CHAPTER X

THE WORLD IN THE CLOISTER

Es maisons de nonnains aucun sont bien venut,

Et as gens festyer n'a nul regne tenut;

On y va volentiers et souvent et menut

Mais mieuls sont festyet jovene que li kenut.

GILLES LI MUISIS ([dagger] 1352).

In the last chapter the question of enclosure was considered only from one

point of view, that of keeping the nuns within the precincts of their

cloister. But there was another side to the problem. In order to preserve

them unspotted from the world it was necessary not only that the nuns

should keep within their cloisters, but that secular persons should keep

outside. It was useless to pass regulations forbidding nuns to leave their

houses, if visitors from the world had easy access to them and could move

freely about within the precincts. Ottobon, Peckham, Boniface VIII, Henry

VIII, and all who legislated on the subject from the earliest years to the

Council of Trent, combined a prohibition against the entrance of seculars,

with their prohibition against the exit of nuns[1236]. Some intercourse

with seculars was bound to occur, even in the best regulated nunnery. The

nuns were often served by layfolk and it was a recognised obligation that

they should show hospitality to guests. In both cases they were of

necessity brought in contact with worldly folk, and as usual they made the

most of their opportunity.

Even more disturbing to monastic discipline were the casual visits of

friends in the neighbourhood, coming to see and talk with the nuns for a

few hours. Visitation documents show that there was a steady intercourse

between the convent and the world. Letters and messages passed between the

nuns and their friends outside, and a great many of the private affairs of

the convent found their way to the ears of seculars. "From miln and from

market, from smithy and from nunnery, men bring tidings" ran the

proverb[1237], and complaints were common that the secrets of the chapter

were spread abroad in the country side. At the ill-conducted house of

Catesby in 1442 the Prioress (herself the blackest sheep in all the flock)

complained that

secular folk have often recourse to the nuns' chambers within the

cloister, and talkings and junketings take place there without the

knowledge of the Prioress; ... also the nuns do send out letters and

receive letters sent to them without the advice of the prioress. Also

... that the secrets of the house are disclosed in the neighbourhood

by such seculars when they come there. Also the nuns do send out the

serving-folk of the priory on their businesses and do also receive the

persons for whom they send and with whom they hold parleyings and

conversations, whereof the Prioress is ignorant[1238].

At Goring in 1530 the Prioress complained that one of the nuns persisted

in sending messages to her friends[1239], and at Romsey in 1509 Alice,

wife of William Coke, the cook of the nunnery, was enjoined "that she

shall not be a messenger or bearer of messages or troths or tokens between

any nun and any lay person on pain of excommunication and as much as in

her lies shall hinder communications of lay persons with nuns at the

kitchen window"[1240]. At St Helen's, Bishopsgate, it was even necessary

to order the nuns to refrain from kissing secular persons[1241].

Sometimes the visitation _detecta_ or _comperta_ or injunctions give

specific details as to the visitors who were most assiduous in haunting a

nunnery. It is amusing to follow the reference to scholars of Oxford in

the records of those houses which were in the neighbourhood of the

University. Godstow was the nearest and the students seem to have regarded

it as a happy hunting ground constituted specially for their recreation.

Peckham, in his set of Latin injunctions to the Abbey, wrote after giving

minute regulations as to the terms upon which nuns might converse with

visitors:

When the scholars of Oxford come to talk with you, we wish no nun to

join in such conversations, save with the licence of the Abbess and

unless they be notoriously of kin to her, in the third grade of

consanguinity at least; we order the nuns to refuse to converse with

all scholars so coming; nor shall you desire to be united in any

special tie of familiarity with them, for such affection often excites

unclean thoughts[1242].

The most detailed information, however, is to be found in the injunctions

sent by Bishop Gray to Godstow in 1432:

That no nun receive any secular person for any recreation in the nuns'

chambers under pain of excommunication. For the scholars of Oxford say

they can have all manner of recreation with the nuns, even as they

will desire.... Also that the recourse of scholars of Oxford to the

monastery be altogether checked and restrained.... Also that (neither)

the gatekeeper of the monastery, nor any other secular person convey

any gifts, rewards, letters or tokens from the nuns to any scholars of

Oxford or other secular person whomsoever, or bring back any such

scholars or persons to the same nuns, nay, not even skins containing

wine, without the view and knowledge of the abbess and with her

special licence asked and had, under pain of expulsion from his office

(and) from the said monastery for ever; and if any nun shall do the

contrary she shall undergo imprisonment for a year[1243].

In a commission addressed two years later to the Abbot of Oseney and to

Master Robert Thornton the Bishop spoke in very severe terms of the bad

behaviour of the nuns, and ordered the commissioners to proceed to Godstow

and to inquire whether a nun, who had been with child at the time of his

visitation, had been preferred to any office or had gone outside the

precincts and whether his other injunctions had been obeyed, especially

"if any scholars of the university of Oxford, graduate or non-graduate,

have had access to the same monastery or lodging in the same, contrary to

the form of our injunctions aforesaid"[1244]. But the situation was

unchanged when, thirteen years later, Alnwick came to Godstow. Elizabeth

Felmersham, the Abbess, deposed

that secular folk have often access to the nuns during the divine

office in quire, and to the frater at meal-time.... She cannot

restrain students from Oxford from having common access in her despite

to the monastery and the claustral precincts. The nuns hold converse

with the secular folk that come to visit the monastery, without asking

any leave of the abbess.

Other nuns deposed that sister Alice Longspey[1245] often conversed in the

convent church with Hugh Sadler, a priest from Oxford, who obtained access

to her on the plea that she was his kinswoman and that Dame Katherine

Okeley:

holds too much talk with the strangers that come to the monastery in

the church, in the chapter-house, at the church-door, the hall door

and divers other places; nor is she obedient to the orders and

commands of the abbess according to the rule[1246].

Other houses also found the clerks of Oxford too attractive. At Alnwick's

visitation of Littlemore Dame Agnes Marcham (a lady with a tongue) spoke

of "the ill-fame which is current thereabouts concerning the place," and

said

that a certain monk of Rievaulx, who is a student at Oxford and is of

the Cistercian order, has common and often access to the priory,

eating and drinking with the prioress and spending the night therein,

sometimes for three, sometimes for four days on end. Also she says

that master John Herars, master in arts, a scholar of Oxford and a

kinsman of the prioress, has access in like manner to the priory,

breakfasting, supping and spending the night in the same[1247].

The state of the house in the sixteenth century was infinitely worse and

it well merited its early suppression in 1526[1248]. At another house,

Studley, visited by Alnwick in 1445, the significant request was made:

that the vicar of Bicester, who is reckoned to be of ripe judgment and

age and sufficient knowledge, may be appointed as confessor to the

convent and in no wise an Oxford scholar, since it is not healthy that

scholars of Oxford should have a reason for coming to the

priory[1249].

Nor does the proximity of Cambridge appear to have had a less disturbing

effect upon morals and discipline. In 1373 it was found that the Prioress

of St Radegund's

did not correct Dame Elizabeth de Cambridge for withdrawing herself

from divine service and allowing friars of different orders, as well

as scholars, to visit her at inopportune times and to converse with

her, to the scandal of religion[1250],

and in 1496, when John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, converted the nunnery into

the college afterwards known as Jesus College, its dilapidation was

ascribed to "the negligence and improvidence and dissolute disposition and

incontinence of the religious women of the same house, by reason of the

vicinity of Cambridge University"[1251]. Plainly the scholars who hung

about the portals and tethered their horses in the paddocks of Godstow,

and who gossiped with the sisters of Studley and Littlemore and St

Radegund's, were not of the type of that clerk of Oxenford, who loved his

twenty red and black-clad books better than "robes riche or fithele or gay

sautrye"; and it is to be feared that their speech was not "souninge in

moral vertu." Rather they belonged to the tribe of Absolon, who could trip

and dance in twenty manners:

After the scole of Oxenforde tho,

And with his legges casten to and fro,

And pleyen songes on a small rubible,

or of hende Nicholas ("of derne love he coude and of solas"), or of those

two clerks of Cambridge, Aleyn and John, who harboured with the Miller of

Trumpington, or of "joly Jankin," the Wife of Bath's first husband. The

nuns certainly got no good from these young men of light heart and

slippery tongue.

