THE OLDE DAUNCE
A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet
understanding, a woman.
_Love's Labour's Lost_, I, i, 266-8.
It is difficult to form any exact impression of the moral state of the
English nunneries during the later middle ages. Certainly there is
widespread evidence of frailty on the part of individuals, and there are
one or two serious cases in which a whole house was obviously in a bad
condition. It is certain also that we retain the record of only a portion
of the cases of immorality which existed; some never came to light at all,
some were hushed up and the records of others are buried in Bishops'
Registers, which are either unpublished or lost. On the other hand it is
necessary to guard against exaggeration. The majority of nuns certainly
kept their lifelong vow of chastity. Moreover when the conditions of
medieval life are taken into account, the lapses of the nuns must, to
anyone who considers them with sympathy and common sense, appear
comprehensible. The routine of the convent was not always satisfying to
the heart, and the temptations to which nuns were submitted were certainly
grosser and more frequent than they are in similar institutions today.
Several considerations may fairly be urged in mitigation of the nuns. The
initial difficulty of the celibate ideal need not be laboured. For many
saints it was the first and necessary condition of their salvation; but
for the average man it has always been an unnatural state and the monastic
orders and the priesthood were full of average men. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the history of ecclesiastical celibacy is one of the
tragedies of religious life. The vow was constantly being broken. The
_focaria_ or priest's mistress is a well-known figure in medieval history
and fiction; and the priest who lived thus with an unofficial wife was
probably less dangerous to his female parishioners than was he who lived
ostensibly alone. A crowd of clerks and chaplains, sometimes attached to
some church, chantry or great man's chapel, sometimes unattached, filled
the country with an "ecclesiastical proletariat," all vowed to chastity;
and any student of the criminal records of the middle ages knows how often
these men were concerned in cases of rape and other crime. A survey of the
monastic visitations of a careful visitor such as Alnwick shows that
consorting with women was a common charge against the monks and there is
some evidence which points to a suspicion of grosser forms of vice. It
would be strange indeed if the nuns were an exception to the rule. Even if
they kept their vow, they kept it sometimes at a cost which psychologists
have only recently begun to understand. The visions which were at once the
torture and the joy of so many mystic women, were sexual as well as
religious in their origin, as in their imagery[1371]. The terrible
lassitude and despair of _accidia_ grew in part at least from the
repression of the most powerful of natural instincts, accentuated by the
absence of sufficient counter interests and employments.
The whole monastic ideal is, however, bound up with the vow of chastity
and, had only women with a vocation entered nunneries, the danger of the
situation would have been small. Unfortunately a large number of the girls
who became nuns had no vocation at all. They were given over to the life
by their families, sometimes from childhood, because it was a reputable
career for daughters who could not be dowered for marriage in a manner
befitting their estate[1372]. They were often totally unsuited for it, by
the weakness of their religions as well as by the strength of their sexual
impulses. The lighthearted _Chansons de Nonnes_[1373], whose theme is the
nun unwillingly professed, had a real basis in fact. If cases of
immorality in convents seem all too frequent, it should be remembered how
young and often how unwilling were those who took the vows:
Je sent les douls mals leis ma senturete
Malois soit de deu ki me fist nonnete.
The blame is justly placed and the wonder is not how many but how few nuns
went astray.
Again the nunneries of the middle ages were subjected to temptations which
rarely occur in our own time. The chief of these was the ease with which
the nuns moved about outside their houses in a world where sex was
displayed good-humouredly, openly, grossly, by the populace, and with all
the subtle charm of chivalry by the upper classes. The struggle to enforce
enclosure had its root in the recognition of this danger, as episcopal
references to the story of Dinah show; and it has already been seen how
unsuccessful that struggle was. Nuns left their precincts, visited their
friends, attended feasts, listened to wandering minstrels, with hardly any
restraint upon their movements. It is true that in church and cloister the
praise of virginity was forever dinned into their ears; but outside in the
world it was not virginity that was praised. Were it a miller's tale or a
wife of Bath's prologue, overheard on a pilgrimage, were it only the lilt
of a passing clerk at a street corner,
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again,
the nun's mind must often have been troubled, as she turned her steps back
to her cloister. Moreover their guest rooms were full of visitors, men as
well as women; if they copied so eagerly the fine dresses and the pet dogs
of worldly ladies, is it strange that they sometimes copied their lovers
too? Other conditions besides the imperfect enforcement of enclosure
increased the danger. The disorders of the times, ranging from the armed
forays of the Scots in the north to the lawlessness of everyday life in
all parts of the country, were not conducive to a fugitive and cloistered
virtue[1374]. Nor was the constant struggle against financial need,
leading as it did to many undesirable expedients for raising money, really
compatible with either dignity or unworldliness. There is a poverty which
breeds plain living and high thinking, a fair Lady Poverty whom St Francis
wedded. But there is also an unworthy, grinding poverty, which occupies
the mind with a struggle to make two ends meet and dulls it to finer
issues. Too often the poverty of the nunneries was of the last type.
Let it be conceded, therefore, that the celibate ideal was a hard one,
that the nuns were often recruited without any regard for their fitness to
follow it, and that some of the conditions of convent life, insufficiently
withdrawn from the temptations and disorders of the outside world, served
to promote rather than to restrain a breach of it. With these preliminary
warnings, an attempt may be made to estimate the moral state of the
English nunneries. The evidence for such a study falls into three classes,
the purely literary evidence of moralist and story-teller, the general
statements of ecclesiastical councils and the exact and specific evidence
of the Bishops' Registers. The literary evidence will be treated more
fully in a further chapter and need not detain us here. Langland's nun,
who had a child in cherry time, Gower's voice crying against the frailty
of woman kind, the "Dame Lust, Dame Wanton and Dame Nice," who haunted the
imaginary convent of the poem _Why I can't be a Nun_, are all well known,
as are the serious _exempla_, the pretty Mary-miracles, and the ribald
tales, which have for their subject an erring nun. They are useful as
corroborative evidence, but without more exact information they would tell
us little that is of specific value. Similarly the enactments of church
councils and general chapters are quite general. By far the most valuable
evidence as to monastic morals is contained in the Bishops' Registers,
whether in the accounts of visitations and the injunctions which followed
them, or in the special mandates ordering inquiry into a scandal, search
after an apostate, or penance upon a sinner. The visitation documents are
particularly useful. Where full _detecta_ are preserved, the moral state
of a house is vividly pictured; there you may see the unworthy Prioress,
whose bad example or weak rule has led her flock astray; there the nuns
conniving at a love affair and assisting an elopement, or complaining
bitterly of the dishonour wrought upon their house. If the register of
visitations be a full one, it is possible to form an approximately exact
estimate of the moral condition of all the nunneries in a particular
diocese at a particular time, in so far as it was known to the Bishop. If
a diocese possess a long and fairly unbroken series of registers, as at
York and Lincoln, the moral history of the house may be traced over a
long period of years. Supplementary evidence is sometimes also to be found
in the Papal Registers, when the Pope had been petitioned in favour of
some nun, or had heard rumours of the evil state of some nunnery; but
Papal letters on the subject are comparatively rare. The mass of the
information which follows is therefore derived from the invaluable records
of the bishops.
