for their use. It must be admitted that this
evidence only confirms the suggestion made above that the nuns often did
not understand the very services which they sang, let alone the Latin
version of their rule, or the Latin charters by which they held their
lands. That they often sang the services uncomprehendingly like parrots is
actually stated by Sir David Lyndesay, the Scottish poet, in his _Dialog
concerning the Monarche_ (1553). He apologises for writing in his native
tongue, unlike those clerks, who wish to prohibit the people from reading
even the scriptures for themselves, and adds
Tharefore I thynk one gret dirisioun
To heir thir Nunnis & Systeris nycht and day
Syngand and sayand psalmes and orisoun,
Nocht vnderstandyng quhat thay syng nor say,
Bot lyke one stirlyng or ane Papingay
Quhilk leirnit ar to speik be lang usage
Thame I compair to byrdis in ane cage[848].
Several translations of the rule of St Benet were made for the special use
of nuns, who knew no Latin. A northern metrical version of the early
fifteenth century explains
Monkes and als all leryd men
In Latin may it lyghtly ken,
And wytt tharby how they sall wyrk
To sarue god and haly kyrk.
Bott tyll women to mak it couth,
That leris no latyn in thar youth,
In inglis is it ordand here,
So that thay may it lyghtly lere[849].
About a century later, in 1517, Richard Fox, the Bishop of Winchester,
published for the benefit of the nuns of his diocese another English
translation of the Rule of St Benedict. In the preface he rehearses how
nuns are professed under the Rule and are bound to read, learn and
understand it:
and also after their profession they should not onely in them selfe
kepe observe execute and practise the said rule but also teche other
and heir sisters the same, and so moche that for the same intent they
daily rede and cause to be rede some parte of the sayd rule by one of
the sayd sisters amonges them selfe as well in their Chapiter House
after the redinge of the Martyrologe as some tyme in their Fraitur in
tyme of refections and collacions, at the which reding is always don
in the latin tonge, whereof they have no knowledge nor understandinge
but be utterly ignorant of the same, whereby they do not only lose
their tyme but also renne into the evident danger and perill of the
perdicion of their soules.
He adds that in order to save the souls of his nuns, and in particular to
ensure that novices understand the Rule before profession,
so that none of them shall nowe afterward probably say that she wyste
not what she professed, as we knowe by experience that some of them
have sayd in tyme passed, for these causes at thinstant requeste of
our ryght dere and well-beloved daughters in oure Lorde Jhesu, the
Abbasses of the Monasteries of Rumsay, Wharwel, Seynt Maries within
the Citie of Winchester and the Prioresses of Wintnay, our right
religious diocesans, we have translated the sayd rule unto our moders
tonge; comune, playne rounde Englishe, easy and redy to be understande
by the sayde devoute religiouse women[850].
The inconvenience of not being able to read the foundation charter and
other legal documents of the house, as confessed by the Prioress of
Langley at Alnwick's visitation, was very great; and about 1460 Alice
Henley, the Abbess of Godstow, caused a translation to be made of the
Latin register, in which were copied all the charters of her abbey. The
translator's preface to the work is interesting:
The wyseman tawht hys chyld gladly to rede bokys and hem well
vndurstonde for, in defaute of vndyrstondyng, is ofttymes caused
neclygence, hurte, harme and hynderaunce, as experyence prevyth in
many a place. And for as muche as women of relygyone in redynge bokys
of latyn, byn excusyd of grete vndurstandyng, where it is not her
modyr tonge; Therfore, how be hyt that they wolde rede her bokys of
remembraunce of her munymentys wryte in latyn, for defaute of
undurstondyng they toke ofte tymes grete hurt and hyndraunce; and,
what for defaute of trewe lernyd men that all tymes be not redy hem to
teche and counsayl, and feere also and drede to shewe her euydence
opynly (that oftyntyme hath causyd repentaunce). Hyt wer ryht
necessary, as hyt semyth to the undyrstondyng of suche relygyous
women, that they myght haue, out of her latyn bokys, sum wrytynge in
her modyr tonge, wher-by they might haue bettyr knowlyge of her
munymentys and more clerely yeue informacyon to her serauntys, rent
gedurarys, and receyuowrs, in the absent of her lernyd councell.
Wher-fore, a poore brodur and welwyller ... to the goode Abbas of
Godstowe, Dame Alice henley, and to all her couent, the whych byn for
the more party in Englyssh bokys well y-lernyd, hertyly desyryng the
worship, profyt and welfare of that deuoute place, that, for lak of
vndurstondyng her munymentys sholde in no damage of her lyflod
huraftur fallyn, In the worship of our lady and seynt John Baptist
patron of thys seyd monastery, the sentence for the more partyre of
her munymentys conteynd in the boke of her regystr in latyn, aftyr the
same forme and ordyr of the seyd boke, hath purposyd with goddys grace
to make, aftur hys conceyt, fro latyn into Englyssh, sentencyosly, as
foloweth thys symple translacion[851].
It will be noticed that the benevolent translator of this Godstow register
says that the nuns are for the most part well learned in English books.
The same impression is given by the translations which were made for the
nuns of Syon. The most famous of these is the _Myroure of Oure Ladye_,
written for the nuns by Thomas Gascoigne (1403-58) and first printed in
1530. This book contains a devotional treatise on divine service, with a
translation and explanation of the "Hours" and "Masses" of our Lady, as
they were used at Syon. The author explains his purpose thus:
Forasmoche as many of you, though ye can synge and rede, yet ye can
not se what the meanynge therof ys; therefore to the onely worshyp
and praysyng of oure lorde Jesu chryste and of hys moste mercyfull
mother oure lady and to the gostly comforte and profyte of youre
soules, I haue drawen youre legende and all youre seruyce in to
Englyshe, that ye shulde se by the vnderstondyng therof, how worthy
and holy praysynge of oure gloryous Lady is contente therin & the more
deuoutely and knowyngly synge yt & rede yt and say yt to her worshyp.
He adds that he has explained the various parts of the divine service for
"symple soulles to vnderstonde," but that he has translated few psalms,
"for ye may haue them of Rycharde hampoules drawynge, and out of Englysshe
bibles, if ye haue lysence therto"[852].
From a passage in the _Myroure_ it appears that the sisters were
accustomed to spend some of their time in reading and advice is given to
them as to the sort of books to read and the way in which to profit by
them; from this it is quite clear that secular learning had no place among
them, their reading being confined to works of ghostly edification[853].
It was their ignorance of Latin which caused the insertion of English
rubrics in the Latin _Processionale_ of the house and which inspired
Richard Whytford, one of the brothers, to translate the splendid
_Martilogium_, which is now in the British Museum, "for the edificacyon of
certayn religyous persones unlerned that dayly dyd rede the same martiloge
in Latyn, not understandynge what they redde"; his translation was printed
by Wynkyn de Worde in 1526[854]. Gascoigne's mention of English bibles is
interesting. Miss Deanesly, in her study of _The Lollard Bible_, has shown
that "it is likely that English nuns were the most numerous orthodox users
of English bibles between 1408 and 1526," but that the evidence for this
use is slight and drawn almost entirely from Syon and Barking, two large
and important houses[855]. Her conclusion is that
it was not the case that the best instructed nuns used Latin Bibles
and the most ignorant English ones: but that the best instructed nuns
were allowed to use English translations, perhaps by themselves,
perhaps to help in the understanding of the Vulgate, while the smaller
nunneries and least instructed nuns almost certainly did not have them
at all.
This goes to confirm the conclusion that even in the greatest houses,
where the nuns were drawn from the highest social classes and might be
supposed to be best educated, the knowledge of Latin was dying out.