Sometimes, as it appears from the cases of Alice Longspey, Katherine

Okeley and Elizabeth de Cambridge, certain nuns rendered themselves

particularly conspicuous for intercourse with seculars, or certain men

were assiduous nunnery-haunters and forbidden by name to frequent the

precincts. At a visitation of St Sepulchre's, Canterbury, in 1367-8, it

was found that

Dame Johanna Chivynton, prioress there, does not govern well the rule

nor the religion of the house, because she permits the rector of Dover

Castle and other suspect persons to have too much access to sisters

Margery Chyld and Juliana Aldelesse, who have a room contrary to the

injunction made there on another occasion by the Lord [Archbishop],

and these suspect persons often spend the night there[1252].

At Nuncoton in 1531 Longland writes:

We chardge you, lady prioresse, undere payne of excommunicacon that ye

from hensforth nomore suffre Sir John Warde, Sir Richard Caluerley,

Sir William Johnson, nor parson ..., ne the parson of Skotton, ne Sir

William Sele to come within the precincts of your monasterye, that if

they by chance do unwares to you that ye streight banish them and

suffre not theme ther to tary, nor noone of your sustres to commune

with them or eny of them. And that ye voyde out of your house Robert

lawrence and he nomore resorte to the same[1253].

Incidents such as these can be multiplied from the records of episcopal

visitations[1254] and general complaints are even more common. It appears

that secular persons set at naught the rule which confined them to the

prioress' hall, the parlour and the guest-house, and penetrated at will

into the private parts of the monastery, haunting now the cloister, now

the infirmary, now the frater, now the choir[1255]. Bishop Gynewell's

injunction to Heynings in 1351 called attention to a state of affairs

which was common enough in the century which opened with _Periculoso_:

"Because," he wrote, "we have heard that great disturbance of your

religion hath been made by seculars, who enter into your cloister and

choir, we charge you that henceforth ye suffer no secular man, save

your patron or other great lord[1256] to enter your cloister, nor to

hold therein parley or other dalliance with any sister of your house,

whereby your silence or religion may suffer blame"[1257].

Moreover it is clear that the nuns sometimes escaped to the guest-house to

enjoy a gossip with their visitors; at Alnwick's visitation of Heynings in

1440 a lay sister deposed "that the nuns do hold drinkings of evenings in

the guest-chamber even after compline, especially when their friends come

to visit them" and the Bishop enjoined

for as muche as we founde that there are vsede late drynkynges and

talkyng by nunnes as wele wythe yn as wythe owte the cloystere wythe

seculeres, where thurgh some late ryse to matynes and some come not at

thayme, expressly agayns the rule of your ordere, we charge yow and

yche oon singulere that fro this day forthe ye neyther vse spekyng ne

drynkyng in no place aftere complyne, but that after collacyone and

complyne sayde ych oon of yow go wythe owte lengere tarying to the

dormytorye to your reste[1258].

In the course of time a series of regulations was devised to govern the

entrance of seculars into the nunneries, hardly less detailed than those

which governed the visits of nuns to the world. An attempt was made to

prevent certain classes of persons from being allowed to sleep in a house;

also to keep all visitors out of certain places and during certain hours;

and elaborate rules were made fixing the conditions under which nuns might

hold conversations or exchange letters with seculars. The rule which

forbade nuns to harbour in houses of religious men was often supplemented

by a regulation forbidding friars, or other men belonging to religious

orders, from being received as guests by nuns. At Godstow in 1284 Peckham

forbade the reception of religious men for the night[1259] and in 1358

Bishop Gynewell enjoined the same convent "for certain reasons, that no

friars of any order whatever be harboured by night within the doors of

your house, nor by day save it be for great necessity and reasonable

cause, and not habitually"[1260]. William of Wykeham directed a special

mandate on the subject to Wherwell in 1368:

"Lately," he says, "it has come to our ears by popular report of

trusty men, that contrary to the honesty of religion you admit various

religious men, especially of the mendicant orders, lightly and

promiscuously to pass the night in your habitations, from which grows

much matter for laxity and scandal, since the cohabitation of

religious clerks and nuns is altogether forbidden by the constitutions

of the holy fathers."

He proceeds to forbid the reception of friars or other religious men to

lodge in the abbey, though food might be given them in alms[1261]. As in

the rules regulating visits paid by nuns, attempts were sometimes made

though not insisted upon with any severity, to restrict the visitors who

might spend the night to near relatives. At Godstow, for instance, Bishop

Gray ordered in 1432 that strangers "in no wise pass the night there,

unless they be father and mother, brother and sister of that nun for whose

sake they have so come to the monastery"[1262]; and Archbishop Lee wrote

to Sinningthwaite in 1534 forbidding any visitor to have recourse to the

Prioress or nuns "onles it be their fathers or moders or other ther nere

kynesfolkes, in whom no suspicion of any yll can be thought"[1263].

The chief efforts of the authorities were, however, directed not towards

keeping certain persons altogether out of the nunneries, but towards

keeping all visitors out of certain parts of the house and during certain

hours. The general rule was that no secular was to enter after sunset or

curfew, and elaborate arrangements were made for locking and unlocking the

doors at certain times. At Esholt and Sinningthwaite Archbishop Lee

enjoined

that the prioress provide sufficient lockes and keys to be sett upon

the cloyster doores, incontinent after recept of thies injunctions and

that the same doores surely be lockid every nyght incontinent as

complane is doone, and not to be unlocked in wynter season to vij of

the clock in the mornyng and in sommer vnto vj of the clock in the

mornyng; and that the prioresse kepe the keyes of the same doores, or

committ the custodie of them to such a discrete and religious suster,

that no fault nor negligence may be imputed to the prioresse, as she

will avoyde punyshment due for the same[1264].

[Illustration: PLATE VIII

PLAN OF LACOCK ABBEY]

At the same time, for better security, he ordered the nuns to be locked

into their dorter every night until service time. Sometimes the nuns

objected to being shut in the house so early in the summer time, when the

days were long and the trees in the convent garden green. The nuns of

Sheppey were plaintive on the subject in 1511. Amicia Tanfeld said

that the gate of the cloister is closed immediately after the bell

rings for vespers and remains shut until it rings for prime[1265];

this, in the opinion of the convent is too strict, especially in

summer time, because it might remain open until after supper, as she

says.

Elizabeth Chatok, _cantarista_[1266], said the same "clauditur nimis

tempestive tempore presertim estiuali"; perhaps she was thinking of better

singers than herself, who piped their vespers outside that closed door,

And songen, everich in his wyse

The most solempne servyse

By note, that ever man, I trowe,

Had herd; for som of hem song lowe

Some hye and al of oon accord[1267].

Her sisters agreed with her, but the stern archbishop took no notice of

their plaints[1268].

Strict regulations were also made for keeping secular visitors out of

certain parts of the convent. The dorter, frater, fermery, chapter and

cloister and the internal offices of the house were supposed to be entered

only by the nuns[1269]:

"And in order that the quiet of your cloister be in future observed

better than has been customary," wrote Peckham to the nuns of Wherwell

in 1284, "we order ... that no secular or religious person be

permitted to enter the cloister, nor the interior offices, save for a

manifest and inevitable reason, that is bodily infirmity, for which a

confessor or doctor or near relative may be allowed to enter, but

always in safe and praiseworthy company. So that no one shall hear the

confession of a healthy nun or woman in cloister or chapter or in the

interior offices.... And we consider healthy anyone who is able,

conveniently and without danger to life, to enter the church or the

parlour"[1270].

At Romsey he further ordered four nuns to be made scrutineers: "Who shall

expel from the cloister as suspect all persons of whatsoever condition

wishing to stare at the nuns or to chatter with them"[1271]. But the rule

was constantly broken and it has been shown that seculars penetrated to

all parts of the convents. Injunctions order them to be excluded now from

dorter, now from frater, now from fermery, according as visitation showed

them to be in the habit of entering one part of a house or another.

Sometimes special orders were given for the making and locking of doors

separating the cloister from the outside court, or the nuns' choir from

the rest of the church, a necessary precaution when the nave of a

conventual church was used as a parish church. Bishop Longland wrote to

Elstow (1531):

Forasmoche as the more secrete religious persones be kepte from the

sight and visage of the world and straungers, the more close and

entyer ther mynd and devoc[i]on shalbe unto god, we ordeyn and Inioyne

to the lady abbesse that before the natiuyte of our lorde next

ensewing she cause a doore with two leves to be made and sett upp att

the lower ende of the quere and that doore to be fyve foote in hight

att the leaste and contynually to stand shitt the tymes of dyvyne

seruice excepte it be att comming in or out of eny off the ladyes and

mynystres off the said churche. And under like payne as is afore we

chardge the said ladye abbess that she cause the doore betwene the

convent and the parishe churche contynually to be shitt, unless itt be

oonly the tymes of dyvyne service, and likewise she cause the cloistre

door towardes the outward court to be continually shitt, unles itt be

att suche tymes as eny necessaryes for the convent shall be brought in

or borne out att the same, and thatt she suffre noo other back doures

to be opened butt upon necessarye, grett and urgent causes by her

approved[1272].