It seems quite clear that the nuns who broke their vows were always
willing parties to the breach. Few men would have been bold enough to
ravish a _Sponsa Dei_. Sometimes a bishop was led to suppose that a nun
had been carried away against her will, but he always found out in the end
that she had been in the plot; all abductions were in reality elopements.
In the Register of Bishop Sutton of Lincoln there is notice of an
excommunication pronounced in 1290 against the persons who abducted Agnes
of Sheen, a nun of Godstow. The Bishop announces that she and another nun
were journeying peacefully towards Godstow in a carriage belonging to
their house, when suddenly, in the very middle of the King's highway at
Wycombe, certain sons of perdition laid violent hands upon them and
dragged the unwilling Agnes out of her carriage and carried her off. But
he seems to have received a different account of the affair later, for in
the following year he announces that Agnes of Sheen, Joan of Carru and "a
certain kinswoman of the Lady Ela, Countess of Warwick," professed nuns of
Godstow, have fled from their house and, casting off their habit, are
living a worldly and dissolute life, to the scandal of the neighbourhood;
and he pronounces excommunication against the nuns and all their
helpers[1375].
Some nuns contrived to meet their lovers secretly, within the precincts of
their own convents, or outside during the visits which they paid so freely
despite the Bull _Periculoso_; they made no effort to leave their order,
and were only discovered if their behaviour were such as to create a
public scandal among the other nuns, or in the neighbouring villages.
Others, smitten deeply by "amor che a nullo amato amar perdona," hailed
insistently by the call of life outside, cast off their habits and left
their convents. They risked their immortal souls by doing so, for the
Church condemned the crime of apostasy far more severely than that of
unchastity, since it involved the breach of all the monastic vows, instead
of only one, and brought religion into dishonour in the eyes of laymen.
The nun who sinned was given a penance; the nun who apostatised was
excommunicated; and there were few who could withstand for long the sense
of utter isolation, even from a God whose love they had scorned. The bride
of Christ who could live happily under the shadow of the ban, who could
marry knowing her union to be unrecognised and even cursed by the
Church[1376], must have been of a most unmedieval scepticism, a most
unfeminine indifference to the scorn of her fellows; or drowned so deep in
love that she counted Heaven well lost. There were not many such; and the
majority of apostates returned to their order, worn out by remorse or by
persecution, or convinced at last that mortal love was but what the author
of _Hali Meidenhad_ named it, "a licking of honey off thorns."
It is no wonder that the majority of these apostates returned. What were
they but individuals? Against them was arrayed the might of two great
institutions, the Church and the State. Sometimes the might of the Church
alone availed to retrieve them; terror brought them of their own free
will, or they found themselves caught in a net of threats and
excommunications, involving not only themselves, but all who helped them.
When Isabel Clouvill, Maud Titchmarsh and Ermentrude Newark, for some time
nuns professed in the house of St Mary in the Meadows (Delapre),
Northampton, left their convent and went to live in sin in the world, they
were excommunicated. Moreover their Bishop ordered the Archdeacon of
Northampton to summon them to return within a week, and all who received
them in their houses or gave them any help and counsel, were to be warned
to desist within three days and to be given a penance. The names of the
villages where they were received were to be notified to the Bishop and
their aiders and abettors were to appear before him[1377]. How many people
would suffer for long the displeasure of the Church for the sake of three
runaway nuns? Lovers might be faithful, but even lovers must eat and drink
and sleep beneath a roof: a nun was no nut-brown maid to live content in
greenwood, "when the shawes be shene." If the pair could escape to a town
where their story was not known, there was some chance for them; but
sooner or later the Church found them out.
Suppose they scorned the Church; suppose powerful friends protected them,
or careless folk who snapped their fingers at the priest and knew too much
about begging friars to hold one amorous nun a monstrous, unexampled
scandal. Then the Church could call in the majesty of the State to help,
and what was a girl to do? Can one defy the King as well as the Bishop? To
a soul in hell must there be added a body in prison? Elizabeth Arundell
runs away from Haliwell in 1382, nor will she return. The Prioress
thereupon petitions the King; let His Highness stretch forth the secular
arm and bring back this lamb which wanders from the fold. His Highness
complies; and his commission goes forth to Thomas Sayvill,
sergeant-at-arms, John Olyver, John York, chaplain, Richard Clerk and John
Clerk to arrest and deliver to the Prioress of Haliwell in the diocese of
London, Elizabeth Arundell, apostate nun of that house[1378]. The
sheriffs of London and Middlesex and Essex and Hertford, as well as a
sergeant-at-arms and three other men, are all set hunting for Joan
Adeleshey, nun of Rowney, who is wandering about in secular dress to the
great scandal of her order[1379]. The net is wide; in the end the nun
nearly always comes back. She comes to the Bishop for absolution. He sends
a letter on her behalf to her convent, bidding them receive her in
sisterly wise, but abate no jot of the penance imposed on her. The
prodigal returns kneeling at the convent gate and begging admission, for
it is an age of ceremony and in these dramatic moments onlookers learn
their lesson[1380]. The gates swing open and close again: Sister Joan is
back.
The most interesting of all the stories of apostasy which have been
preserved is the romantic affair of Agnes de Flixthorpe (alias de
Wissenden), nun of St Michael's, Stamford, which for ten years continually
occupied the attention of Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln[1381]. The story of
this poor woman is a tragic witness to the desperation into which convent
life could throw one who was not suited for it, as well as to the
implacable pursuit of her by the Church; for indeed the Hound of Heaven
appears in it in the aspect of a bloodhound. In 1309 Dalderby
excommunicated Agnes for apostasy and warned all persons against receiving
her into their houses or giving her any help. The next year he was obliged
to call in the secular arm against her. She was then living at Nottingham
and the Archdeacon of Nottingham was instructed to warn her to return.
Shortly afterwards the Bishop wrote to the Abbot of Peterborough, asking
him to see to her being taken back to her house and there imprisoned and
guarded. The combined efforts of the Sheriff, the Archdeacon of Nottingham
and the Abbot of Peterborough would appear to have succeeded. The hapless
woman was taken back to her house by force and still obdurate; and the
Bishop ordered her to be confined in a chamber with stone walls, each of
her legs shackled with fetters until she consented to resume her habit.
Her perseverance seems, however, to have worn out the nuns, and in 1311
the Bishop wrote to one Ada, sister of William de Helewell, instructing
her to take custody of Agnes. The reason for thus placing her in secular
charge was that her case was now _sub judice_, for two months later the
Bishop sent two commissioners to inquire into the whole question of the
apostasy. Agnes had declared that she was never professed at all, because
she had been married to one whose name she refused to give, before she
entered religion; and she still, said the bishop, continued in obstinacy.
But the Church did not easily relax its clutch. After three months the
Bishop wrote to his colleague the Bishop of Exeter, stating that Agnes de
Flixthorpe, after having been professed for twenty years, left her house
and was found wearing a man's gilt embroidered gown, that she was brought
back to her house, excommunicated and kept in solitude, and that she
remained obstinate and would not put on the religious habit. The Bishop,
thinking it desirable that she should be removed from the diocese for a
time, prayed his brother of Exeter that she might be received into the
house of Cornworthy, there to undergo penance and to be kept in safe
custody away from all the sisters. A clerk, Peter de Helewell (the
Helewells seem to have had some special interest in her), duly conveyed
Agnes far away from the level fields of the Midlands and the friends who
had hidden her from her persecutors, to the little Devonshire priory.