Other occupations besides reading filled the working hours of the nuns and
of these spinning and needlework were the most important. Most women in
the middle ages possessed the art of spinning and Aubrey's Old Jacques may
have remembered aright how "he saw from his house the nuns of the priory
(Kington St Michael) come forth into the nymph-hay with their rocks and
wheels to spin," though his memory misled him sorely as to the number of
these ladies. Sometimes a visitation report gives us a glimpse of the nuns
at work: at Easebourne in 1441 the nuns say that the Prioress "compels her
sisters to work continually like hired workwomen and they receive nothing
whatever for their own use from their work, but the prioress takes the
whole profit"[856] and at Catesby in the following year a young nun
complains that the Prioress "setts her to make beds, to sewing and
spinning and other tasks"[857]. Nevertheless it does not seem that the
nuns were in the habit of spinning the wool and flax for their own and
their servants' clothes and account rolls often contain payments made to
hired spinsters, as well as to fullers and weavers.
It is more probable that they busied themselves with needlework and
embroidery, which were the usual occupations of ladies of gentle
birth[858]. Very few traces have unfortunately survived of the work of
English nuns. In earlier centuries English needlework had been famous and
the nuns had been pre-eminent in the making of richly embroidered
vestments. In the thirteenth century, too, English embroidery far
surpassed that made in other countries and it has been conjectured that
"the most famous embroidered vestments now preserved in various places in
Italy are the handiwork of English embroiderers between 1250 and 1300
though their authorship is not as a rule recognised by their present
possessors"[859]. Some of these may have been made by nuns; it is thought
that the famous Syon cope, for long in the possession of the nuns of Syon,
may have been made in a thirteenth century convent in the neighbourhood of
Coventry; but such examples of medieval embroidery as have survived
usually bear no trace of their origin; since a vestment cannot be signed
like a book and it must be remembered that there was a large class of
professional "embroideresses" in the country.
Some, however, of the splendid vestments and altar cloths possessed by the
richer nunneries were probably the work of the nuns. At Langley in 1485
there were, among other rich pieces of embroidery
iiij fronteys (altar frontals) of grene damaske powdered with swanys
and egyls, ... iiij fronteys of blake powdered with swanys and rosys,
... a vestment of blew silke brodyt complete with all yt longyth to
hyt, a vestment of grene velwett complete with a crucifixe of silver
and gylte apon ye amys, a complete vestiment of red velwet, a
vestiment of swede (sewed) work complete, a vestiment of blake damaske
brodyrt with rosys and sterys, a complete vestiment of white brodyrte
with rede trewlyps (_true-love knots_), ... j gret cloth (banner) of
rede powderyd with herts heds and boturfleys ... a large coverlet of
red and blew with rosys and crossys, a tapett of ye same; j large
coverlett of rede and yowlowe with flowrs de luce, a tapett of ye
same; a large coverlett of blew and better blew with swanys and coks,
a tapett of ye same; a coverlett of grene and yowlowe with borys and
draguyns, a tapett of ye same; ... a coverlett of ostrych fydyrs and
crounyd Emmys (_monogram of the Blessed Virgin Mary_); a coverlet of
grene and yowlowe with vynys and rosys; a coverlet of grene and
yowlowe with lylys and swannys; a coverlet of blew and white whyl
knotts (_wheel knots_) and rosys; a coverlet of red and white with
traylest (_trellis_) and Bryds; a coverlet of red and blew with
sterrys and white rosys in mydste; a coverlet of yowlowe and grene
with egyles and emmys; v coveryngs of bedds, yat hys to sey A coveryng
of red saye, a coveryng of panes (_stripes_) of red and grene and
white saye, a coveryng of red and blake saye, a coveryng of red and
blew poudyrd with white esses and sterys, a blew saye with a red
dragne[860].
Many of these embroideries and tapestries were doubtless legacies or
gifts; but it is impossible not to picture the white fingers of the nuns
at work on swans and roses, harts' heads and butterflies, stars and
true-love knots. One may deduce that the nuns of Yorkshire, at least,
busied themselves in these pursuits from an injunction sent to Nunkeeling,
Yedingham and Wykeham in 1314 that no nun should absent herself from
divine service "on account of being occupied with silk work" (_propter
occupacionem operis de serico_)[861].
Reference to the sale of embroidery by nuns is surprisingly rare in
account rolls. The household roll of the Countess of Leicester in 1265
contains an item, "Paid to the nuns of Wintney, for one cope to be made
for the use of Brother J. Angelus by the gift of the Countess at Panham
10_d._"[862], which small sum must have been a part payment in advance,
perhaps towards the purchase of materials; the nuns of Gracedieu, too,
sold a cope to a neighbouring rector for L10, early in the fifteenth
century[863], and on one occasion the cellaress of Barking derived a part
of her income for the year from the sale of a cope[864], but search has
revealed no further instances. The nuns also probably made little presents
for their friends, such as purses (though the Gracedieu nuns always bought
the purses which they gave to their bailiff, to Lady Beaumont, or to other
visitors) and the so-called "blood-bands." In an age when bleeding was the
most common treatment for almost every illness and when monks, in
particular, were regularly bled several times a year, these little
bandages were common presents, being sometimes made of silk. The author of
the _Ancren Riwle_ thus bade his anchoresses "make no purses to gain
friends therewith, not blodbendes of silk, but shape and sew and mend
church vestments and poor people's clothes"[865]. The nuns of the diocese
of Rouen in the mid-thirteenth century were accustomed to knit or
embroider silken purses, tassels, cushions or needlecases for sale or as
gifts, and Archbishop Eudes Rigaud was continually forbidding them to do
any silk work except for church ornament[866]. There is some reason to
think that the nuns, then as now, sometimes eked out their income by doing
fine needlework for ladies of the world, though there is no mention of it
in nunnery accounts, or indeed in any English records. Among the
correspondence of Lady Lisle in the first half of the sixteenth century,
however, are several letters to and from a certain Antoinette de Favences
at Dunkirk, who would appear to have been a nun, for she signs herself
_sister_ Antoinette de Favences and is addressed by Lady Lisle as _Madame_
and _Dame_. This woman was employed to make caps and coifs for Lady
Lisle's family and friends and there is much correspondence between them
as to night-caps which are too wide, lozenge-work and such matters; in one
letter Lady Lisle speaks of sending "16 rozimbos and 2 half angels of
Flanders, a Carolus of gold," in payment for the caps[867].
What other accomplishments the nuns may have possessed we do not know.
They were possibly skilled in herbs and in the more simple forms of home
medicine and surgery, for it was the function of the lady of the manor to
know something of these things, though doctors were available (for nuns as
well as for lay folk) in more serious illnesses[868]. They doubtless bled
each other as did the monks, else how was the wicked Prioress of Kirklees,
who slew Robin Hood, so skilled?:
Doun then came Dame Prioress
Doun she came in that ilk,
With a pair of blood-irons in her hand,
Were wrapped all in silk....
She laid the blood-irons to Robin's vein
Alack the more pitye!
And pierc'd the vein and let out the blood
That full red was to see.