Special attempts were made to prevent secret communications between nuns

and secular persons in corners and passages or through windows, and to

block up unnecessary doors by which persons might enter:

"We ordeyn and injoyne yow, prioresse and convent," writes Dean

Kentwode to St Helens, "That ye, ne noone of yowre sustres use nor

haunte any place withinne the priory, thoroghe the wiche evel

suspeccyone or sclaundere mythe aryse; weche places for certeyne

causes that move us, we wryte here inne owre present iniunccyone, but

wole notyfie to yow, prioresse: nor have no lokyng nor spectacles

owtewarde, thorght the wiche ye mythe fall into worldly

dilectacyone[1273]."

Archbishop Lee showed no such desire to spare the feelings of the nuns of

Esholt by not openly specifying the places where they were wont to whisper

with their friends:

Item where there is on the backside of certen chambres, on the south

side of the church where the sustres worke, an open way goyng to the

watirside, and to the brige goyng over the water, without wall or

doore, so that many ylles may be committed by reason hereof; wherfore

in avoyding such inconveniences that myght folow yf it shuld so

remayne, by thies presentes we inioyne the prioresse, that she,

incontinent withoutzt delay aftre the recept herof cause a strong and

heigh wall to be made in the said voyde place[1274].

Above all it was reiterated at visitation after visitation that no nun was

to receive a man in her private chamber or to hold conversations with any

stranger there and that certain conditions were to be observed in all

conversations between the nuns and their visitors. Archbishop Rotherham's

injunction to Nunappleton in 1489 is typical:

Item yat none of your sustirs bring in, receyve or take any laie man,

religiose or secular into yer chambre or any secret place, daye or

knyght, not w{t} yaim in such private places to commyne ete or drynke

w{t}out lycence of you, Prioresse[1275].

At Sopwell in 1338 an interesting addition was made to the ordinary rule:

And because it is seemly that ladies of religion in the presence of

seculars should bear themselves according to rule in dress and in

deportment, we will and ordain that none of you henceforward come to

the parlour to talk with seculars if she have not her cowl and her

headdress of kerchiefs and veil, according to the rule (_son cool et

son covert de cuverchiefs et de veil ordine_), as beseemeth your

religion. And none save honest persons shall be suffered to enter, and

if such person wish to remain for a meal, let him eat in the parlour,

by permission of the confessor, and on no account in the chambers

without our express permission, or that of our own prior, if we be

absent. Concerning the workmen, whom you need for your necessities, to

wit tailors and furriers, we will for that such workmen a place be

ordained near the cloister, where such workmen may do their works, and

that they be by no means called into the chambers, nor into any

private place. And let the workmen be such that no suspicion of evil

may be roused by them[1276].

At Barking Peckham ordered in 1279 that no secular man or woman was to

enter the nuns' chambers, unless a nun were so ill that it was necessary

to speak to her there, in which case a confessor, doctor, father or

brother might have access to her[1277].

The rules laid down for the holding of conversations between nuns and

visitors required that the permission of the head of the house should

first be obtained, and that the meeting should take place in the

_locutorium_ or parlour, or occasionally in the abbess's hall[1278], and

in the hearing of "at least one other nun of sound character," or more

frequently two other nuns. Sometimes it was added that conversations were

not to be too lengthy:

"Let it not be permitted to any nun," wrote Peckham to Romsey, "to

hold converse with any man save either in the parlour or in the side

of the church next the cloister. And in order that all suspicion may

henceforth be removed, we order that any nun about to speak with any

man, save in the matter of confession, have with her two companions to

hear her conversation, in order that they may either be edified by

useful words, if these are forthcoming, or hinder evil words, lest

evil communications corrupt good manners"[1279].

Alnwick's injunction to Godstow in 1445 was couched in very similar terms:

That ye suffre none of your susters to speke wythe any seculere

persone ne religiouse, but all onely in your halle in your presence

and audience, or, by your specyalle licence asked and had, in the

presence of two auncyent nunnes approuved in the religyon so that ye

or the said two nunnes here and see what that say and do, and so that

thaire spekyng to gedre be not longe but in shorte and few

wordes[1280].

It was also attempted to exercise control over communication between the

nuns and the world by means of messages and letters. Alnwick sent

injunctions on this point to Langley, Markyate and St Michael's, Stamford

("ne that ye suffre none of youre sustres to receyve ne sende owte noyre

gyfte ne lettre, but ye see the gyftes and wyte what is contyened in the

lettres")[1281], and in 1432 Dean Kentwode wrote to St Helen's,

Bishopsgate:

Also we ordeyne and injoyne yow, that noone of yow speke, ne comone

with no seculere persone; ne sende ne receyve letteres myssyves or

gyftes of any seculere persone, withowte lycence of the prioresse: ...

and such letters or gyftes sent or receyved, may turne into honeste

and wurchepe and none into velanye or disclaundered of yowre honeste

and religione[1282].

It is common to find among episcopal injunctions to nunneries one to the

effect that no secular woman is to sleep in the dorter with the nuns. The

fact that this injunction had constantly to be repeated shows that it was

as constantly broken. Servants, boarders and school children seem in many

houses to have shared the dorter with the nuns, an arrangement which must

have been exceedingly disturbing to all parties. Alnwick found the

practice at eleven out of the twenty houses which he visited in 1440-5.

At Catesby, Langley, Stixwould and St Michael's, Stamford, little girls,

between the ages of five and ten, used to sleep with the nuns; there were

six or seven of them at that ill-conducted house, Catesby, in the charge

of Agnes Allesley, who was so disobedient to the bishop[1283]. At

Gracedieu the cellaress had a boy of seven with her in the dorter[1284].

At Legbourne a nun complained that "the Prioress suffers secular women,

both boarders and servants, to lie by night in the dorter among the nuns,

against the rule"[1285] and at Heynings (which was much haunted by

visitors) a lay sister deposed that "the infirmary is occupied by secular

folk, to the great disturbance of the sisters; ... also that secular

serving women do lie among the sisters in the dorter, and especially one

who did buy a corrody there"[1286]. At the other houses (Godstow, Nuncoton

and Stainfield) it was simply mentioned that secular persons lay in the

dorter, without details as to whether they were servants, boarders or

children[1287]. In all cases Alnwick strictly forbade the practice, and a

prohibition to this effect is common in episcopal injunctions[1288].

These injunctions against the use of the dorter by seculars illustrate

another aspect of the movement for enclosure. The majority of the other

injunctions which have been quoted were attempts to regulate the

intercourse of nuns with casual visitors, strangers who came for a day, or

perhaps for two or three days. But a far more dangerous menace to the

quiet of the cloister lay in the constant presence of secular boarders and

corrodians, who made their home in a nunnery. Ladies who wished to end

their days in peace sometimes went there as boarders or as corrodians; it

is, no doubt, decent sober women such as these, who are sometimes

exempted by name in episcopal injunctions ordering the exclusion of

boarders from a house. But more often women would seek the temporary

hospitality of a nunnery when, for some reason, they wished to leave their

homes. A monastic house was, on the whole, a safe refuge, and many a

knight going to the wars went with a lighter heart when he knew that his

wife or daughter was sleeping within convent walls. In 1314 John of

Drokensford, Bishop of Bath and Wells, licensed the Prioress of Cannington

to lodge and board the wife and two daughters of John Fychet during his

absence abroad[1289], and in 1372 William of Wykeham sent letters to the

Abbesses of Romsey and Wherwell on behalf of another wife left alone in

England:

"The noble Earl of Pembroke," wrote the Bishop, "has begged us by his

letters to direct our special letters to you on behalf of the noble

and gently-born lady, Lady Elizabeth de Berkele, a kinswoman of the

aforesaid Earl, that she may lodge within your house ... while Sir

Maurice Wytht [_sic_ ? knyght] the same lady's husband, remains in the

company of the aforesaid Earl in parts beyond the sea";

and so, in spite of a recent prohibition to these houses to receive

boarders, they are to take in Lady Berkeley[1290]. Sometimes the wording

of these licences shows that the ladies required only a temporary shelter

and had by no means retired from the world. Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury

gave leave to Joan Wason and Maude Poer to stay at Cannington from

December 1336 till the following Easter, and Isabel Fychet received a

similar licence; in 1354 Isolda wife of John Bycombe was licensed to stay

there from March till August[1291]. Sometimes these ladies brought their

servants or gentlewomen with them; Joan Wason and Maude Poer had

permission to take two "dammoiselles" and Isabel Fychet one maid to

Cannington; when Lady Margery Treverbyn, a widow, went with every

profession of piety to Canonsleigh in 1328, she was accompanied by "a

certain priest, a squire (_domicellus_) and a damsel (_domicella_)"[1292];

the widow of Sir John Pateshull was licensed to dwell in Elstow with her

daughter and maids in 1350[1293]; the _familia_ of Elizabeth Berkeley is

mentioned in William of Wykeham's licence and in 1291 John le Romeyn,

Archbishop of York, gave the convent of Nunappleton permission to receive

Lady Margaret Percy as a boarder for a year, "provided that her household

during that time shall not be other than respectable (_honesta_)"[1294].