Solitude and despair for the moment broke her spirit and the next year,
in 1312, she declared her penitence and the Bishop of Exeter was
commissioned to absolve her; but she was kept in solitary confinement at
Cornworthy until 1314, when Peter de Helewell once more journeyed across
to Devonshire and brought her back to Stamford. Her native air blew hope
and rebellion once more into that wild heart. Four years later Dalderby
addressed a letter to the Prioress stating that Agnes de Flixthorpe had
three times left her order and resumed a secular habit and was now in the
world again and had been for two years past; reiterating once more the
futile injunction that the Prioress "under pain of excommunication and
without any dissimulation" was to bring her back and to keep her in safe
custody and solitude; the unfortunate Prioress had doubtless had more than
enough of Agnes de Flixthorpe and wished for nothing better than to leave
her in the world. The story ends abruptly here and it will never be known
whether Agnes de Flixthorpe was caught again.
It was perhaps merciful to receive again apostates whose hearts failed
them and who besought with tears to be reconciled to the Church. But the
forcible return of a hardened sinner cannot have raised the moral tone of
a house. Sometimes these nuns had lived for two or three years in the
world before they were brought back. Sometimes they broke out again,
yielded their easy virtue to a new lover, or fled once more into the
world. At Basedale (1308) Agnes de Thormondby had three times fallen thus
and left her order[1382]; and cases of more than one lover are not rare.
Sometimes the prioress of a house struggled to preserve her flock from
contagion by refusing to admit the returned sinner; thus the Prioress of
Rothwell in 1414 declined to comply with the Bishop's mandate to receive
back a certain Joan, saying that by her own confession the girl had lived
for three years with one William Suffewyk; whereupon the Bishop cited her
for disobedience and repeated his order[1383]. The only recorded case of a
woman being refused admission concerns a sister and not a professed nun;
in 1346 the Archbishop of York warned the Prioress of Nunappleton on no
account to receive back Margaret, a sister of the house, who had left it
pregnant, as he found that in the past she had on successive occasions
relapsed and been in a similar condition[1384]. It is significant that the
same Archbishop wrote to the Convent of Sinningthwaite (where they
opportunely preserved "the arm of St Margaret and the tunic of St Bernard,
believed to be good for women lying in") concerning one of their nuns
Margaret de Fonten, who had left the house pregnant, that "as she had only
done so once" her penance was to be mitigated[1385]. There can be no
plainer commentary on the literary theme of the nun unwillingly professed
than these cases of recurring frailty and apostasy. In the world these
girls might have been happy wives, each with a lover or two beside their
lords, like the ladies admired by Aucassin; for convents they were totally
unsuited and obeyed their natures only with woe and disgrace to themselves
and to their orders.
The pages of the Registers throw some light upon the partners of their
misdemeanours. In the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the
convents of France and Italy were the haunts of young gallants,
_monachini_, who specialised in intrigues with nuns[1386]. But the
seduction of a _Sponsa Dei_ was not a fashionable pursuit in medieval
England, and it was not as a rule lords and gentlemen who hung about the
precincts. Now we hear of a married man boarding in the house[1387], now
of the steward of the convent[1388], now of the bailiff of a manor[1389],
now of a wandering harp-player[1390], now of a smith's son[1391], now of
this or that layman, married or unmarried. But far more often the theme is
_Clericus et Nonna_. Nuns' lovers were drawn from that great host of
vicars, chaplains and chantry priests, themselves the children of the
Church and under the vow of chastity, whose needs were greatest and whose
very familiarity with the bonds of religion possibly bred contempt. As
visitors in their convents, or as acquaintances outside, the nuns were
constantly meeting members of this band of celibates, who roamed about "as
thick as motes in the sunbeam." They knew well how to sing, with Chaucer's
Pardoner, "Come hider, love, to me," and little enough like priests they
looked with their short tunics, peaked shoes and silvered girdles,
Bucklers brode and swerdes long,
Baudrike with baselardes kene,
Sech toles about her necke they hong,
With Antichrist seche prestes been.
Love would light on Alison, even were the lover a clerk and she a nun, and
sometimes where the priest had tempted he could absolve. What the young
man of fashion was to the Italian convent of the sixteenth century, the
chaplain was to the English convent of the fourteenth and fifteenth.
Sometimes the seducer was attached to the convent as chaplain and even
dwelt within the precincts. Bishop Sutton had to write to the Prioress of
Studley bidding her send away from the house John de Sevekwurth, clerk,
who had borne himself in such unseemly wise while he dwelt there, that he
had seduced two of the nuns[1392]. The chaplain of the house was involved
in cases at White Hall, Ilchester (1323)[1393], Moxby (1325)[1394] and
Catesby (1442)[1395], which may lend some support to the complaints of
Gower[1396] and other medieval moralists and an additional sting to the
good humoured chaff addressed by Chaucer's host to the nun's priest, Sir
John. That the spiritual father of the nuns could thus abuse his position
would seem almost incredible to anyone unfamiliar with medieval sources;
yet Gower goes further still, suggesting that even the visitors of the
convents were not always beyond suspicion[1397].
More often the lover had no connection with the nunnery, but had some post
as chaplain or vicar in the neighbourhood[1398]. Opportunities for a
meeting were not hard to obtain in the houses and gardens of the
town[1399], even in the church and precincts of the priory itself[1400],
as visitation _comperta_ show. Nor were cloistered monks proof against
temptation. They knew only too well what passionate hearts could beat
beneath a monastic habit and they knew the merry rhyme of Cockaygne land,
where every monk had his nun. It has already been shown that nuns and
monks met freely and that Bishops were constantly sending injunctions
against the admission of monks and friars to convents and the visits paid
by nuns to monasteries[1401]. Yet we hear of a nun of St Sepulchre's,
Canterbury, whose name scandal connected with the cellarer of the
Cathedral (1284)[1402]; of a nun of Lymbrook, who was the mistress of
William de Winton, Subprior of Leominster Priory, and not his only
mistress (1282)[1403]; of a nun of Swine, who had had two monks of the
Abbey of Meaux for her lovers (1310)[1404]. Bishop Alnwick's visitation of
the Lincoln diocese brought to light two such cases and in both the monk
was not the nun's sole lover. Agnes Butler (_alias_ Pery _alias_
Northampton) ran away from St Michael's, Stamford, for a day and a night
with Brother John Harreyes, an Austin friar; her secret was kept, but when
Alnwick visited her house in 1440 she had run away again, this time with a
harp-player, and had been living with him a year and a half at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, a far enough cry from Stamford[1405]. In 1445, when the
Bishop went to Godstow, he found Dame Alice Longspey grievously suspected,
by reason of her confabulations alone in the convent church with an Oxford
chaplain, who gave himself out to be her kinsman. A week later, while
visiting Eynsham Abbey, he received a further sidelight on her character
from the evidence of the abbot that
one brother John Bengeworthe, a monk, who had been imprisoned for his
ill desert, brake prison and went into apostasy, taking with him a nun
of Godstow, but he has now been brought back to the monastery and is
still doing penance.