There is an occasional brief reference to the recreation of nuns in their
"seynys" in visitations[869], but the precaution was less necessary and
less frequent than it was in houses of monks[870]. No doubt, also, the
nuns sometimes nursed their boarders, some of whom must have been old and
ailing; wills are occasionally dated from nunneries[871]. The nuns of
Romsey had a hospital attached to the house, in which were received as
sisters any parents and relatives of the nuns, who were poor and ill[872],
but this does not prove that the nuns nursed them, and references in
visitation reports show that even sick nuns were often looked after by lay
servants in the infirmary, or if permanently disabled, occupied a separate
room, with a separate maid to attend them. It is not likely that the nuns
left their convents, save very occasionally, to undertake sick-nursing;
this would have been against the spirit of their rule, for their main
business was not (as was that of the sisters who looked after spitals) to
care for the sick, but to live enclosed in their houses, following the
prescribed round of church services. It is however of interest that the
will of Sir Roger Salwayn, knight of York (1420) contains this legacy:
"Also I will that the Nunne that kepid me in my seknes haue ij nobles, and
that ther be gif into the hous that she wonnes in xxs, for to syng and
pray for me"[873]. Nuns may have emerged sometimes to nurse friends and
relatives, whose sick-beds they were always allowed to attend; but there
is no documentary evidence for the belief of modern writers, who would
fain turn the nun into a district visitor, smoothing the pillows of all
who ailed in her native village.
These then were the educational attainments of the English nuns in the
later middle ages: reading and singing the services of the church,
sometimes but not always writing, Latin very rarely after the thirteenth
century, French very rarely after the fourteenth century; needlework and
embroidery; and perhaps that elementary knowledge of physic, which was the
possession of most ladies of their class. It was, in fact, very little
more than the education possessed by laywomen of the same social rank
outside and there is little trace of anything approaching scholarship. The
study of the education of the nuns during this period leads naturally to
one of the most vexed questions in the field of monastic history, the
extent to which the nunneries acted as girls' schools. There is no doubt
that every nunnery was prepared to educate young girls who entered in
order to take the veil; if the nunnery were fairly large these _scolae
internae_ probably included several novices at a time. At Ankerwyke in
1441 three young nuns complained that they had no governess to instruct
them in "reading, song and religious observance," and mention is made of
three other sisters "of tender age and slender discretion, seeing that the
eldest of them is not more than thirteen years of age"; the Bishop
appointed a nun to be their teacher, "enjoining her to perform the charge
laid upon her and to instruct them in good manners"[874]. Similarly at
Thetford, where there were three novices in 1526, the Bishop found "non
habent eruditricem"[875]. At the larger houses, such as Romsey, the
_magistra noviciarum_ was a regular obedientiary[876].
[Illustration: PLATE V
PAGE FROM _LA SAINTE ABBAYE_
(In the bottom left hand corner the mistress of the novices, with birch in
hand, is instructing two young novices; in the bottom right hand corner
the abbess and a nun are at prayer.)]
The vexed question, however, does not concern these schools for novices.
It has been the custom, not only of writers on monasticism but also of the
man in the street, to assume that the nunneries were almost solely
responsible for the education of girls in the middle ages. There was
little evidence for the assumption, but it was always made, and until the
combined attack made upon it in 1910 by Mr Coulton and Mr Leach it was
unchallenged[877]. With the publication of bishops' registers, however, we
have something more definite to go upon and it is now possible to come to
some sort of conclusion, based on the evidence of visitation injunctions,
account rolls and other miscellaneous sources. This conclusion may be
summarised as follows. It was a fairly general custom among the English
nuns, in the two and a half centuries before the Dissolution, to receive
children for education. But there are four limitations, within which and
only within which, this conclusion is true. _First_, that by no means all
nunneries took children and those which did take them seldom had large
schools; _secondly_, that the children who thus received a convent
education were drawn exclusively from the upper and the wealthy middle
classes, from people, that is to say, of birth and wealth; _thirdly_, that
the practice was a purely financial expedient on the part of the nuns, at
first forbidden, afterwards restricted and always frowned upon by the
bishops, who regarded it as subversive of discipline; and _fourthly_, that
the education which the children received from the nuns, so far as
book-learning as distinct from nurture is concerned, was extremely
exiguous. In fine, though nunneries did act as girls' schools, they
certainly did not educate more than a small proportion even of the
children of the upper classes, and the education which they gave them was
limited by their own limitations[878].
That the custom of receiving schoolgirls was fairly general appears from
the wide area over which notices of such children are spread. The
references range in date from 1282 to 1537; they give us, if a doubtful
reference to King's Mead, Derby, be accepted, the names of forty-nine
convents, which at one time or other had children in residence. These
convents are situated in twenty-one counties. The greater number of
references naturally occur in those dioceses for which the episcopal
registers are most complete; Yorkshire affords fifteen names and two which
are doubtful; Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire,
Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire and Leicestershire, counties in
the large Lincoln diocese, afford seventeen between them, five from
Lincolnshire and two from each of the others. These references do not
prove that the houses in question had continuously throughout their career
a school for girls; sometimes only one or two children are mentioned and
usually the evidence concerns but a single year out of two and a half
centuries. Sometimes, however, a happy chance has preserved several
references to the same house, spread over a longer period, from which it
is perhaps not too rash to conclude that it was the regular practice of
that house to receive children. For Elstow, for instance, there is an
early reference to a boy of five sent there for education by St Hugh,
Bishop of Lincoln, towards the close of the twelfth century. In 1359
Bishop Gynewell prohibited all boarders there, except girls under ten and
boys under six. In 1421 Bishop Flemyng prohibited all except children
under twelve and in 1432 Bishop Gray altered this to girls under fourteen
and boys under ten, and children are mentioned at Alnwick's visitation in
1442. Similarly at Godstow there are references to children in 1358, 1445
and 1538, at Esholt in Yorkshire in 1315, 1318 and 1537, at Sopwell in
1446 and 1537, at Heynings in 1347, 1387 and 1393, at Burnham in 1434 and
1519.
The mention of boys in these references needs perhaps some further
emphasis, for it is not usually recognised that the nunneries occasionally
acted as dame-schools for very young boys. "Abstinence the abbesse myn
a.b.c. me taughte," says Piers Plowman, "And conscience com aftur and
kennide me betere." It is true that a Cistercian statute of 1256-7 forbade
the education of boys in nunneries of that order[879], but the ordinance
soon became a dead letter, and five of the convents at which Alnwick found
schoolboys (c. 1445) were Cistercian houses. Boys were specifically
forbidden at Wherwell in 1284, at Heynings in 1359 and at Nuncoton in
1531, which argues that they were then present, and they are mentioned at
Romsey (1311), at five Yorkshire convents (1314-17), at Burnham (1434), at
Lymbrook (1437), at Swaffham Bulbeck (1483) and at Redlingfield (1514), a
chronologically and geographically wide range of houses. Occasionally some
details as to a particular boy may be gleaned; the five year old Robert de
Noyon, sent by Bishop Hugh to Elstow "to be taught his letters," the two
Tudor boys commended to Katharine de la Pole, the noble Abbess of Barking;
the little son and heir of Sir John Stanley, who made his will in 1527 and
then became a monk, leaving the boy to be brought up until twelve years of
age by another Abbess of Barking, after which he was to pass to the care
of the Abbot of Westminster; and Cromwell's son Gregory and his little
companion, sent to be supervised, though not taught by Margaret Vernon,
Prioress of Little Marlow[880]. But as a rule the boys in nunneries were
very young; it was not considered decorous for them to stay with the nuns
later than their ninth or tenth year; the bishop forbade it and besides,
the education which the good sisters could give them would not have been
considered sufficient. The rule which gives a man child to a man for
education is of very old standing.
Such is the evidence for concluding that the custom of receiving children
for education in nunneries was widespread. It remains to consider
carefully the limitations within which this conclusion is true. In the
first place, not all nunneries received children. It is obviously
impossible, considering the gaps in our evidence, to attempt an exact
estimate of the proportion which did so. Some sort of clue may be obtained
by an analysis of the Yorkshire visitations of Archbishops Greenfield and
Melton at the beginning of the fourteenth century (1306-20) and of
Alnwick's Lincoln visitations (1440-5). The Yorkshire evidence is rather
scanty, being based on the summaries of injunctions, which are given in
the _Victoria County Histories_, and any statistics must needs be
approximate only. The two archbishops between them visited nineteen
nunneries and mention of children is made at twelve, i.e. about
two-thirds. The information given by the invaluable Alnwick is more exact.