In the list (compiled by Mr Rye) of boarders in Carrow Priory during the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, several ladies are mentioned as being

accompanied by servants; Lady Maloysel and servant, Isabell Argentoin and

servant, the Lady Margaret Kerdeston and woman, Margaret Wryght and

servant, Lady Margaret Wetherby, her servant Matilda and her chaplain

William. The same list shows that not only women but men were received as

boarders, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by their wives, and

though some of the names given are doubtless those of little boys, who

were receiving their education in the nunnery, others can be clearly

identified as adults[1295]. The Paston Letters afford a famous case in

which both a girl and her betrothed, who had quarrelled with her parents,

were lodged for a time in a nunnery. Margery Paston had fallen in love

with her brother's bailiff, Richard Calle, to the fury of her family, who

swore that "he should never have their good will for to make her to sell

candle and mustard in Framlingham." The two lovers plighted their troth, a

ceremony as binding in the eyes of the Church as marriage itself, and

Richard Calle appealed to the Bishop of Norwich to set the matter beyond

doubt by an inquiry. The spirited Margery "rehearsed what she had said,

and said, if those words made it not sure, she said boldly that she would

make that surer or than she went thence, for she said she thought in her

conscience she was bound, whatsoever the words were," whereupon her

mother refused to receive her back into her house, and the Bishop himself

was obliged to find a lodging for her. This he did at first with some

friends and afterwards at a nunnery, where Richard Calle also was lodged,

for John Paston mentions him shortly afterwards in a letter to his

brother, "As to his abiding it is in Blakborow nunnery a little fro Lynn

and our unhappy sister's also"[1296].

It is plain from visitation records that the boarders who flocked to the

nunneries were exceedingly disturbing to conventual life and sometimes

even brought disrepute upon their hostesses by behaviour more suited to

the world than to the cloister. Alnwick's register contains some amusing

and instructive evidence on this point. At Langley, a very worldly and

aristocratic person, Lady Audley, was occupying a house or set of rooms

(_domum_) within the Priory, paying 40_s._ yearly and keeping the house in

repair; but she had no intention of giving up the ways of the world; pet

dogs were her hobby, and the helpless Prioress complained to Alnwick (a

Bishop must sometimes have had much ado to keep a straight face at these

revelations):

Lady Audley, who boards in the house, has a great abundance of dogs,

insomuch that whenever she comes to church there follow her twelve

dogs, who make a great uproar in church, hindering them in their

psalmody and the nuns hereby are made terrified![1297]

"Let a warning be directed to Lady Audley to remove her dogs from the

church and the choir," says a note in the Register; and Lady Audley,

followed by her twelve dogs, recedes for ever from our view, unless

reincarnated four centuries later in the person of Hawker of Morwenstow. A

boarder at Legbourne had a different taste in pets. Dame Joan Pavy

informed the Bishop: "That Margaret Ingoldesby, a secular woman, lies of a

night in the dorter among the nuns, bringing with her birds, by whose

jargoning silence is broken and the rest of the nuns is disturbed"[1298].

Exasperated Dame Joan, trying to steal some sleep before groping her way

down to matins! She had never heard of Vert-Vert, nor even of Philip

Sparrow and she would not have been of the young and pretty novices, whose

toilet the immortal parrot superintended with a connoisseur's eye. The

Bishop cut the Gordian knot for her by ordering all seculars to be turned

out of the dorter. At Stixwould there were two widows, Elizabeth Dymmok

and Margaret Tylney, with their maidservants, staying with the Prioress,

and two other adult women staying with the cellaress; and

there is in the same place a certain woman suspect [she was probably a

servant] who dwells within the cloister precincts, Joan Bartone by

name, to whom one William Traherne had had suspicious access, bringing

her therafter before the ecclesiastical judge in a matrimonial suit,

and she is very troublesome to the nuns[1299].

At Gracedieu it was found that the Prioress divulged the secrets of the

house to her secular boarders[1300]. At other houses also it was

complained that the boarders not only disturbed convent life, but

attracted many visitors. At Nuncoton the Subprioress "prays that the

lodgers be removed from the house, so that they mingle not among the nuns,

for if there were none the Prioress might be able to come constantly to

frater; and because there is great recourse of strangers to the lodgers,

to the sore burthen of the house"; another nun also deposed "that there is

great recourse of guests on account of the lodgers" and a third asked that

boarders of marriageable age should be altogether removed from the house,

frater and dorter, "by reason of the divers disadvantages which arise to

the house out of their stay"[1301]. At Godstow in 1432 Bishop Gray

enjoined:

that Felmersham's wife with her whole household, and other women of

mature age be utterly removed from the monastery within one year next

to come, seeing that they are a cause of disturbance to the nuns and

an occasion of bad example by reason of their attire and those who

come to visit them[1302].

It is indeed easy to understand why bishops objected so much to the

reception of these worldly women as boarders. If instead of Felmersham's

wife we read "the wife of Bath" all is explained. That lady was not a

person whom a Prioress would lightly refuse; the list of her pilgrimages

alone would give her the _entree_ into any nunnery. Smiling her

gat-toothed smile and riding easily upon her ambler, she would enter the

gates and alight in the court, and what a month of excitement would pass

before she rode away again. It is hard not to suspect that it was she who

introduced "caps of estate" (were they "as broad as is a buckler or a

targe"?) to the Prioress of Ankerwyke and crested shoes to the nuns of

Elstow; and it may have been she (alas) who taught some of them to step

"the olde daunce"[1303]. Bad enough for their peace of mind to meet her at

a pilgrimage, but much worse to have her settled in their midst, gossiping

as endlessly as she gossiped in her prologue, and amplifying her

reminiscences for a less sophisticated audience. This was one reason why

the bishops made a special injunction against the reception of married

women. The presence of men was open to even more serious objections. At

Hampole in 1411 the Archbishop of York made the significant injunction

that the Prioress was not to allow any _corrodiarii_ or others to retain

suspected women with them in the house[1304]. At St Michael's, Stamford,

in 1442 Alnwick discovered

that Richard Gray lately boarding in the priory together with his

legitimate wife, _procreavit prolem de domina Elizabetha Wylugby

moniali ibidem_, and boarded there until last Easter against the

injunction of the lord (bishop)[1305].

So also at Easebourne in 1478 it was deposed that "a certain Sir John

Senoke[1306] much frequented the priory or house, so that during some

weeks he passed the night and lay within the priory or monastery every

night, and was the cause ... of the ruin" of two nuns who had gone into

apostasy at the instigation of various men[1307].

The reception of secular women as boarders without the consent of the

diocesan was forbidden as early as 1222 by the Council of Oxford[1308] and

the bishops henceforth pursued a steady policy of ejection:

"Since," wrote Bishop Flemyng to Elstow, "from the manifest

conjectures and assurances of our eyes we have learned that by reason

of the stay of lodgers, especially of married persons, in the said

monastery, the purity of religion (and) pleasantness of honest

conversation and character, (which) in their fragrance in our judgment

far surpass temporal goods, and the destruction of which far exceeds

the waste of temporal wealth, have suffered grave shipwreck, and may

suffer, as is likely, more heavily in future, we ordain, enjoin and

charge you who are now abbess and the other several persons who shall

be abbesses in the said monastery, under pain of deprivation, beside

the other penalties written beneath, which likewise, if you do

contrary to that which we command, it is our will that you incur

thereupon, that henceforward you admit or allow to be admitted or

received to lodge or stay within the limits of the cloister, no

persons male or female, how honest soever they be, who are beyond the

twelfth year of their age, nor any other persons soever, and married

persons in special, without the site of the same monastery, unless you

have procured express and special licence in the cases premised from

ourselves or from our successors, who for the time being shall be

bishops of Lincoln"[1309].