The nun was Alice Longspey and it is significant that this particular
escapade had been concealed from the Bishop at his recent visitation of
Godstow[1406]. The most spirited enterprise of all, however, was the
combined effort of William Fox, parson of Lea (near Gainsborough) and John
Fox and Thomas de Lingiston, Friars Minor of Lincoln, who were indicted
before the Kings Justices at Caistor, because they came to Brodholme
Nunnery (one of the only two Premonstratensian houses in the kingdom) on
January 15th, 1350, and then and there "violently took and carried away,
against the peace of their lord the King, a certain nun, by name Margaret
Everingham, a sister of the said house, stripping her of her religious
habit and clothing her in a green gown of secular habit, taking also
divers goods to the value of 40 shillings"[1407].
Much as the church hated sin, it hated scandal even more and a nun might
often hope to have her frailty concealed by her fellows. Sometimes they
may have condoned it, for they are occasionally found assisting an
elopement[1408]; sometimes they feared episcopal interference and an evil
reputation for their house. But it was not always possible to conceal
these unhallowed unions and when a child was born the wretched nun could
not hope to escape disgrace and punishment[1409].
And dame Peronelle a prestes file--Priouresse worth she neuere
For she had childe in chirityme--all owre chapitere it wiste.
Usually Dame Pernell fled in despair to any friendly asylum which she
could find and only returned to her house after the birth and disposal of
her child. Sometimes she remained there in what privacy she might; and the
affair was managed with as little scandal as possible. The nuns of St
Michael's, Stamford, knew that their sister Margaret Mortimer had had a
child on this side of Easter; but even the Subprioress did not know (or
said she did not know) "of whom she conceived or whether she bare male or
female; howbeit she was absent from quire for a fortnight"[1410]. Once we
hear of an apostate, deserted and pregnant, coming back to St Mary's,
Winchester, and the wise and humane William of Wykeham writes to the
Abbess bidding her receive the girl gently and kindly, and keep her in
safety until the birth of her child, after which he will himself make
ordinance concerning her[1411]. It is hard to discover what became of
these most unwelcome children. It is not surprising that they sometimes
died[1412]. But if they lived their origin probably weighed but lightly on
them in those days, when it was regarded as no dishonour to have bastards,
who were often acknowledged by their fathers and provided for in their
wills side by side with true born sons and daughters. It is true that,
like other illegitimates, they could not be ordained or hold
ecclesiastical preferment, without a special dispensation. But even the
son of a nun could obtain such dispensation[1413] and even the daughter of
a nun did not always go undowered. There were not many monastic parents
like that seventeenth century abbess of Maubuisson who was rumoured to
have twelve children, who were brought up diversely, each according to the
rank of the father[1414], or like the Prior of Maiden Bradley, as
described by Henry VIII's commissioner, "an holy father prior and hath but
vj children and but one dowghter mariede, yet of the goods of the
monasteries trysting shortly to mary the rest, [and] his sones be tale men
waytting upon him"[1415]. Yet we hear of at least one Prioress who sold
the goods of her house to make a dowry for her daughter[1416].
If it be sought to know whether any houses were particularly liable to
scandals and enjoyed a bad name, it must be answered that it is almost
impossible to say. But isolated cases of immorality and apostasy come from
nunneries so widely distributed in different dioceses, that one must
conclude that most of them had at one time or another a sinner in their
midst. Often enough the case was isolated; occasionally there was scandal
about the general condition of a house in its neighbourhood. The
discipline and morals of convents were apt to vary with that of their
heads. It is significant that when a house is in a bad moral state the
fault may nearly always be traced to a weak or immoral prioress. So it was
at Wintney in 1405, at Redlingfield in 1427, at Markyate in 1433, at
Catesby in 1442, at St Michael's, Stamford, in 1445, at Littlemore in
1517, and at several Yorkshire nunneries. It is plain also that when a
convent was very small and poor, it was apt to become lax and disorderly.
The small Yorkshire houses bear witness to this and if further proof be
required the state of Cannington in 1351 and Easebourne in 1478 may be
quoted from among several other instances.
Cannington in Somerset was a small and poor house, but its nuns were drawn
from some of the best county families. In 1351 it was visited by
commissioners of Ralph of Shrewsbury, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and they
found something more like a brothel than a priory. Maud Pelham and Alice
Northlode (a young lady whom the Bishop had forced on the unwilling
convent, on his elevation to the See some twenty years before) were in the
habit of frequently admitting and holding discourse with suspected
persons. The inevitable chaplain was again the occasion for a fall. On
dark nights they held long and suspicious confabulations with Richard
Sompnour and Hugh Willynge, chaplains, in the nave of the convent church.
Hugh was apparently only too willing and Richard was even as Chaucer's
summoner, "as hot he was and lecherous as a sparrow," for (say the
commissioners) "it is suspected by many that as a result of these
conversations they fall into yet worse sin." Moreover
"the said sisters, and in particular the said Maud, not content with
this evil behaviour, are wont _per insolencias, minas et tactus
indecentes_ to provoke many of the serving men of the place to sin,"
and, "to make use of her own words she says that she will never once
say _Mea culpa_ for these great misdeeds, but turning like a virago
upon the prioress and the other sisters who abhor the aforesaid
things, when they reproach her, she threatens to do manly execution
upon them with knives and other weapons."
Nor was this all:
In the said visitation the charge was made, dreadful to say, horrible
to hear, and was proven by much evidence as to notoriety and by
confession, that a certain nun of the said house, Joan Trimelet,
having cast away the reins of modesty ... was found with child, but
not indeed by the Holy Ghost, and afterwards gave birth to offspring,
to the grave disgrace and confusion of her religion and to the scandal
of many.
These were the most serious charges; but the same visitation revealed that
the Prioress was weak and had been guilty of the simoniacal reception of
four nuns, for the sake of scraping together some money, while the
subprioress was incurably lazy, refused to attend matins and other
canonical hours, and neglected to correct her delinquent sisters[1417]. It
is plain that the whole house was utterly demoralised and the
demoralisation was possibly of long standing, for there had been one of
the usual election quarrels in the early part of the century, and in 1328
the then Bishop had issued a commission to inquire into the illicit
wanderings of certain nuns[1418]. Yet the priory was a favourite resort of
boarders.
Easebourne, again, was a poor but very aristocratic house, containing
towards the close of the fifteenth century from six to ten nuns. In 1478
Bishop Story of Chichester visited it and found grave need for his
interference. One of the nuns, Matilda Astom, deposed
that John Smyth, chaplain, and N. Style, a married man in the service
of Lord Arundel, had and were accustomed to have great familiarity
within the said priory, as well as elsewhere, with Dame Joan
Portsmouth and Dame Philippa King, nuns of the said priory, but
whether the said Sir John Smyth and N. Style abducted, or caused to be
abducted, the said Joan Portsmouth and Philippa King she knows not, as
she says.
(Another nun deposed that they did.)
And moreover she says that a certain William Gosden and John Capron of
Easebourne aforesaid, guarded and kept in their own houses the said
Joan and Philippa for some time before their withdrawal from the said
priory and took their departure with them and so were great
encouragers to them in that particular.