From the _detecta_ of some of the nuns and from the number of prohibitions
of this practice, it is obvious that Alnwick was accustomed to ask at his
visitations whether children were sleeping in the nuns' dorter; he also
made careful inquiry as to the boarders. The probability, therefore, is
that we have in his register an exact record of those houses in which
children were received. Analysis shows that of the twenty houses which he
visited he found children, often boys as well as girls, at twelve, i.e. a
little over two-thirds, which is substantially the same result as was
given by the Yorkshire analysis a century earlier. The estimate is
interesting, but it cannot be considered conclusive without the
corroborative evidence from other dioceses, which is unfortunately
lacking. It is a hint, a straw, which shows which way the wind of research
is blowing, for if it is unsafe to argue from silence that the nuns of
other convents did take pupils, it is equally unsafe to argue that they
did not.
The fact is, however, clearly established that all nunneries did not take
children; possibly about two-thirds of them did. The further fact has then
to be recognised that even those nunneries had not necessarily what we
should regard as a school for girls. Not only does it sometimes seem as
though children were taken occasionally and intermittently, rather than
regularly, but the numbers taken were rarely great. Sometimes we do hear
of a house with a large number of pupils. At St Mary's Winchester in 1536
there were as many as twenty-six children, to twenty-six nuns; and at
Polesworth in 1537 Henry VIII's commissioners state vaguely that "repayre
and resort ys made to the gentlemens childern and studiounts that ther doo
lif, to the nombre sometyme of xxx{ti} and sometyme xj{ti} and moo." There
were fifteen nuns in the house at the time and it is likely that the
number of children given is a pardonable exaggeration by local gentlemen
who were interested in preserving the nunnery; but it seems undoubted that
there was a comparatively large school there. At Stixwould, again, in 1440
there were about eighteen children to an equal number of nuns. These,
however, are the largest schools of which we have record. At St Michael's
Stamford in 1440 there were seven or eight children to twelve nuns, at
Catesby in 1442 six or seven children to seven nuns. At Swaffham Bulbeck,
where there were probably eight or nine nuns, there were nine children in
1483. These also are schools, though small schools. But at other houses
there were only one or two children at a time. The accounts of the
Prioress of St Helen's Bishopsgate in 1298 mention only two children,
there were only two at Littlemore in 1445 and two at Sopwell at the time
of the Dissolution. It must be remembered that many nunneries were
themselves very small and their inmates could not have looked after a
large number of children. The examples quoted above suggest that the
number of children hardly ever exceeded the number of nuns. To what
conclusion are we driven when we find that a possible two-thirds of the
convents of England received children and that the largest school of which
we have record numbered only twenty-six children (or thirty if we take the
higher and less probable figure for Polesworth), while most had far fewer?
Surely to represent a majority of girls, or even a majority of girls of
gentle birth, as having received their nurture in convents, would be on
the evidence absurd.
The second limitation of convent education in medieval England is
contained in the words "girls of gentle birth." Tanner's statement that
"the lower rank of people, who could not pay for their learning"[881], as
well as noblemen's and gentlemen's daughters, were educated in nunneries
has not a shred of evidence to support it, though it has been repeated _ad
nauseam_ ever since he wrote it. Every scrap of evidence which has come
down to us goes to prove that the girls educated in nunneries were of
gentle birth, daughters of great lords, or more often daughters of country
gentlemen, or of those comfortable and substantial merchants and
burgesses, who were usually themselves sprung from younger sons of the
gentry. The implication is plain in Chaucer's description, in _The Reves
Tale_, of the Miller's wife, who was "y-comen of noble kin" and daughter
of the parson of the toun, and who "was y-fostred in a nonnerye":
Ther dorste no wight clepen hir but "dame" ...
And eek, for she was somdel smoterlich
She was as digne as water in a dich;
And ful of hoker and of bisemare.
Her thoughte that a lady sholde hir spare,
What for hir kinrede and hir nortelrye
That she had lerned in the nonnerye.
An analysis of some of the schoolgirls whose names have come down to us
confirms this impression. The commissioners who visited St Mary's,
Winchester, in 1536 drew up a list of the twenty-six "chyldren of lordys,
knyghttes and gentylmen brought up yn the saym monastery." They were
Bryget Plantagenet, dowghter unto the lord vycounte Lysley (i.e.
Lisle); Mary Pole, dowghter unto Sir Geffrey Pole knyght; Brygget
Coppeley, dowghter unto Sir Roger Coppeley knyght; Elizabeth Phyllpot,
dowghter unto Sir Peter Phyllpot, knyght; Margery Tyrell; Adrian
Tyrell; Johanne Barnabe; Amy Dyngley; Elizabeth Dyngley; Jane Dyngley;
Frances Dyngley; Susan Tycheborne; Elizabeth Tycheborne; Mary Justyce;
Agnes Aylmer; Emma Bartue; Myldred Clerke; Anne Lacy; Isold Apulgate;
Elizabeth Legh; Mary Legh; Alienor North; Johanne Sturgys; Johanne
Ffyldes; Johanne Ffrances; Jane Raynysford.
The house was evidently at this time a fashionable seminary for young
ladies. It must be remembered that it was a general custom among the
English nobility and gentry to send their children away to the household
of a lord, or person of good social standing, in order to learn breeding
and it was not uncommon to send boys to the household of an abbot. In 1450
Thomas Bromele, Abbot of Hyde, thus entertained in his house eight
"gentiles pueri," there were many "pueri generosi" at Westacre in 1494,
and Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, is stated by Parsons
to have had, among his 300 servants, "multos nobilium filios"[882]. It was
doubtless much in the same way that the children of lords, knights and
gentlemen were put in the charge of the Abbess of St Mary's Winchester, a
great lady, who had her own "gentlewoman" to attend upon her and her own
private household. It is probable that the nuns taught these children, but
the boys who went as wards to abbeys seem often to have taken their tutors
with them, or at least to have been taught by special tutors. At
Lilleshall, for instance, the commissioners found four "gentylmens sons
and their scolemaster"[883] and it is significant that when little Gregory
Cromwell was sent to be brought up by Margaret Vernon, Prioress of Little
Marlow, he was taught by a private tutor and not by the nun.
Other references to the children received in nunneries confirms the
impression that they were of gentle birth. At Polesworth, as at St Mary's,
Winchester, the commissioners specified "gentylmens childern and
studiounts." At Thetford a daughter of John Jerves, _generosus_, is
mentioned in 1532 and two daughters of Laurens Knight, _gentleman_, were
at Cornworthy, c. 1470. The accounts of Sopwell in 1446 mention the
daughter of Lady Anne Norbery; at Littlemore in 1445 the daughter of John
FitzAleyn, steward of the house, and the daughter of Ingelram Warland are
boarders. Among the Carrow boarders, who may be set down as children, are
the son and two daughters of Sir Roger Wellisham, the daughter of Sir
Robert de Wachesam, a niece of William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, and
girls with such well-known names as Fastolf, Clere, Baret, Blickling,
Shelton and Ferrers, though the last two may be adult boarders. The
Gracedieu boarders nearly all bear the names of neighbouring gentry and
one was the daughter of Lord Beaumont. In the course of time, as the urban
middle class grew and flourished, the daughters of the well-to-do
_bourgeoisie_ were sometimes sent to convents for their education. Thus
among the Carrow boarders we find a daughter of John de Erlham, a merchant
and citizen of Norwich, and Isabel Barber, daughter of Thomas Welan,
barber, who afterwards, however, became a nun. It is plain from the wills
which have been preserved that the wealthy Norwich burgesses were in the
habit of sending their daughters as nuns to Carrow, and it is a natural
supposition that they should have sent them sometimes as schoolgirls; but
by birth and by wealth these city magnates were not far removed from the
neighbouring gentry. The school at Swaffham Bulbeck in 1483 was less
fashionable than that at Carrow and did not cater for the nobly born; it
was a small house and the names of the children suggest a sound middle
class establishment, perhaps the very one in which Chaucer's Miller's wife
of Trumpington was educated, full of the sons and daughters of the
burgesses of Cambridge, Richard Potecary of Cambridge, William Water,
Thomas Roch, unnamed fathers "of Cambridge," "of Chesterton," Parker "of
Walden," and "the merchant."