Always the reason given is that these boarders are a disturbance to

conventual discipline:

"Item because religion has been much disturbed among you by reason of

secular women lodging in your house," wrote Bishop Gynewell to

Heynings in 1351, "we forbid on pain of excommunication that after the

feast of St Michael next to come any secular woman be allowed to

remain in your Priory, save your servants who be necessary for your

service"[1310].

"Also for as myche as we fynde detecte," Alnwick wrote nearly a

century later to the same house, "that for the multitude of

sujournauntes wythe [yow] as wele wedded as other ofte tymes the

qwyere and the rest of yowe in your obseruances is troubled, we charge

[yow] pryoresse vnder payne of the sentence of cursyng that fro this

day forthe ye receyve no sodeiyourauntes that pas[se a man] x yere, a

woman xiii yere of age, wytheowten specyalle leve of hus or our

successours bushops of Lincolne asked [and had]"[1311].

But the attempt to clear the convents of secular boarders was entirely

unsuccessful. The bishops had two powerful forces against them, the desire

of the impoverished nuns to make money and the desire of seculars for a

quiet and inexpensive hostel; and the nuns continued to take boarders, in

spite of a series of prohibitions. At Romsey, for instance, Peckham

forbids boarders, c. 1284; in 1311 Bishop Woodlock has to repeat the

prohibition "because of the continual sojourn of seculars we find the

tranquillity of the nuns to be much disturbed and scandals to arise in

your monastery"; in 1346 Edynton orders the removal of all secular persons

within a month; in 1363 he has to write again, complaining that he has

heard by public report that they have not obeyed his former letter and

ordering them to remove all _perhendinatrices_ within fifteen days[1312].

At Godstow injunctions to this effect are made in succession by Gynewell

(1358), Gray (1432-4) and Alnwick (1445)[1313]; at Elstow by Gynewell

(1359), Bokyngham (1387), Flemyng (1421-2) and Gray (c. 1432)[1314].

Moreover the bishops themselves were sometimes obliged to leave the nuns a

loophole of escape, by excepting certain women from the general

prohibition; thus Alnwick excepted the two widows Elizabeth Dymmok and

Margaret Tylney at Stixwould[1315]; Brantyngham excepted "the noble woman

Lady Elizabeth Courtenay, wife of the noble man Sir Hugh de Courtenay,

Knight" at Canonsleigh (1391)[1316]; and Archbishop Rotherham at

Nunappleton (1489) excepted children "or ellis old persones, by which

availe biliklyhood may growe to your place"[1317]. Often too they were

persuaded to grant licences to boarders, at the prayer of influential

persons who must not be offended[1318]. The largest loophole which they

were obliged by the pressure of circumstances to leave open was, however,

the permission to receive small children for education[1319].

It is clear from the evidence of visitation documents that nuns often took

boarders of their own free will, for the sake of the money which thus

accrued to their impecunious houses; certainly no episcopal injunction was

more consistently disobeyed. On the other hand great ladies often thrust

themselves upon a convent, which dared not say them nay, and it is not at

all unusual to find the nuns complaining of the disturbance caused to

their daily life by visitors. The matter was complicated by the fact that

the exercise of hospitality was one of the chief functions of monastic

houses in the middle ages, and was so far regarded as a right by their

neighbours that remonstrances were actually made if the quality of the

entertainment offered was not considered sufficiently good. At Campsey in

1532 one of the nuns declared that "well-born guests (_hospites

generosae_) coming to the priory complained of the excessive parsimony of

the Prioress"[1320]. Complaints by the nuns of the spiritual disturbance

caused by this influx of visitors, show that the right was vigorously

exercised. In 1364 the Pope granted permission to Margaret de Lancaster,

an Augustinian Canoness of the same nunnery of Campsey, to transfer

herself to the Order of St Clare, she having already caused herself to be

enclosed at Campsey in order to avoid the number of nobles coming to the

house[1321]; and in 1375 he commanded the Bishop of St Andrews to make

order concerning the Prioress and nuns of the Benedictine convent of North

Berwick, "who have petitioned for perpetual enclosure, they being much

molested by the neighbourhood and visits of nobles and other secular

persons"[1322]. Even enclosure was not always a protection against

visitors; for the Popes constantly granted indults to great persons,

allowing them to enter, with a retinue, the houses of monks and nuns

belonging to enclosed orders. A few instances may be taken at random. John

of Gaunt in 1371 received an indult to enter any monasteries of religious

men and women once a year, with thirty persons of good repute[1323]; Joan

Princess of Wales in 1372 was given permission to enter monasteries of

enclosed nuns with six honest and aged men and fourteen women and to eat

and drink, but not to pass the night therein[1324]; Thomas of Gloucester

and his wife, the notorious Eleanor de Cobham, had an indult to enter

monasteries of enclosed monks and nuns six times a year, with twenty

persons of either sex[1325]. Sometimes, it is true, the visitors were

forbidden to eat, drink or spend the night in the house[1326], but often

they received special permission to do so; thus in 1408 Philippa, Duchess

of York, was given an indult allowing her to take five or six matrons and

to stay in monasteries of enclosed nuns for three days and nights at a

time[1327] and in 1422 Joan Countess of Westmoreland received one to enter

any nunnery with eight honest women, and to stay there with the nuns,

eating, drinking and talking with them and spending the night[1328]. An

indult granted in 1398 to Margery and Grace de Tylney "noblewomen," to

enter "as often as they please with six honest matrons, the monastery of

enclosed nuns of the Order of St Clare, Denney"[1329], and a faculty

granted in 1371 to "John, Cardinal of Sancti Quatuor Coronati"[1330],

empowering him to give leave to a hundred women of high birth of France

and England, to enter nunneries once a year, accompanied each by four

matrons[1331], give some idea of the extent to which it was usual for

guests to visit even houses belonging to enclosed orders.

Nuns do not seem to have concerned themselves with political movements,

unlike the monks, who in great abbeys were sometimes keen politicians. But

it sometimes happened that the strife and intrigue and tragedy of the

outside world entered into quiet convents, through this custom of using

them as boarding houses. Not otherwise can we account for a curious case

in which the nuns of Sewardsley were involved in 1470, when a certain

Thomas Wake accused Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, of making an image of

lead to be used in witchcraft against the King and Queen, which image he

said had been shown to various persons and exhibited in the nunnery of

Sewardsley[1332]. Moreover echoes of great doings came to nuns when the

hapless wives and daughters of the King's enemies were placed in their

custody, a kindlier fate than imprisonment in a fortress or in charge of

some loyal noble's sharp-tongued wife. The course of Edward II's troubled

reign may be traced in the story of the women who were successively sent

as prisoners, or (worse still) as nuns, to various priories. The first to

suffer was the King's niece Margaret; she had been married by him to Piers

Gaveston and had seen her husband miserably slain at Thomas of Lancaster's

behest; she was married again to Sir Hugh Audley and ten years later, poor

pawn in the game of politics, she suffered for her second husband's share

in Lancaster's rebellion, when the crime of Blacklow Hill was expiated on

the hill of Pontefract.

"Margarete countesse de Cornewaille," says the chronicle of

Sempringham, "La femme Sire Hugh Daudelee, e la niece le roi, fu

ordinee a demorer en guarde a Sempringham entre les nonaignes, a quel

lieu ele vint le xvi jour de Mai (1322) e la demorra"[1333].

In the same year the Abbess of Barking was ordered "to cause the body of

Elizabeth de Burgo, late wife of Roger Damory, within her abbey, to be

kept safely and not to permit her to go outside the abbey gates in any

wise until further orders"[1334]. In 1324 another rebel, Roger Mortimer,

broke his prison in the Tower and escaped across the sea to France. But

three poor children, his daughters, could not escape, and on April 7th of

the same year the sheriff of Southampton received an order to cause

Margaret, daughter of Roger Mortimer of Wygmore, to be conducted to the

Priory of Shouldham, Joan, his second daughter, to the Priory of

Sempringham, and Isabella, his third daughter, to the Priory of Chicksand,

"to be delivered to the priors of those places (all were Gilbertine

houses) to stay amongst the nuns in the same priories." The Prior of

Shouldham had 15_d._ weekly for Margaret's expenses and a mark yearly for

her robe, and each of the other two little girls received 12_d._ weekly

for expenses and a mark for her robe[1335]. The she-wolf of France bided

her time, and when the game was hers she was no less swift to avenge her

wrongs; to Sempringham (where her lover's daughter had gone two years

before) now went the two daughters of the elder Hugh Despenser, to pray

for the souls of a father and brother done most dreadfully to death[1336].