Another nun, Joan Stevyn, deposed that the two nuns had each had, long
before their withdrawal, "children or a child." Another said that Sir John
Senoke (i.e. Sevenoaks, clearly the same as John Smyth)
much frequented the priory, so that during some weeks he passed the
night and lay within the priory every night, and was cause, as she
believes, of the ruin of the said Sir John Smyth (_sic_, MS. ? Joan
Portsmouth). Also she says Sir John Smyth gave many gifts to Philippa
King.
All the nuns agreed in blaming the Prioress for not having properly
punished the two sinners and one raked up a vague story that "she had had
one or two children several years ago"; but as she admitted that this was
hearsay and as the Prioress was then at least fifty years old, too much
credit must not be given to it. On the same day a certain "Brother William
Cotnall," evidently attached in some capacity, perhaps as _custos_, to the
house, appeared before the Bishop and confessed that he had sealed a
licence to Joan Portsmouth to go out of the Priory and had himself sinned
with Philippa King. The two priests, Smyth and Cotnall, had not only
debauched the convent, but had done their best to ruin it financially; for
they had persuaded the Prioress to pawn the jewels of the house for
fifteen pounds, in order to purchase a Bull of Capacity for Cotnall, who
had then sealed with the common seal of the convent, against the wish of
the Prioress, a quittance for John Smyth concerning all and every sort of
actions and suits which the convent might have against him, and especially
the matter of the jewels[1419].
But if small houses fell easily into disorder, great abbeys were not
exempt from contagion. Cases of immorality are found at Wilton,
Shaftesbury, Romsey, St Mary's Winchester, Wherwell and Elstow, all of
them abbeys and among them the oldest and richest in the land. It is the
same with two other houses, famous in legend, Amesbury, where Guinevere
"let make herself a nun and wore white clothes and black," and Godstow,
where Fair Rosamond lay buried in the chapter house. Here, where
deathless romance had its dwelling place, it is not strange that the
winged god ever and again took his toll of the nuns. But what sorry
substitutes for Guinevere and Rosamond were the trembling apostates, who
fled into hiding to bear their miserable infants and were haled back by
bishops to do penance in the cloister.
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy
breath.
The ancient house of Amesbury fell into evil ways in the twelfth century.
In 1177 its abbess was said to have borne three children and its nuns were
notorious for their evil lives, whereupon the convent was dissolved, most
of the nuns being placed in other houses, and Amesbury was then
reconstituted as a cell of Fontevrault and peopled with a prioress and
twenty-four nuns, brought over from that house[1420]. Queen Eleanor, widow
of Henry III, took the veil there and by her influence Edward I allowed
his daughter Mary to become a nun there, together with twelve noble
maidens[1421]. But the sin of Guinevere haunted it. About Mary herself
there is an ancient unexplained scandal, for in a papal mandate she is
declared to have been seduced by John de Warenne, the rather disreputable
Earl of Surrey[1422]; and she seems to have been as much out of her house
as in it, for she constantly visited court and went on pilgrimages. Later
still the papal benevolence was exerted on behalf of Margaret Greenfield,
nun of Amesbury, who had borne a child after her profession (1398)[1423],
and Cecily Marmyll, who "after having lived laudably for some time in the
said monastery, allowed herself to be carnally known by two secular
priests and had offspring by each of them" (1424)[1424]. These ladies were
doubtless well born, with wealthy friends, who could afford to petition
the Pope and buy restoration to the monastic dignities and offices, which
they had lost by their fault. The story of Godstow is very similar. There
seems to have been some scandal about the morals of the subprioress in
1284, but Peckham announced that he did not believe a word of it[1425]. In
1290, however, a nun of noble birth was (as we saw) carried off from her
carriage; and she and two others were apostate in the following year.
Another apostate repented and was absolved in 1339. In 1432 a nun was
found by the bishop with child and in 1445 Dame Alice Longspey indulged in
the escapades already described with an Oxford priest and a monk of
Eynsham. All through the career of the convent, it was continually being
warned against the recourse of scholars from Oxford. Both Amesbury and
Godstow enjoyed fame and good repute and at the latter children were
received for education. Their history shows that even the most
aristocratic and popular houses fell sometimes on evil days and sometimes
sheltered unworthy inmates.
It is of considerable interest to study the condition of all the nunneries
in a particular part of the country at a particular date. An analysis of
the references to the Yorkshire houses has been made elsewhere[1426]; here
we may study a diocese in which the conditions of daily life were less
abnormal than they were on the Scottish border. A rather imperfect view of
the state of the diocese of Lincoln between the years 1290 and 1360 may be
gleaned from the registers of Bishops Sutton, Dalderby, Burghersh and
Gynewell; it is imperfect because there are not many visitation records,
and information has chiefly to be derived from episcopal mandates for the
return of apostates[1427], which leave us with little knowledge of the
internal discipline of houses from which nuns did not happen to run away.
The names of eleven out of the four and thirty[1428] nunneries of the
diocese occur in connection with apostates during these years, six
Benedictine, four Augustinian and one Cluniac. The apostasy of three
Godstow nuns in 1290 has already been described[1429]. There was an
apostate at Wothorpe in 1296[1430] and two years later a nun of Harrold
was found guilty of unchastity[1431]. Apostates are also mentioned from
Sewardsley in 1300[1432], from Goring in 1309 and again in 1358[1433],
from Markyate in 1336[1434] and from St Leonard's, Grimsby, in 1337[1435].
At Burnham there is the case of Margery Hedsor, who was excommunicated at
intervals for apostasy between 1311 and 1317[1436]. St Mary in the Meadows
(Delapre), Northampton, seems to have been in a bad state, for in 1300
three nuns, said to have been professed for some years, were
excommunicated for leaving their convent and living in carnal sin in the
world, and in 1311 there was another apostate from the house[1437]. St
Michael's, Stamford, provides the curious story of Agnes de Flixthorpe,
and the almost equally tragic case of Agnes Bowes, ex-Prioress of
Wothorpe, all of whose fellows had died in the Black Death and whose house
had therefore been annexed to St Michael's, Stamford, in 1354. She was
evidently unable to settle down in her new home and she ran away from it
five years later[1438]. In the plague year 1349, Ella de Mounceaux, a nun
of Nuncoton, who had obtained leave of absence and instead of returning
had become the mistress of John Haunsard, appeared with tears before the
Bishop and begged to be sent back to her house[1439].
This list of apostates is, as has been said, necessarily incomplete and
gives no details as to the state of the nunneries absolved. A much more
exact impression can be gained of the diocese a century later, during the
twenty years between 1430 and 1450, when Bishops Gray and Alnwick were
visiting the religious houses under their control; Alnwick's Register is
particularly valuable, since the verbal evidence of the nuns is preserved.
If we take Gray's Register first, we find serious charges of general
misconduct made against three houses, Markyate and Flamstead in 1431 and
Sewardsley in 1432. The Bishop wrote to a canon of Lincoln that
abundant rumour and loud whisperings have brought to our hearing that
in the priories of the Holy Trinity of the Wood by Markyate and of St
Giles by Flamstead ... certain things forbidden, hateful, guilty and
contrary to holy religion and regular discipline are daily done and
brought to pass in damnable wise by the said prioresses, nuns and
other, servingmen and agents of the said places; by reason whereof the
good report of the same places is set in jeopardy, the brightness and
comeliness of religion in the same persons are grievously spotted,
inasmuch as the whole neighbourhood is in commotion herefrom.