None of these examples can possibly be twisted into a case for the free,
or even the cheap, education of the poor. Just as we never find low-born
girls as nuns, so we never find them as schoolgirls and for the same
reason; "dowerless maidens," as Mr Leach says, "were not sought as nuns."
As will be seen hereafter, the reception of school children was
essentially a financial expedient; one of the many methods by which the
nuns sought to raise the wind[884]. The fees paid by these children are
recorded here and there, in nunnery accounts; education was apparently
thrown in with board, and the usual rate for board for children during the
century and a half before the Dissolution seems to have been about 6_d._ a
week, though the charge at Cornworthy c. 1470 was 10_d._ a week and at
Littlemore in 1445 only 4_d._ a week[885]. Occasionally the good nuns
suffered, like so many schoolmistresses since their day, from the
difficulty of extracting fees. Among the debts owing to the nuns of Esholt
at the Dissolution was one of 33_s._ from Walter Wood of Timble in the
parish of Otley for his child's board for a year and a half; and at
Thetford in 1532 the poor nuns complained that "John Jerves, gentleman,
has a daughter being nurtured in the priory and pays nothing." The most
melancholy case of all has been preserved to us owing to the fact that the
nuns, goaded to desperation, sought help from the Chancellor. About 1470
Thomasyn Dynham, Prioress of Cornworthy, made petition to the effect that
Laurens Knyghte, gentleman, had agreed with Margaret Wortham the late
Prioress, that she should take his two daughters "to teche them to scole,"
viz. Elizabeth, aged seven years, and "Jahne," aged ten years, at the
costs and charges of Laurens, who was to pay 20_d._ a week for them. So at
Cornworthy they remained during the life of Margaret, to the great costs
and charges and impoverishing of the said poor place, by the space of five
years and more, until the money due amounted to L21. 13_s._ 4_d._, "the
which sum is not contented ne paid, nor noo peny thereof." Laurense
meanwhile departed this life, leaving his wife "Jahne" executrix, and
Jahne, unnatural mother that she was, married again a certain John
Barnehous and utterly refused to pay for her unhappy daughters. One is
uncertain which to pity most, Thomasyn Dynham, a new Prioress left with
this incubus on her hands, or Elizabeth and Jane Knyghte, trying hard to
restrain their appetites and not to grow out of their clothes under her
justly incensed regard. Jane was by now grown up and marriageable
according to the standards of the time and it is tantalising not to know
the end of the dilemma. A proneness to forget fees seems to have been
shared by greater folk than Mistress Knyghte, as the petition of Katherine
de la Pole, Abbess of Barking, concerning Edmond and Jasper Tudor, whose
"charges, costs and expenses" she had taken upon herself, will show.
Both this matter of fees and the names of schoolgirls which have survived
are against any suggestion that the nuns gave schooling to poor girls.
There is not the slightest evidence for anything like a day school, and
the only hint for any care for village girls on the part of the nuns is
contained in a letter from Cranmer, when fellow of Jesus College, to the
Abbess of Godstow:
Stephen Whyte hath told me that you lately gathered round you a number
of wild peasant maids and did make them a most goodly discourse on the
health of their souls; and you showeth them how goodly a thing it be
for them to go oftentimes to confession. I am mighty glad of your
discourse[886].
But this is obviously an isolated discourse and in any case it has nothing
to do with education. So far as it is possible to be certain of anything
for which evidence is scanty, we may be certain that poor or lower-class
girls were no more received in nunneries for education, than they were
received there as nuns. No single instance has ever been brought of a
lowborn nun or a lowborn schoolgirl, in any English nunnery, for the three
centuries before the nunneries were dissolved.
The third limitation to which convent education was subjected is an
important one; the reception of children by the nuns was never approved
and always restricted by their ecclesiastical superiors. The greater
number of references to schoolchildren which have come down to us are
these restrictive references. The attitude of monastic visitors towards
children was in essence the same as their attitude towards boarders. The
nuns received both, because they were nearly always in low water
financially and wished to add to their scanty finances by the familiar
expedient of taking paying guests. But the bishops saw in all boarders,
whether adults or schoolchildren, a hindrance to discipline; they objected
to them for the same reason that they objected to pet dogs and silver
girdles and with just as little success.
The ecclesiastical case against schoolchildren may be found delightfully
set forth in the words addressed, it is true, to anchoresses, but
expressing the same spirit as was afterwards shown by Eudes Rigaud, Johann
Busch and other great medieval visitors towards nuns. Aelred, the great
twelfth century Abbot of Rievaulx, writes thus:
Allow no boys or girls to have access to you. There are certain
anchoresses, who are busied in teaching pupils and turn their chambers
into a school. The mistress sits at the window, the child in the
cloister. She looks at each of them; and, during their puerile
actions, now is angry, now laughs, now threatens, now soothes, now
spares, now kisses, now calls the weeping child to be beaten, then
strokes her face, bids her hold up her head, and eagerly embracing
her, calls her her child, her love[887].
Similarly the author of the _Ancren Riwle_ warns his three anchoresses:
An anchoress must not become a schoolmistress, nor turn her
anchoress-house into a school for children. Her maiden may, however,
teach any little girl, concerning whom it might be doubtful whether
she should learn among boys, but an anchoress ought to give her
thoughts to God only[888].
The gist of the matter was that the children constituted a hindrance to
claustral discipline and devotion. It is plain, however, that in this, as
in so many other matters, the reformers were only "beating the air" in
vain with their restrictions. Sympathy must be with the needy nuns, for
even if discipline were weakened thereby, the reception of children was in
itself a very harmless, not to say laudable expedient; and so the
neighbouring gentry as well as the nuns considered it.
An analysis of the attitude of medieval visitors to schoolchildren shows
us the usual attempt to limit what it was beyond their power to prohibit.
Eudes Rigaud, the great Archbishop of Rouen, habitually removed all the
girls and boys whom he found in the houses of his diocese, when he visited
them during the years 1249 to 1269. But in England, at least, the nuns
very soon became too strong for the bishops, who gradually adopted the
policy of fixing an age limit beyond which no children might remain in a
nunnery and sometimes of requiring their own licence to be given before
the boys and girls were admitted. Since the danger of secularisation could
not be removed, it was at least reduced to a minimum, by ensuring that
only very young boys and only girls, who had not yet attained a
marriageable age, should be received. The age limit varied a little with
different visitors and different houses. In the Yorkshire diocese early in
the fourteenth century the age limit was twelve for girls; boys are rarely
mentioned, but at Hampole in 1314 the nuns were forbidden to permit male
children over five to be in the house, as the bishop finds has been the
practice. Bishop Gynewell in 1359 allowed girls up to ten and boys up to
six at Elstow, but forbade boys altogether at Heynings. Bishop Gray
allowed girls under fourteen and boys under eight at Burnham in 1434 and
Bishop Stretton in 1367 allowed boys up to seven at Fairwell. The age
limit tended, it will be seen, to become higher in the course of time;
Alnwick writing to Gracedieu in 1440, forbade all boarders "save
childerne, males the ix and females the xiiij yere of age, whom we
licencede you to hafe for your relefe"[889]; he allowed boys often at
Heynings and Catesby and boys of eleven (an exceptionally high age) at
Harrold.