The perennial wars with Scotland also found their echo in the nunneries.

In 1306 the Abbess of Barking was ordered "to deliver Elizabeth, sister of

William Olifard [? Olifaunt] Knight, who is in their custody by the King's

permission to Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, the King having granted her

to the said Henry"[1337]; she was doubtless a relative of that "Hugh

Olyfard, a Scot, the King's enemy and rebel," who together with one

"William Sauvage the King's approver" had broken his prison at Colchester

some three years before, and fled into sanctuary in the convent

church[1338]. Barking was a favourite prison, doubtless on account of its

situation, and in 1314 the sheriffs of London were ordered "to receive

Elizabeth, wife of Robert de Brus, from the Abbess of Berkyngg, with whom

she had been staying by the King's order and to take her under safe

custody to Rochester and there deliver her to Henry de Cobham, constable

of the castle"[1339].

The mention of the Scot Hugh Olyfard, who took sanctuary in the church of

Barking, recalls another reason for which the world might break into the

cloister. The terrified fugitive from justice would take sanctuary in a

convent church if it lay nearest to him, and the peace of chanting nuns

would be rudely broken, when that unkempt and desperate figure sprang up

the choir between them and flung itself upon their altar steps. The hand

of a master has drawn for us what the trembling novices saw, peeping from

their stalls:

... the breathless fellow at the altar foot,

Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there

With the little children round him in a row

Of admiration, half for his beard and half

For that white anger of his victim's son

Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,

Signing himself with the other because of Christ

(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this

After the passion of a thousand years),

Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head

Which the intense eyes looked through, came at eve

On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,

Her pair of ear-rings and a bunch of flowers

The brute took growling, prayed and then was gone[1340].

But sometimes more than a momentary disturbance was occasioned to the

nunnery; in 1416, for instance, Edith Wilton, Prioress of Carrow, was

attached, together with one of her nuns, on the charge of harbouring in

sanctuary the murderers of William Koc of Trowse, at the appeal of his

widow Margaret. She was arrested, imprisoned and called to answer at

Westminster, but after the court had adjourned many times she was

acquitted[1341]. An abbess of Wherwell was involved in a lawsuit over a

case of sanctuary for somewhat different reasons; she claimed the right of

seizing chattels of fugitives in the hundred of Mestowe[1342], a right

which was disputed by the crown officials. One Henry Harold of Wherwell

had killed his wife Isabel and fled to the church of Wherwell and the

Abbess had promptly seized his chattels to the value of over L35, by the

hands of her reeve[1343].

These cases of violence will lead us to the consideration of breaches of

enclosure which were in no sense the fault of the unhappy nuns. Visits

from their peaceful friends they welcomed; the sojourn of great folk they

bore; but they would fain have passed their days undisturbed by war's

alarms and by the assault and battery of private feuds. But it was not to

be. Alarums and excursions sometimes shattered their peace and, especially

in the Northern counties, violent attacks at the hands of robbers, lawless

neighbours, or enemies of the realm were only too common. Disorder was

general and grew worse in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries. The nunnery of Markyate was once assaulted in the night by

fifty robbers and the nuns pillaged and robbed of everything

valuable[1344], and in 1408 the Bishop of Ely gave an indulgence for the

relief of the nuns of Rowney, "whose chalices, books, ornaments and other

goods have been stolen by evil men, so that they have not the wherewithal

to perform the divine office"[1345].

Neighbourly disagreements sometimes developed into petty warfare, as the

Paston Letters show, and an almost exact parallel to the dispute between

John Paston and Lord Molynes over the manor of Gresham is to be found in a

complaint made in 1383 by the Prioress of Brodholme, who asserted that a

gang of men (whom she named)

"had broken her close at Brodholme, felled her trees and underwood,

dug in her soil, carried off earth, trees, underwood and other goods,

depastured her corn and grass, assaulted her servants and besieged her

and her nuns in the Priory and threatened them with death"[1346].

Such instances might be multiplied[1347]. Sometimes the presence of

secular boarders led to unpleasant experiences for the nuns. The Lincoln

registers record two such cases, which incidentally furnish an additional

reason why the reception of boarders was frowned upon by the Church. In

1304 certain

"satellites of Satan whose names we know not" (Bishop Dalderby informs

his official), "lately came in great numbers to the monastery of the

nuns of Goring, where they boldly laid violent hands upon Henry,

chaplain of the parish church and brother John le Walleys, lay brother

of the same place (from whom they drew blood) and upon certain nuns of

the house who struggled to guard their monastery, and then they

entered and rode their horses up to the high altar of the church,

polluting that holy place shamefully with the footprints and dung of

their horses."

Their object was apparently to seize a certain Isabella de Kent, a married

woman then dwelling in the nunnery, and they pursued her to the belfry,

where she had taken refuge and dragged her away with them[1348]. An even

worse disturbance took place at Rothwell in 1421-2. A gang of ruffians

broke open the cloister and doors, seized one Joan (a boarder) and carried

her away to a lonely house, where their leader forcibly violated her, with

every circumstance of brutality. She escaped back to the priory, whereupon

the leader

entering the same priory a second time, like a tyrant and pirate with

a far greater multitude of like henchmen and people untamed and savage

in his company, with naked swords and other sorts of divers weapons of

offence, fell ... upon the same woman, who was then in the presence of

the prioress and the nuns in the hall of the said priory and ...

daringly laid wicked, sacrilegious and violent hands, notwithstanding

the worship both of their persons and of the place, upon the prioress

and nuns of the said place, honourable members of the church and

persons hallowed to God accordingly--who endeavoured gently to appease

their baseness and savagery, so far as their sex as women allowed--and

cudgelled them with cruel strokes, threw them down on the ground and,

trampling on them with their feet, mercilessly kicked them and

violently dragged off their garments of their habits over their heads,

and even as robbers, having caught their prey, carried off the said

woman, dragging her with them out of the priory[1349].

Even more significant is the licence granted to the Abbess and Convent of

Tarrant Keynes in 1343 to cut down two hundred acres of under-wood in

their demesne land, "on their petition setting forth that their house and

possessions in the county of Dorset had been burned and destroyed by an

invasion of the king's enemies in those parts"[1350]; or the permission

given to the Abbess of Shaftesbury in 1367 to crenellate her Abbey,

presumably for purposes of defence[1351]. The south coast was a constant

prey to pirates, and it was still within the memory of man that, at the

beginning of the French war

the Normayns Pycardes and Spanyerdes entred into the toune (of

Southampton) and robbed and pilled the toune, and slewe dyvers and

defowled maydens, and enforced wyves, and charged their vessels with

the pyllage and so entred agayne into their shyppes[1352].

The sanctity which attached to the person of a nun was apt to be forgotten

in the brutal warfare of the day and the Abbess might well fear for her

flock. The English nunneries did not, indeed, experience anything to

compare with the unimaginable sufferings endured by French convents during

the hundred years' war[1353]. But they were by no means immune from the

effects of civil war; Wilton, Wherwell and St Mary's, Winchester, were all

burned during the struggle between Stephen and Matilda[1354], and during

the Wars of the Roses the nuns of Delapre were unwilling witnesses of the

Battle of Northampton (1460), which was held "in the medowys beside the

Nonry"; after the fight was over the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury

and the Bishop of London rested at the nunnery and many of the slain were

buried in its churchyard[1355].

The most striking example of the effect of warfare upon monastic houses in

England is, however, provided by the history of the northern monasteries,

which were throughout their history (but especially during the first part

of the fourteenth century) in danger from the inroads of the Scots. So

great was the destruction wrought in 1318 that it was necessary to make a

new assessment of church property for purposes of taxation, in part of the

province of York[1356]. Nor was the trouble purely material, though the

poverty of the nunneries (in particular) was sometimes abject and the

harrying of their lands must have made prosperity at all times a vain

hope. The moral results of such disorder were even more serious. It was

almost impossible to maintain an ordinary communal life, when at any

moment it might be necessary to disperse the nuns and quarter them in

other houses out of the line of the marauders' march. Even in houses which

were never actually attacked, the prevalent unrest, the lawlessness which

is naturally engendered by border warfare, must have been disorganising

and demoralising. It is easy to understand why cases of immorality and

grave disorder are more prevalent in the convents of the north of England

than in those of any other district.