The canon is accordingly told to inquire into the scandals and punish
delinquents[1440]. Unfortunately the result of the inquiry has not been
preserved; three years later the Bishop deputed another commissioner to
inquire into the condition of Markyate and from his letters of commission
it is plain that he had himself visited the house, but that the Prioress
and sisters had managed to conceal their misdeeds from him. Since then he
had learnt that one of the nuns, Katherine Tyttesbury, had been guilty of
immorality and apostasy and that the Prioress herself had failed to obey
his injunctions. The commissioner was therefore ordered to go to Markyate,
absolve the apostate if she made submission and, if necessary, depose the
Prioress. The result of the inquiry was that the Prioress, Denise
Loweliche, was charged with having consorted with Richard, the steward of
the Priory, for five years and more, up to the time of his death, so that
"public talk and rumour during the said time were busy touching the
premises in the town of Markyate and other places, neighbouring and
distant, in the diocese of Lincoln and elsewhere." The Prioress denied the
charge and begged to be allowed to clear herself, so the commissioner
ordered her, in addition to her own oath, to find five out of her ten nuns
as compurgatresses, i.e. to swear to her innocence. She sought in vain for
help among her sisters; at the appointed hour she begged for an extension
of time and the commissioner granted her this boon, "so that she might be
able meanwhile to communicate and take counsel with her sisters," and also
"of a more liberal grace," declared himself ready to take the word of four
nuns on her behalf. The picture of the wretched Prioress going from nun
to nun, imploring each to forswear herself, with heaven knows what threats
and entreaties, is a melancholy one. Not even four nuns could be found to
swear to her innocence, so clear and notorious was her guilt, and she laid
her formal resignation in the hands of the bishop[1441].
The other nunnery against which a general charge of immorality was made by
the Bishop in 1434 was the Cistercian house of Sewardsley, of which he
said that the Prioress and nuns,
following the enticements of the flesh and abandoning the path of
religion and casting aside the restraint of all modesty and chastity,
are giving their minds to debauchery, committing in damnable wise in
public and as it were, in the sight of all the people, acts of
adultery, incest, sacrilege and fornication[1442].
The report of the inquiry held has not been preserved, but there was
obviously something seriously amiss. Gray had also to deal with individual
cases of immorality at three other houses. Already at Elstow in 1390
Archbishop Courtenay on his metropolitan visitation had made a general
injunction that
no nun convicted or publicly defamed of the crime of incontinency, be
deputed to any office within the monastery and especially to that of
gatekeeper, until it be sufficiently established that she has made
purgation of her innocence[1443],
an injunction repeated _verbatim_ by Bishop Flemyng of Lincoln in
1421[1444]. Now in 1432 Gray found that a nun named Pernell had been
"several times guilty of fleshly lapse" and was leading an apostate life
in secular dress outside the house; which speaks but ill for the moral
state of an important abbey[1445]. In the same year he found one of the
nuns of Godstow _enceinte_[1446], and in 1433 inquiry showed that Ellen
Cotton, nun of Heynings, had recently had a child[1447].
The worst cases found by Alnwick when he visited the religious houses of
the diocese ten years later have already been described and the evidence
of his register can be summarised briefly. All was well at Elstow,
Heynings and Markyate; Dame Pernell [Gauthorpe], Dame Ellen Cotton and
Dame Katherine Tyttesbury were all dwelling peaceably among their sisters;
even the disreputable Denise Loweliche was still, in spite of her
resignation, ruling as Prioress of Markyate. An echo of old difficulties
remained, however, at this last house and one nun begged the Bishop to
speak to the Prioress, "to the end that she take better heed to the nuns
who have previously erred, so that they be kept more strictly from erring
again than is wont"[1448]; evidently discipline was not strict. At Godstow
disorders had not yet ceased. The nuns received visitors and paid visits
freely and scholars of Oxford still haunted the house; moreover one of the
nuns, Dame Alice Longspey (of whom we have heard before), was of very easy
virtue[1449]. In two other houses Alnwick found great disorder prevailing:
the _regime_ of Margaret Wavere, Prioress of Catesby, has already been
described, her bad language, her temper, her dishonesty and her priestly
lover; and her chief accuser Isabel Benet had borne a child to the
chaplain of the house[1450]. Similarly we have seen into what a
disreputable state St Michael's, Stamford, fell under an aged and impotent
Prioress; how one nun ran away with an Austin friar and then with a
wandering harp-player, and how two others had borne children or were
notoriously held to be unchaste; this is one of the worst houses which the
records of medieval nunneries have brought to light[1451]. Finally there
is the doubtful case of Ankerwyke, where the Prioress is said through
negligence to have allowed no less than six nuns to go into apostasy, a
fact which she freely admitted; but whether they had merely removed
themselves through discontent with an unpopular prioress, or whether they
had eloped it is impossible to say. At any rate they had not
returned[1452].
It is interesting to attempt a statistical estimate of the moral condition
of the Lincoln nunneries during the twenty years from 1430 to 1450. It is
possible to do so with some accuracy because the nuns giving evidence in
each convent are enumerated in Alnwick's reports. If we omit the general
charges against Sewardsley and Flamstead and the ambiguous apostasy of the
six nuns of Ankerwyke, we have twelve out of 220 nuns guilty of immoral
behaviour, or a little over five per cent.; but this is certainly an
understatement, having regard to the loss of the Sewardsley and Flamstead
inquiries and of other visitations by the two bishops, to say nothing of
possible concealment by the nuns. Between them Gray and Alnwick have left
on record visitations or inquiries relating to twenty-four houses and
cases of immorality came to light at eight, that is to say at one-third of
the number visited. All except two of these, Elstow and Heynings, were
very seriously affected, more than one nun having succumbed to sin; and
the Prioress was found guilty in two and probably suspected in two others.
The situation seems a serious one and Alnwick's visitations of the houses
of monks and canons which were in his diocese show that the men were more
lax in their behaviour than the women.
A similar statistical estimate can be made of the condition of convents in
the diocese of Norwich during the visitation by Bishop Nykke or his
commissary in 1514[1453]. Eight convents, containing between them
seventy-two nuns, were visited and only one case of immorality was found,
at Crabhouse[1454]. This is a far more favourable picture than that
presented by the diocese of Lincoln in the previous century. Again in 1501
Dr Hede visited the nunneries of the diocese of Winchester as commissary
of the Prior of Canterbury, during the vacancy of the sees of Canterbury
and Winchester[1455]. The diocese contained only four houses, but three of
them were important abbeys, St Mary's, Winchester, with fourteen nuns,
Wherwell with twenty-two and Romsey with forty; the fourth was Wintney
Priory, with ten nuns. All seem to have been in perfect order except
Romsey, which had fallen into decay under the _regime_ of an abbess who
had herself been guilty of adultery, and where one of the nuns was
charged with incontinence with the vicar of the parish church.