There was a special reason, besides the general interference with
discipline, for which the bishops objected to children in nunneries. It
seems very often to have been the custom for the nuns to take, as it were,
private pupils, each child having its own particular mistress. This custom
grew as the practice of keeping separate households grew. Thus at Catesby
the Prioress complained to Alnwick that sister Agnes Allesley had "six or
seven young folk of both sexes, that do lie in the dorter"; at St
Michael's Stamford, he found that the Prioress had seven or eight
children, at Gracedieu the cellaress had a little boy and at Elstow, where
there were five households of nuns, it was said that "certain nuns"
brought children into the quire. In fact, the nuns would appear to have
kept for their own personal use the money paid to them for the board of
their private pupils. This was a sin against the monastic rule of personal
poverty and the bishops took special measures against such manifestations
of _proprietas_. William of Wykeham in 1387 forbids the nuns of Romsey to
make wills and to have private rooms or private pupils, giving this
specific reason, and at St Helen's Bishopsgate in 1439 Dean Kentwode
enjoined "that no nonne have ne receyve noo schuldrin wyth hem ... but yf
that the profite of the comonys turne to the vayle of the same howse."
Similarly the number of children who might be taken by a single nun was
sometimes limited; Gynewell wrote to Godstow in 1358 "that no lady of the
said house is to have children, save only two or three females sojourning
with them" and at Fairwell in 1367 no nun might keep with her for
education more than one child.
Another habit against which bishops constantly legislated was that of
having the children to sleep in the dorter with the nuns. This practice
was exceedingly common, for many of the nunneries which took children were
small and poor; they had possibly no other room to set aside for them, and
no person who could suitably be placed in charge of them. Moreover in some
cases adult boarders and servants also slept in the dorter. Alnwick was
constantly having to bid his nuns "that ye suffre ne seculere persones,
wymmen ne children lyg by nyghte in the dormytory," but Atwater and
Longland in the sixteenth century still have to make the same injunction.
Bokyngham in 1387 ordered that a seemly place outside the cloister should
be set apart for the children at Heynings; the reason was that (as
Gynewell had expressly stated on visiting this house forty years before)
"the convent might not be disturbed." Indeed little attempt was made by
the nuns to keep the children out of their way. They seem to have dined in
the refectory, when not in the separate rooms of their mistresses, for
Greenfield forbids the Prioress and Subprioress of Sinningthwaite (1315)
to permit boys or girls to eat flesh meat in Advent or Sexagesima, or
during Lent eggs or cheese, in the refectory, "contrary to the honesty of
religion," but at those seasons when they ought to eat such things, they
were to be assigned other places in which to eat them. There are
references, too, to disturbances and diversions created by the children in
the quire. At Elstow in 1442 Dame Rose Waldegrave said that "certain nuns
do sometimes have with them in time of mass the boys whom they teach and
these do make a noise in quire during divine service"[890]. To us the
picture of these merry children breaking the monotony of convent routine
is an attractive one; more attractive even than the pet dogs and the
Vert-Verts. But to stern ecclesiastical disciplinarians it was not so
attractive, and their constant restriction, though it never succeeded in
turning out the children, must have kept down the number who were
admitted.
The evidence which has so far been considered shows that, though the
reception of children to be boarded and taught in nunneries was fairly
common, it was subjected to well marked limitations. There remains to be
considered one more question the answer to which is in some sort a
limitation likewise. What exactly did the nuns teach these children? We
are hampered in answering this question by the difficulty of obtaining
exact contemporary evidence. Most modern English writers content
themselves with a glib list of accomplishments, copied without
verification from book to book, and all apparently traceable in the last
resort to Fuller and John Aubrey, the one writing a century, the other
almost a century and a half after the nunneries had been dissolved. Fuller
(whom Tanner copies) says:
Nunneries also were good Shee-schools, wherein the girles and maids of
the neighbourhood were taught to read and work; and sometimes a little
Latine was taught them therein. Yea, give me leave to say, if such
Feminine Foundations had still continued ... haply the weaker sex
(besides the avoiding modern inconveniences) might be heightened to a
higher perfection than hitherto hath been obtained[891].
Aubrey, speaking of Wiltshire convents says:
There the young maids were brought up ... at the nunneries, where they
had examples of piety, and humility, and modesty, and obedience to
imitate, and to practise. Here they learned needle-work, the art of
confectionary, surgery (for anciently there were no apothecaries or
surgeons--the gentlewomen did cure their poor neighbours: their hands
are now too fine), physic, writing, drawing etc.[892]
One would have thought the familiar note of the _laudator temporis acti_
to be plainly audible in both these extracts. But a host of modern writers
have gravely transcribed their words and even, taking advantage no doubt
of Aubrey's "etc." (much virtue in etc.), improved upon them. In the work
of one more recent writer the list has become "reading, writing, some
knowledge of arithmetic, the art of embroidery, music and French 'after
the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,' were the recognised course of study,
while the preparation of perfumes, balsams, simples and confectionary was
among the more ordinary departments of the education afforded"[893].
Another adds a few more deft touches: "the treatment of various disorders,
the compounding of simples, the binding up of wounds, ... fancy cookery,
such as the making of sweetmeats, writing, drawing, needlework of all
kinds and music, both vocal and instrumental"[894]. The most recent writer
of all gives the list as "English and French ... writing, drawing,
confectionary, singing by notes, dancing, and playing upon instruments of
music, the study also of medicine and surgery"[895]. Though the historian
must groan, the student of human nature cannot but smile to see music
insinuate itself into the list and then become "both instrumental and
vocal"; confectionery extend itself to include perfumes, balsams, simples,
and the making of sweetmeats; arithmetic appear out of nowhere; and (most
magnificent feat of the imagination) dancing trip in on light fantastic
toe. From this compound of Aubrey, memories of continental convents in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and familiarity with the convent
schools of our own day, let us turn to the considered opinion of a more
sober scholar, who bases it only upon contemporary evidence:
"No evidence whatever," says Mr Leach, "has been produced of what was
taught in nunneries. That ... something must have been taught, if only
to keep the children employed, is highly probable. That the teaching
included learning the Lord's Prayer, etc. by heart may be conceded.
Probably Fuller is right in guessing that it included reading; but it
is only a guess. One would guess that it included sewing and spinning.
As for its including Latin, no evidence is forthcoming and it is
difficult to see how those who did not know Latin could teach
it[896]."
Direct evidence is therefore absolutely lacking; all we can do is to
deduce probabilities from what we know of the education of the nuns
themselves, and it must be conceded that this was not always of a very
high order. It is quite certain, from the wording of some of the
visitation injunctions, that the quality and extent of the teaching must
have varied considerably from house to house. It was probably good (as the
education of women then went) at the larger and more fashionable houses,
mediocre at those which were small and struggling. Latin could not have
been taught, because, as has already been pointed out, the nuns at this
period did not know it themselves; but the children were probably taught
the _Credo_, the _Ave_ and the _Pater Noster_ in Latin by rote. They may
have been taught French of the school of Stratford atte Bowe, as long as
that language was fashionable in the outside world and known to the nuns,
but it died out of the convents after the end of the fourteenth century.
It seems pretty certain that the children must have been taught to read.