In 1296 the chronicler of Lanercost describes thus the first great raid of

the Scots:

In this raid they surpassed in cruelty all the fury of the heathen;

when they could not catch the strong and young people, who took

flight, they imbrued their arms, hitherto unfleshed, with the blood of

infirm people, old women, women in childbed and even children two or

three years old, proving themselves apt scholars in atrocity, insomuch

that they raised little span-long children pierced on pikes, to expire

thus and fly away to the heavens. They burnt consecrated churches;

both in the sanctuary and elsewhere they violated women dedicated to

God [i.e. nuns] as well as married women and girls, either murdering

them or robbing them, after gratifying their lust. Also they herded

together a crowd of little scholars in the schools of Hexham and

having blocked the doors set fire to that pile [so] fair [in the sight

of God]. Three monasteries of holy collegiates were destroyed by them,

Lanercost, of the Canons Regular; and Hexham of the same order and

[that] of the nuns of Lambley; of all of these the devastation can by

no means be attributed to the valour of warriors, but to the dastardly

conduct of thieves, who attacked a weaker community, where they would

not be likely to meet with any resistance[1357].

Some allowance must be made for the indignation of a canon of Lanercost,

whose own house had been burnt; but even so it is plain that the religious

houses must have endured terrible things at the hands of the Scots; and

the peril of the nuns was to honour as well as to life and home.

In several cases record of the actual dispersal of the nuns has been

preserved, though such dispersal lasted only for a short time. The priory

of Holystone, which lay right upon the border, was in a particularly

exposed position and in 1313, when Bruce was devastating the northern

counties, a letter from the Bishop of Durham bears vivid testimony to its

miserable plight:

"The house of the said nuns," he says, "situated in the March of

England and Scotland, by reason of the hostile incursions which daily

and continually increase in the March, is frequently despoiled of its

goods and the nuns themselves are often attacked by the marauders,

harmed and pursued and, put to flight and driven from their home, are

constrained miserably to experience bitter suffering. Wherefore we

make these things known to you, that you may compassionate their

poverty, which is increased by the memory of happier things, and that

your pity and benevolence may be shown them, lest (to the disgrace of

their estate) they be forced publicly to beg"[1358].

The expiration of the truce with Scotland in 1322 was followed by another

raid and by Edward II's unsuccessful campaign, in the course of which the

Scots overran Yorkshire and very nearly captured the King at Byland Abbey.

The canons of Bridlington (whither he fled) departed with all their

valuables to Lincolnshire, sending an envoy to purchase immunity from

Bruce at Melton. The poor nuns of Moxby and Rosedale did not escape so

easily. In November Archbishop Melton wrote to the Prioress of Nunmonkton,

ordering her to receive two nuns of the house of Moxby, which had been

"destroyed and devastated by the Scots"; the Prioress tried to excuse

herself, on the plea that it was unseemly for Austin nuns to be received

in a Benedictine convent and that her house barely sufficed to support

herself and her sisters; but the Archbishop sternly replied that he was

sending the nuns for a time only and that it behoved the convent of

Nunmonkton to receive them, in order to avoid their being dispersed in the

world. He added that he had placed a like burden upon other nunneries in

his diocese which had escaped the horrors of the invasion, and a note in

his Register shows that two nuns were sent to Nunappleton, two to

Nunkeeling and two to Hampole, while the Prioress went to Swine. Three

days later he boarded out the nuns of Rosedale, who had received similar

injuries at the hands of the Scots, sending one to each of the houses of

Nunburnholme, Sinningthwaite, Thicket, Wykeham and Hampole[1359]. The

dispersal of the nuns of Rosedale did not extend beyond six months and the

nuns of Moxby probably returned about the same time, for they were back in

their own house in 1325, when their Prioress resigned "super lapsu

carnis"[1360]. The moral record of both houses--and indeed of the majority

of Yorkshire nunneries--is bad at this period, and at least part of the

responsibility must be laid at the door of the Scottish invasions.

Yorkshire also suffered in the invasion which ended with the Battle of

Neville's Cross (1346), when the Scots

went forth brenning and destroying the county of Northumberland; and

their currours ran to York and brent as much as was without the walls

and returned again to their host within a days journey, of

Newcastle-upon-Tyne[1361].

One of these marauding bands ("the most outrageoust people in all the

country," Froissart calls them) came galloping into that lonely and

beautiful dale, where the nunnery of Ellerton stands beside the brown

torrent of Swale. They entered the house and carried away seven charters

and writings, so the nuns complained later[1362]; what else they did in

that quiet spot and whether the nunnery of Marrick on the hill above

escaped them history will not tell us. Such disasters were common enough

in the north. The records of Armathwaite in Cumberland show that an

unlucky proximity to the border might hamper a convent throughout the

whole of its career. In 1318 pasture for cattle in Inglewood Forest was

granted to "the poor nuns of Armathwaite, who had been totally ruined by

the Scots"; in 1331 they were excused a payment of ten pounds for the same

reason; and in 1474 they were obliged to apply for a ratification of their

possessions, because their house had been almost destroyed by the Scots,

who had not only spoiled them of their church ornaments, books, relics and

jewels, but also of all their charters and evidences[1363]. The obscure

little nunnery of Lambley on Tyne suffered in the same way, for in the

Receiver's Account made at its dissolution in 1536 there occurs, under the

heading _Decasus Redditus_, the entry of a tenement in Haltwhistle called

Redepath, "eo quod comburatum (_sic_) per Scottos"[1364].

But the most horrible story of outrage suffered by a nunnery in time of

war is that strange tale reported by the anonymous monk of St Albans, who

wrote a _Chronicon Angliae_ between the years 1376 and 1379[1365]. The

suffering of French nunneries at the hand of Free Companies and English

was not more terrible than the fate of these English nuns at the hand of

their own countrymen. In 1379 an army was mustered in England to replace

Duke John of Brittany upon his throne, which had been annexed by Charles V

of France. The main army, under John FitzAlan of Arundel, Marshal of

England (the same who had "two and fiftie new sutes of apparell of cloth

of gold or tissue") was delayed in England for some months, first by a

difficulty in raising the money to equip it, and then by contrary winds,

and it was December before Sir John was ready to sail. Complaints came

from all hands of the depredations committed along the coast by the

lawless soldiers, but their other misdeeds were insignificant compared

with the crime recorded in the St Albans Chronicle:

"When," says the chronicler, "Sir John Arundel and his companions were

come to the sea and no breeze favoured them, he ordered that a more

favourable wind should be awaited. Meanwhile he proceeded to a certain

monastery of virgin nuns, which stood not far away, and entering with

his men, he asked the mother of the monastery to permit his fellow

soldiers, engaged on the king's service, to lodge there. But the nun,

considering in her mind that danger might arise from such guests and

that his request was absolutely contrary to religion, pointed out to

him with due reverence and humility that many of his followers were

young and might easily be moved to commit an inexpiable crime, which

would not only bring ill fame upon the place but would also be a

danger and an evil to himself and his men, who should shun not only an

offence against chastity but all manner of crimes, if they acted as

befitted men about to go to the wars. But he began to insist with

great fervour, declaring that her suspicions were false and her

imaginings without truth, whereupon she prostrated herself on the

ground before him, and answered, 'My lord, I know that your men are

unbridled and fear not even God. It is expedient neither for us nor

for you that they should enter our cloister. Wherefore I beseech and

counsel you with clasped hands, that you give up this intention and

seek other hosts (who abound in the neighbourhood) for yourself and

for your men.' But he persisted and, contemptuously bidding her arise,

swore that he would in no wise give up his determination to have

hospitality for his people there. Wherefore he straightway ordered his

men to enter the building and to occupy the public and private rooms

until the time came for setting sail. And they, inspired (it is

thought) by a devil, burst into the cloister of the monastery, and as

is the wont of such an undisciplined mob, broke the one into this, the

other into that room, wherein the maidens, daughters of the

neighbouring gentry, were lodged to be taught; and many of these were

already prepared to take upon them the habit of holy religion and had

set their mind on the purpose of virginity. These, scorning reverence

for the place and casting aside the fear of God, the men oppressed and

violated by force. Nor did their lust rage against these alone, for

they feared not to pollute the widow's continence and the conjugal

tie. For many widows had gathered there to receive hospitality, as is

customary in such abbeys, either for lack of property or in order the

more perfectly and safely to preserve their chastity. They forced into

public adultery the married women who had gathered there for the same

reasons, and not content (it is said) with these misdeeds they

subjected the nuns themselves to their lust. Whereupon at first those

who suffered the injury, and soon all who dwelt in the neighbourhood

and who heard the news of so great a crime, heaped very horrible

curses upon their heads and called down upon them whatever misfortune

and whatever adversity God might be able to raise against them."