Unfortunately the record of the visitation is left incomplete and there
are no injunctions; hence it is impossible to say whether the last charge
was true, but the abbey had been in a disordered state for some years
past[1456]. Another diocese for which an estimate can be made is
Chichester, but it contained only two nunneries, Rusper and Easebourne. At
Bishop Story's visitation in 1478 all was well at Rusper, a poor and
ruinous little house containing seven nuns; but all was very far from well
at Easebourne, where six nuns remained and two had gone into apostasy
after conducting themselves in the thoroughly dissolute manner described
above[1457]. At Bishop Sherborne's visitation in 1524 the number of nuns
at Rusper had fallen to four, but there was no complaint except that a
certain William Tychenor had frequent access to the priory and sowed
discord between the Prioress and her three sisters. At Easebourne there
were eight nuns, but the house seems not to have recovered its tone after
the scandals of 1524. The subprioress deposed that some twelve years
before a certain Ralph Pratt had seduced a sister; yet the convent had
granted him the proceeds of the church of Easebourne and he still had much
access to the priory[1458]. It is a pity that more of these statistical
estimates, imperfect as they are, cannot be made.
It remains to consider what steps were taken to punish offenders and to
reform evils. The crime of seducing a nun was always considered an
extremely serious one; she was _Sponsa Dei_, inviolable, sacrosanct.
Anglo-Saxon law fined the ravisher heavily, and a law of Edward I declared
him liable to three years imprisonment, besides satisfaction made to the
convent. There is, however, no evidence that the State imprisoned or
otherwise punished persons guilty of this crime, though it was always
ready to issue the writ _De apostata capiendo_, for the recovery of a monk
or nun who had fled. Whenever the lover of a nun is found undergoing
punishment, it is always a punishment inflicted by the Church. If a man
had abducted a nun, or were accused of seducing her, he was summoned
before the Bishop or Archdeacon and required to purge himself of the
charge. If he pleaded "Not guilty" a day was appointed, on which he had
to clear himself by the oath of a number of compurgators. Thus the
Prioress of Catesby's lover, the priest William Taylour, was summoned
before Bishop Alnwick in the church of Brampton; there he denied the crime
and was told to bring five chaplains, of good report, who had knowledge of
his behaviour, in a few days' time to the parish church of Rothwell[1459].
The result of his attempt to find compurgators is not known, but the
Prioress had already failed to get four of her nuns to support her and had
been pronounced guilty. One wonders what happened when the man produced
compurgators and the lady failed to do so: for these misdemeanours _a
deux_ the compurgatorial system would seem a little uncertain.
If a man's guilt were proven by his failure to provide compurgators or to
come before the Bishop, it remained to decree his punishment. The obdurate
were excommunicated until such time as they submitted. The penitent were
adjudged a penance. There is abundant evidence that the penance given by
the Church was always a severe one. The classical instance is that of Sir
Osbert Giffard in 1286. The Giffards were a large and influential West
country family and in the last quarter of the thirteenth century several
of the children of Hugh Giffard of Boyton rose to high positions in the
Church. His eldest son, Walter, became in turn Bishop of Bath and Wells
and Archbishop of York, dying in 1279, and his second son Godfrey became
Bishop of Worcester. Of his daughters one, Juliana, is found as Abbess of
Wilton in 1275, another, Mabel, as Abbess of Shaftesbury in 1291, and a
third, Agatha, would seem to have held a position of some importance at
Elstow, though she was never Abbess there[1460]. These great ladies do not
seem to have had a very good influence in their nunneries, in spite of the
exalted position of their brothers. In 1270 the Bishop of Lincoln writes
apologetically to Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York, concerning scandals
which have arisen in Elstow, "whence more frequently than in any other
house beneath our rule scandals of wicked deeds arise," and it is clear
from his letter that the Abbess and the Bishop's sister were
implicated[1461]. In 1298 also the Abbess and nuns of Shaftesbury had
incurred excommunication "for their offences against God and by the
creation of scandal"[1462]. But the most serious mishap occurred at Wilton
in 1286. Here Juliana Giffard[1463] had under her rule a young relative
named Alice Giffard, and in this year Sir Osbert Giffard, knight (whose
exact relationship to the Abbess and the Bishop and to Alice is not
clear), "with sacrilegious hand ravished and abducted in the silence of
the night sisters Alice Russel and Alice Gyffard, professed according to
the rule of St Benedict in the monastery of Wylton." Archbishop Peckham
and the Bishop of Salisbury forthwith excommunicated Sir Osbert, who
eventually made his submission. It was indeed an unfortunate scandal to
occur in a Bishop's family and created a great stir in the country round.
Godfrey's concern is shown by the appearance in his Worcester Register of
the Bishop of Salisbury's letter to the Sub-dean of Salisbury and others
announcing the penance to be imposed upon the abductor[1464].
This penance was as follows:
The bishop enjoined upon him that he should restore the aforesaid
sisters and all goods of the monastery withdrawn and should make all
the satisfaction that he possibly could to the abbess and convent. And
that on Ash Wednesday in the church of Salisbury, the said crime being
solemnly published before the clergy and people, he should humbly
permit himself to be taken to the door of the church, with bare feet,
in mourning raiment and uncovered head, with other penitents and
should be beaten with sticks about the church on three holy days and
on three Tuesdays through the market of Salisbury and so often and in
like manner about the church of Wylton and through the market there
and he should be likewise beaten about the church of Amesbury and the
market there and about the church of Shaftesbury and the market there.
In his clothing from henceforth there shall not appear any cloaks of
lamb's wool, gilt spurs or horse trappings, or girdle of a knight,
unless in the meantime he should obtain special grace of the king, but
he shall take journey to the Holy Land and there serve for three
years[1465].
The penance was thus severe; but it is another matter to say that it was
always duly performed. A man who had already risked his immortal soul
once, by the seduction of a nun, might well choose to undergo
excommunication and risk it a second time, by refusing to do penance. The
lover of a nun of Harrold in 1298 was thus excommunicated for refusing to
be beaten through the market-place[1466]. Moreover there were endless ways
of delaying the humiliating ceremony. Take the case of Richard Gray, the
married boarder to whom Elizabeth Willoughby bore a child at St Michael's,
Stamford. On July 3rd, 1442, in the parish church of Wellingborough, the
Bishop caused him to swear upon the Holy Book that he would abjure the
priory and all communication with Elizabeth. He then sentenced him to four
floggings round one of the churches of Stamford on four Sundays or feast
days,
carrying in his hand before the procession of the same church a taper
of one pound's worth of wax, being clothed in his doublet and linen
garments only, and on the last of the said four days, after the
procession is finished, he has to offer the said taper to the high
altar of the said Church.
Moreover he was to perform a like penance on four Fridays, going round the
market-place of Stamford, and within a month he was also to make
pilgrimage on horseback to Lincoln Cathedral and when he came within five
miles of Lincoln, to dismount and go barefoot to the cathedral and there
offer to the high altar a taper of one pound's weight. The very evening,
however, that this severe penance was imposed, Richard Gray came before
the Bishop again and made lowly supplication that he would deign to temper
the penance; whereupon Alnwick, "moved with compassion on him," commuted
the penance round the market-place to a payment of twenty shillings to the
nuns of St Michael's, to be paid within a month, and another twenty
shillings to the fabric of the cathedral church, to be paid within six
weeks. Gray was to bring the Bishop letters testimonial as to the payment
of the forty shillings and the performance of the penance at Lincoln, also
within six weeks. But Richard had no intention of buying expensive wax
candles, paying forty shilling fines, catching cold in his shirt at
Stamford or humiliating himself at Lincoln. When summoned to do his
penance he appealed to the court of Canterbury. The Bishop then got
licence from the commissary of the official in that court to proceed
against the delinquent and summoned him to show cause why he had not done
penance. On November 15th, 1442, the slippery Richard appeared by proxy
before the Bishop's commissioner and said that he was "withheld by so many
and so sore infirmities of fevers and other kinds, lying in his bed every
other day, that he could not without grievous bodily harm appear in person
in or on the same day and place." The commissioner postponed his
appearance until December 11th and eventually he appeared on that day, but
showing no cause why he had not performed his penance, and was
excommunicated again by the Bishop, at which point he drops out of
history, with his penance still unperformed[1467].