"Abstinence the abbesse myn a.b.c. me taughte," says Piers Plowman; the
Abbess of St Mary's Winchester buys the matins books for little Bridget
Plantagenet; and it will be remembered that the nuns of Godstow were said
about 1460 (fifteen years after Alnwick visited the house and gave
permission for children to be boarded there) to be "for the more party in
Englyssh bokys well y-lernyd." Caesarius of Heisterbach has a delightful
story, repeated thus in a fifteenth century _Alphabet of Tales_:
Caesarius tellis how that in Freseland in a nonrie ther was ii little
maydens that lernyd on the buke, and euer thai strafe whethur of thaim
shulde lern mor than the toder. So the tane of thaim happened to fall
seke and sho garte call the Priores vnto hur & sayd: "Gude ladie!
suffre nott my felow to lern vnto I cover of my sekenes, and I sall
pray my moder to gif me vj d & that I sall giff you & ye do so, ffor I
drede that whils I am seke, that sho sall pas me in lernyng, & that I
wolde not at sho did." And at this wurde the priores smylid & hadd
grete mervayle of the damysell conseyte[897].
Whether girls were taught to write, as well as to read, is far more
doubtful. It is probable that the nuns did not always possess this
accomplishment themselves, nor did sober medieval opinion consider it
wholly desirable that girls should know how to write, on account both of
the general inferiority of their sex, and of a regrettable proclivity
towards clandestine love letters[898]. Still, writing may sometimes have
formed part of the curriculum; there is no evidence either way. For
drawing (by which presumably the art of illumination must be meant) there
is no warrant; a medieval nunnery was not a modern "finishing" school.
So much for what may be called book learning. Let us now examine for a
moment the other accomplishments with which nunnery-bred young ladies have
been credited. We may, as Mr Leach suggests, make a guess at spinning and
needlework, though here also there is no evidence for their being taught
to schoolgirls. Jane Scroupe, into whose mouth Skelton puts his "Phyllyp
Sparowe," was apparently being brought up at Carrow, and describes how she
sewed the dead bird's likeness on her sampler,
I toke my sampler ones,
Of purpose, for the nones,
To sowe with stytchis of sylke
My sparow whyte as mylke.
Confectionery does not seem very probable, for at this period the cooking
for the convent was nearly always done by a hired male cook and not (as
laid down in the Benedictine rule) by the nuns themselves, who were apt to
complain if they had to prepare the meals. For "home medicine" there is
absolutely no evidence, though all ladies of the day possessed some
knowledge of simples and herb-medicines and the girls may equally well
have learned it at home as among the nuns. It is probable that the
children learned to sing, if the nuns took them into the quire; but for
this there is no definite evidence, nor has any document been quoted to
prove that they learned to play upon instruments of music. It is true that
the flighty Dame Isabel Benet "did dance and play the lute" with the
friars of Northampton[899] and that "a pair of organs" occurs twice in
Dissolution inventories of nunneries[900], but an organ is hardly an
instrument of secular music to be played by the daughter of the house in a
manorial solar; and Dame Benet's escapade with the lute was a lapse from
the strict path of virtue. Finally to suggest that the nuns taught dances
verges upon absurdity. That they did sometimes dance is true, and grieved
their visitors were to hear it[901]; but what Alnwick would have said to
the suggestion that they solemnly engaged themselves to teach dancing to
their young pupils is an amusing subject for contemplation. Evidence for
everything except the prayers of the church and the art of reading is
non-existent; we can but base our opinion upon conjecture and probability;
and the probability for instrumental music is so slight as to be
non-existent. If it be argued that gentlewomen were expected to possess
these arts, it may be replied that the children whom we find at nunneries
probably had opportunity to learn them at home, for they seem sometimes
to have spent only a part of the year with the nuns. It is true that board
is sometimes paid for the whole year, and that little Bridget Plantagenet
stayed at St Mary's Winchester for two or three years, while her parents
were absent in France; moreover we have already heard of poor Elizabeth
and Jane Knyghte, left for over five years at Cornworthy. But an analysis
of the Swaffham Bulbeck accounts shows that the children (if indeed they
are children) stayed for the following periods during the year 1483, viz.,
two for forty weeks, one for thirty weeks, one for twenty-six weeks, two
for twenty-two weeks, one for sixteen weeks, one for twelve weeks and one
for six weeks. It is much more likely that girls were sent to the nuns for
elementary schooling than for the acquirement of worldly accomplishments.
As has already been pointed out, it is difficult to get any specific
information as to the life led by the schoolchildren in nunneries. But by
good fortune some letters written by an abbess shortly before the
Dissolution have been preserved and give a pleasant picture of a little
girl boarding in a nunnery. The correspondence in question took place
between Elizabeth Shelley, Abbess of St Mary's Winchester, and Honor,
Viscountess Lisle, concerning the latter's stepdaughter, the lady Bridget
Plantagenet, who was one of the twenty-six aristocratic young ladies then
at school in the nunnery[902]. Lord Lisle was an illegitimate son of
Edward IV, and had been appointed Lord Deputy of Calais in 1533; and when
he and his wife departed to take up the new office, they were at pains to
find suitable homes for their younger children in England. A stepson of
Lord Lisle's was boarded with the Abbot of Reading and his two younger
daughters, the ladies Elizabeth and Bridget Plantagenet, were left, the
one in charge of her half-brother, Sir John Dudley, and the other in that
of the energetic Abbess of St Mary's Winchester. It must be admitted that
the correspondence between the abbess and Lady Lisle shows a greater
preoccupation with dress than with learning. The Lady Bridget grew like
the grass in springtime; there was no keeping her in clothes.
"After due recommendation," writes the abbess, "Pleaseth it your good
ladyship to know that I have received your letter, dated the 4th day
of February last past, by the which I do perceive your pleasure is to
know how mistress Bridget your daughter doth, and what things she
lacketh. Madam, thanks be to God, she is in good health, but I assure
your ladyship she lacketh convenient apparel, for she hath neither
whole gown nor kirtle, but the gown and kirtle that you sent her last.
And also she hath not one good partlet to put upon her neck, nor but
one good coif to put upon her head. Wherefore, I beseech your ladyship
to send to her such apparel as she lacketh, as shortly as you may
conveniently. Also the bringer of your letter shewed to me that your
pleasure is to know how much money I received for mistress Bridget's
board, and how long she hath been with me. Madam, she hath been with
me a whole year ended the 8th day of July last past, and as many weeks
as is between that day and the day of making this bill, which is
thirty three weeks; and so she hath been with me a whole year and
thirty three weeks, which is in all four score and five weeks. And I
have received of mistress Katherine Mutton, 10_s._, and of Stephen
Bedham, 20_s._; and I received the day of making this bill, of John
Harrison, your servant, 40_s._; and so I have received in all, since
she came to me, toward the payment for her board, 70_s._ Also, madam,
I have laid out for her, for mending of her gowns and for two matins
books, four pair of hosen, and four pairs of shoes, and other small
things, 3_s._ 5_d._ And, good madam, any pleasure that I may do your
ladyship and also my prayer, you shall be assured of, with the grace
of Jesus, who preserve you and all yours in honour and health. Amen."
But for the matins books, sandwiched uncomfortably between gowns and
hosen, there is no clue here as to what the Lady Bridget was learning.
The tenor of the next letter, written about seven months later, is the
same, for still the noble little lady grew:
"Mine singular and special good lady," writes the Abbess, "I heartily
recommend me to your good ladyship; ascertaining you that I have
received from your servant this summer a side of venison and two dozen
and a half of pee-wits."
(What flesh-days there must have been in the refectory!)