The chronicler goes on to relate how, undeterred and indeed encouraged by

Sir John Arundel, the men spread over the country-side and pillaged it,

carrying off a bride and stealing plate from the altar of a church, for

which sacrilege they were solemnly excommunicated. At last, however, Sir

John (in spite of the protests of the shipman who was to carry him)

decided to set sail. His men carried off with them the stolen bride and a

number of wives, widows and virgins from the abbey, forced the wretched

women on board and put to sea. But a storm came on and the ships were

driven out into the Atlantic. In the midst of the roaring tempest the

guilty soldiers seemed to see a spectre, more awful than death itself,

which stalked among them on the deck and foretold the loss of all who

sailed upon Sir John Arundel's ship. Even more pitiable was the condition

of the women:

"Hard it is to relate," says the chronicler, "what clamour, what

lamentation, what groans, what tears, arose among the women, who by

force or of their own will had boarded the ship, when buffeted by the

winds and waves they rose to the skies and descended to the depths;

for now they saw not the spectre of death, but death itself among

them, and could not doubt that they must die. What mental anguish,

what bodily fear, what remorse and anxiety assailed the conscience of

the men, who to satisfy their lust had dragged these women into the

peril of the seas, they were best able to describe who, although

sharers in so great a crime, were nevertheless permitted by God's

mercy to reach a port of safety. Wherefore the men were doubtful what

to do in the midst of the clamour, for on the one hand the wind and

storm, on the other the tears and cries of the women, urged them to

action. First, therefore, they tried to lighten the vessel, throwing

overboard first the worthless baggage, then precious things, that

perchance a hope of safety might arise. But when they perceived their

desperate plight to be rather increased than diminished, they cast the

blame of their misfortune upon the women, and in a spirit of madness

they seized hold of them (with the same hands wherewith before they

had sweetly caressed them, the same arms wherewith they had lustfully

embraced them) and threw them into the sea, to be devoured by fishes

and sea beasts, to the number (it is said) of sixty women. But not

even thus was the tempest stayed, but rather it grew greater so that

it deprived them of all hope of escaping the danger of death."

The story is soon ended. The ships were driven onto the coast of Ireland,

Sir John Arundel's vessel ran upon a rock, and he was drowned, with all

his suits of apparel, his goods and his horses; and twenty-five other

vessels of the ill-fated expedition, laden with soldiers and horses and

baggage, also went down in the storm. Public opinion did not fail to

attribute these disasters to the crimes of which Sir John and his troops

had been guilty; and so, with dramatic fitness, ends this tale of the

golden days of chivalry[1366]. Side by side with it must be set another

episode, drawn from an earlier age and from an epic instead of a

chronicle. It was part of the chivalrous convention to show a special

respect to nunneries, in their double character of religious and

aristocratic institutions. Yet the most striking account of a nunnery in

the twelfth century, when this convention was at its height, has for

subject a brutal sacrilege committed by a great baron upon a church of

nuns. This is the famous episode of the burning of Origny in the _chanson

de geste_ "Raoul de Cambrai." The writer of the poem makes Raoul's knights

recoil in shame from a crime in which their allegiance has made them

unwilling partners, and manifests the utmost horror and pity at this

action so opposed to all the ideals of chivalry; but it is only one of the

many proofs that the golden idol had feet of clay. Whether or not the

account was founded upon an actual incident is unknown; but it deserves

quotation because it illustrates all too clearly the fate of nuns when

their quiet houses stood in the way of warring knights. It represents one

side of chivalry as truly as "Queen Guenever in Almesbury, a nun in white

clothes and black" represents another. In the same century that produced

"Raoul de Cambrai" a chronicler, writing of the wars of Stephen and

Matilda in England, records, "Burnt also was the abbey of nuns of Wherwell

by a certain William of Ypres, an evil man, who respected neither God nor

man, because certain supporters of the Empress had taken refuge therein";

and another:

The famous town [of Winchester] was given to the flames, wherein a

convent of nuns with its offices, and more than twenty churches, with

the greater part of the town and the monastery of St Grimbald's and

the dwellings attached to it, were reduced to ashes[1367].

What these bald statements mean the _chanson de geste_ can tell us better.

Raoul de Cambrai, the greatest villain who ever led knights to war, had in

his train a young knight Bernier. One day he set out to pillage Origny, in

which town was a famous convent, where Bernier's fair mother Marcens had

retired to end her days in peace. But as he hurled himself, with four

thousand men, upon the town, the gates of the convent opened

and the nuns came forth from the church, gentle ladies, each with her

psalter, for there they did the service of God. Marcens was there, who

was Bernier's mother. "Mercy, Raoul, in the just God's name! You do

great sin if you allow harm to come to us, for easily can we be driven

forth." In her hand she held a book of the time of Solomon and she was

saying an orison to God.

After a tender inquiry for her son, Marcens proceeded to plead with Raoul

to raise the siege; clearly the burgesses regarded the abbess of the great

convent as their leader and a fit person to negotiate with their enemy.

"Sir Raoul," she said, "shall I beseech you in vain to withdraw you?

We be nuns, by all the saints of Bavaria; we shall never hold lance

nor banner, nor by our hand shall any man be brought to his grave."

But Raoul answered her with a stream of coarse abuse, showing even less

respect for her sex and calling than Sir John Arundel showed to the

abbess who refused him lodging[1368]. Marcens put aside his charges with a

word of dignified denial and proffered him terms of truce:

"Sir Raoul, we know not how to wield arms; easily can you destroy us

and put us to flight. We have neither shield nor lance for our

defence. All our livelihood we have from this altar and within this

town; noble men hold this place dear and send us silver and pure gold.

Therefore do you grant us a truce for hearth and church and go you and

take your ease in our meadows; of our own substance we will feed you

and your knights and your squires shall have corn and oats and plenty

to eat for your steeds." "By the body of St Richier," answered Raoul,

"For love of you and since you ask it, I will grant you the truce,

whoever may dislike it."

But Raoul de Cambrai had no regard for his knightly word; he quarrelled

with the townsfolk and swore to burn Origny about their ears.

"The rooms burn," the _chanson_ continues, "The ceilings crumble: the

barrels catch fire and their hoops burst. Woe and sin it is, for the

children burn too. Evil has Count Raoul done, for the day before he

gave his faith to Marcens that they should not lose so much as a fold

of silk; and on the morrow he burned them in his wrath. In Origny,

that great and rich town, the sons of Herbert, who love the place had

put Marcens, Bernier's mother, and a hundred nuns to pray to God.

Count Raoul, the hot-heart, sets fire to the streets; the houses burn,

the ceilings melt, the wine spills and the cellars flow with it; the

bacon burns, the larders fall, the fat makes the great fire burn more

fiercely. It strikes up to the tower and to the high belfry and the

roofs fall in, so great is the blaze between the two walls. The nuns

are burnt, all hundred of them are burnt (woe it is to tell); burnt is

Marcens that was Bernier's mother, and Clamados the daughter of Duke

Renier. The smell of burning flesh rises from the flames and the brave

knights weep for pity. When Bernier sees the fire grow worse, he is

near mad with grief. Could ye but have seen him sling on his shield!

With drawn sword he comes to the church and sees the flames pouring

from the doors; no man can come within a shaft's throw of the fire.

Bernier sees a rich marble pavement, and upon it lies his mother, with

her tender face laid on the ground and her psalter burning upon her

breast. Then says the boy, 'I am on a foolish errand. Never will any

succour avail her now. Ha! sweet mother, yesterday you kissed me; you

have but a poor heir in me, for I can neither aid nor help you. God,

who will judge the world, keep your soul!'"[1369]

So ends this terrible episode; but that chivalry in this matter at least

suffered no change from the twelfth to the fourteenth century Froissart's

account of the burning of this same Origny-Saint-Benoit by the peerless

John of Hainault and his troops in 1339 will show[1370]. If the code of

knighthood and the fear of God could not save the nuns from mischances

such as these, it is plain that no injunctions against the breach of their

enclosure could have done so. These were the risks of war, which nuns

shared in common with all unhappy women. But the siege of Origny and even

the outrage at Goring were still exceptional events; and the Church found

its chief problem not in these unwelcome incursions, but in the number of

welcome visitors who hung about the nunneries. "The Lord deliver them from

their friends" was in effect the bishop's prayer. The expulsion of these

friends was a necessary corollary to the enclosure movement; and, like the

injunctions to nuns to keep within their cloister, the injunctions to lay

folk to keep outside remained a dead letter. John of Ayton's conclusion is

true here also:

Why, then, did the holy fathers thus labour to beat the air? Yet

indeed their toil is none the less to their own merit; for we look not

to that which is, but to that which of justice should be.