"And whereas your ladyship do write that you sent me an ermine cape
for your daughter, surely I see none; but the tawny velvet gown that
you write of, I have received it. I have sent unto you, by the bringer
of your letter, your daughter's black velvet gown; also I have caused
kirtles to be made of her old gowns, according unto your writing; and
the 10_s._ you sent is bestowed for her, and more, as it shall appear
by a bill of reckoning which I have made of the same. And I trust she
shall lack nothing that is necessary for her."
Another letter shows that the wardrobe difficulty was no whit abated, but
the Abbess dealt with it by the rather hard-hearted expedient of sending
poor Bridget away on a visit to her father's steward at Soberton in
Hampshire, in her outgrown clothes, in order that he might be moved to
amend her state. Clearly it was not always easy to get what was requisite
for a schoolgirl from a gay and busy mother, disporting herself across the
sea:
"This is to advertise your ladyship," says the Abbess, "Upon a
fourteen or fifteen days before Michaelmas, mistress Waynam and
mistress Fawkenor came to Winchester to see mistress Bridget Lisle,
with whom came two of my lord's servants, and desired to have mistress
Bridget to sir Anthony Windsor's to sport her for a week. And because
she was out of apparel, that master Windsor might see her, I was the
better content to let her go; and since that time she came no more at
Winchester: Wherein I beseech your ladyship think no unkindness in me
for my light sending of her: for if I had not esteemed her to have
come again, she should not have come there at that time."
The reason why lucky little Bridget was enjoying a holiday appears in a
letter from the steward, Sir Anthony Windsor, to Lord Lisle, in which he
not only takes a firm line over the dress problem (as the Abbess foresaw),
but seems also to cast some aspersion upon the nunnery; the nuns, he
evidently thought, had no idea how to feed a growing girl, or how to spoil
her, as she ought to be spoiled:
Also mistress Bridget recommendeth her to your good lordship, and also
to my lady, beseeching you of your blessing. She is now at home with
me, because I will provide for her apparel such things as shall be
necessary, for she hath overgrown all that she ever hath, except such
as she hath had of late: and I will keep her here still if it be your
lordship's and my lady's pleasure that I shall so do, and she shall
fare no worse that I do, for she is very spare and hath need of
cherishing, and she shall lack nothing in learning, nor otherwise that
my wife can do for her.
Apparently she never went back to the nunnery, and a few years later it
was dissolved:
And when (s)he came to Saynte Marie's aisle
Where nonnes were wont to praie,
The vespers were songe, the shryne was gone,
And the nonnes had passyd awaie.
A word should perhaps be added as to the "piety and breeding," which Lady
Bridget and other little schoolgirls learned from the nuns, for good
sentimentalists of later days often looked back and regretted the loss of
a training, presumably instinct with religion and morality. It is well
nigh impossible to generalise in this matter, so greatly did convents
differ from each other. St Mary's Winchester was of very good repute, and
for this we have not only the testimony of the local gentlemen, who were
commissioned to visit it by Henry VIII in 1536, but also of the visitation
which was held by Dr Hede in 1501. Undoubtedly the aristocratic young
ladies who went there did not lack the precept and example of pious and
well bred mistresses. The statement of the commissioners at Polesworth
that the children there were "right virtuously brought up" has often been
quoted. So also has the plea of Robert Aske, who led the ill-fated
Pilgrimage of Grace, by which the people of Yorkshire sought to bring back
the old religion, and in particular the monastic houses; in the abbeys, he
said, "all gentlemen (were) much succoured in their needs, with many their
young sons there assisted and in nunneries their daughters brought up in
virtue"[903]. Less well-known is the tribute of the reformer Thomas Becon
(1512-67), the more striking in that he was a staunch Protestant, who had
suffered for his faith. Although he refers in disparagement to the
nunneries of his own day, his description of the relations between nuns
and their pupils cannot be founded solely upon an imaginary golden age:
"The young maids," he writes, "were not enforced to wear this or that
apparel; to abstain from this or that kind of meats; to sing this or
that service; to say so many prayers; to shave their heads; to vow
chastity; and for ever to abide in their cloister unto their dying
day. But contrariwise, they might wear what apparel they would, so
that it were honest and seemly and such as becometh maidens that
profess godliness. They might freely eat all kinds of meats according
to the rule of the gospel, avoiding all excess and superfluity, yea,
and that at all times. Their prayers were free and without compulsion,
everyone praying when the Holy Ghost moved their hearts to pray; yea,
and that such prayers as present necessity required, and that also not
in a strange tongue, but in such language as they did right well
understand. To shave their heads and to keep such-like superstitious
observances as our nuns did in times past and yet do in the kingdom of
the pope, they were not compelled. For all that they were commanded to
do of their schoolmistresses and governesses was nothing else than the
doctrine of the gospel and matters appertaining unto honest and civil
manners; whom they most willingly obeyed. Moreover, it was lawful for
them to go out of the cloister when they would, or when they were
required of their friends; and also to marry when and with whom they
would, so that it were in the Lord. And would God there were some
consideration of this matter had among the rulers of the christian
commonwealth, that young maids might be godly brought up, and learn
from their cradles 'to be sober-minded, to love their husbands, to
love their children, to be discreet, chaste, housewifely, good,
obedient to their husbands'"[904].
These eulogies are all necessarily tinged by the knowledge that the
nunneries either were about to disappear, or had disappeared, from
England. They had filled a useful function and men were willing to be to
their faults a little blind. It cannot be doubted that the gentry and the
substantial middle class appreciated them; up to the very eve of the
Dissolution legacies to monastic houses are a common feature in wills.
Only an inadequate conclusion, however, is to be reached from a study of
tributes such as those of the commissioners at St Mary's Winchester and
Polesworth and of Robert Aske. If we turn to pre-Reformation visitation
reports, which are free from the desire to state a case, the evidence is
more mixed. It is only reasonable to conclude that many nunneries did
indeed bring children up, with the example of virtue before their eyes,
and the _omnia bene_ of many reports reinforces such a conclusion. But it
is impossible also to avoid the conviction that other houses were not
always desirable homes for the young, nor nuns their best example. When
Alnwick visited his diocese in the first half of the fifteenth century
there were children at Godstow, where at least one nun was frankly immoral
and where all received visits freely from the scholars of Oxford; nor was
the general reputation of the house good at other periods. There were
children also at Catesby and at St Michael's Stamford, which were in a
thoroughly bad state, under bad prioresses. At Catesby the poor innocents
lay in the dorter, where lay also sister Isabel Benet, far gone with
child; and they must have heard the Prioress screaming "Beggars!" and
"Whores!" at the nuns and dragging them round the cloister by their
hair[905]. At St Michael's Stamford, all was in disorder and no less than
three of the nuns were unchaste, one having twice run away, each time with
a different partner. The visitation of Gracedieu on the same occasion
shows too much quarrelling and misrule to make possible a very high
opinion of its piety or of its breeding. If we turn to another set of
injunctions, the great series for the diocese of York, it must be conceded
that though the gentry of the county doubtless found the convents useful
as schools and lodging houses, it is difficult to see how Aske's plea that
"their daughters (were) brought up in virtue" could possibly have been
true of the fourteenth century, when the morals and manners of the nuns
were extremely bad. There is not much evidence for the period of which
Aske could speak from his own knowledge; but at Esholt, where two children
were at school in 1537, one of the nuns was found to have "lyved
incontinentlie and vnchast and ... broght forth a child of her bodie
begotten" and an alehouse had been set up within the convent gates, in
1535[906]. The only safe generalisation to make about this, as about so
many other problems of medieval social history, is that there can be no
generalisation. The standard of piety and breeding likely to be acquired
by children in medieval nunneries must have differed considerably from
time to time and from house to house.