It was no doubt an easier matter to exact penance from a nun. The apostate
was excommunicated until she made submission and returned to her convent.
Sometimes a very obdurate sinner was transferred to do penance at another
nunnery; the punishment was a common one in the diocese of York[1468] and
a wicked Prioress of Redlingfield was sent to Wix in 1427[1469]; but
nunneries not unnaturally sometimes objected to having to support at their
cost an evilly disposed woman from another house[1470]. More commonly the
sinner did penance in her own house. If particularly obdurate, she was
imprisoned for a time and even, if need be, shackled, in some secure place
in the convent[1471]. A severe penance was imposed in 1321 by Archbishop
Melton upon Maud of Terrington, an apostate nun of Keldholme, who had for
long lived in sin in the world. She was to be last in choir at all the
canonical hours, and when not in choir to be confined in solitude. She was
never to go out of the precincts of the cloister and was to be forever
debarred from speaking with lay folk and from sending or receiving
letters. She was not to be allowed to wear the black Benedictine veil,
which marked her as a nun, until such time as the Archbishop should
mitigate her penance, and should fast with bread and vegetables on
Wednesdays and bread and water on Fridays. For the rest of her life she
was never to wear a shift next her skin. On Wednesdays and Fridays she was
to go barefoot in the presence of the convent round the cloister, all
secular persons having been excluded, and there receive two beatings by
the hand of the Prioress and on each other day of the week she was to
receive one such discipline. Every week she was to say two psalters,
besides _Placebo_ and _Dirige_ and the commendation for the dead, which
she was to say each day for the remission of her sins. She was never to be
present at the daily consultations of the chapter, or at any other
convent business, but "let her lie prone before the convent at the
entrance of the choir, to be spurned by their feet, if they will"[1472].
This was a particularly severe, not to say inhuman, penance and it is
unlikely that such was the rule even in the case of obdurate offenders. A
guilty nun at Crabhouse in 1514 is told to sit last among her sisters for
a month and to say seven psalters during that period[1473] and a novice at
Redlingfield in 1427 is to go in front of the solemn procession of the
convent on Sunday, wearing no veil and clad in white flannel[1474]. The
former was not an apostate, though she had had a child, and the latter was
not yet professed and had been led away by the bad example of her
Prioress; nevertheless these penances seem sufficiently mild, in
comparison with the orthodox view of their offence. Fasting and
penitential psalms and some outward mark of degradation, such as the loss
of the veil and of the place in choir and chapter, to which the nun's
standing in the convent entitled her, were common penances. A guilty nun
was also debarred from holding any conventual office; but it must be
admitted that this salutary precaution was not always strictly carried
out. Occasionally a visitor is obliged to make a general injunction
against the holding of office by nuns convicted or suspected of
incontinence; Archbishop Courtenay mentions specifically the office of
portress[1475], a necessary precaution when one remembers how often the
French and Italian _touriere_ of a later date was little better than a
procuress. Frequently notorious evil-doers retained their position, and it
is surprising to notice how often persons who were obviously unsuitable
and immoral were elected to the headship of a house, or continued to hold
that position after conviction. Sabina de Apelgarth, who had been in
apostasy when a simple nun of Moxby in 1310, is found holding office in
1318, for Archbishop Melton orders her to be removed from all offices and
not to go outside the convent and couples his injunction with a general
prohibition against any office being held by a nun convicted _de lapsu
carnis_. Yet she apparently became Prioress of the house, for her removal
on account of further misconduct is noted in 1328[1476]. Isabel de
Berghby, Prioress of Arthington, apostatised in 1312, but returned
eighteen months later and was re-elected Prioress in 1349[1477]. In 1310
Isabella de St Quintin was ordered to be removed from the office of
cellaress in the presence of the whole convent of Nunkeeling, and the nuns
were ordered not to appoint her to any other office nor allow her to leave
the house; but in 1316 Isabella de St Quintin was elected Prioress[1478].
Denise Loweliche, the Prioress of Markyate, who had been so ready to add
perjury to incontinence in 1433 and had resigned only because she could
not find four nuns to swear to her innocence, was still, despite her
resignation, Prioress when Alnwick visited the house in 1442. Abbess
Elizabeth Broke of Romsey was similarly re-elected, after having been
found guilty of perjury and adultery[1479]. Even the wicked Prioress of
Littlemore (1517) was deprived but "allowed to perform the functions of
her office for the present, provided she did nothing without the advice of
the Bishop's commissary" and she was still acting-Prioress and behaving as
badly as ever when the house was visited again some nine months
later[1480]. Moreover it was possible for an influential sinner to obtain
a dispensation reinstating her to her position and allowing her to hold
office. Some curious papal mandates to this effect are extant. Joan
Goldesburgh, a nun of Nunmonkton, is so dispensed in 1450 "to receive and
hold any dignities, even of Abbess and Prioress, even conventual, of her
order, even if they be elective and have cure of souls"[1481], and two
nuns of Amesbury were restored to their voice and place in stall and
chapter, and rendered eligible for all offices even that of Abbess in 1398
and 1424[1482]. On the other hand such a dispensation shows that the
penance had been rigorously enforced; one of the nuns (a serious offender
who had had children by two priests) is said to have lived laudably in the
nunnery for six years since her condemnation. Occasionally, moreover, the
office of head of the house is specifically excepted in the
dispensation[1483].
Besides punishing offenders, the Bishops took steps to effect a general
reform of convents which they found in an unsatisfactory moral state, by
removing as far as possible the conditions which facilitated immorality.
Such steps usually consisted in forbidding the nuns to wander about freely
outside their houses and in prohibiting the visits of men, except under
safeguards. Sometimes a careful Bishop issues a special injunction against
a particular visitor, sometimes he enumerates painfully a list of
chaplains and others whose access to the precincts of a nunnery is
forbidden. These attempts to enforce enclosure have been dealt with
elsewhere[1484], and a study of convent morals shows how necessary a
principle of monastic life it was and how closely the breach of it was
connected with moral decay. The attempt at reform by stricter enclosure
was, as we know, not a success. The Bishops "beat the air" in vain with
their restrictions. In the nature of the case the control exercised by any
Bishop over the monastic houses of his diocese varied according to his own
energy or leisure. If visitation were made only at rare intervals, abuses
persisted and became public scandals before they were reformed, and even
after visitation it by no means followed that abuses would be
corrected[1485]. The fact is that the medieval bishops were too badly
overworked to be able to keep any systematic control over the monastic
houses in their dioceses, in spite of the energy which some of them gave
to the task and in spite of a liberal use of commissioners.
To pass a final judgment on the moral state of English nunneries, as
revealed by the bishops' registers during the later middle ages, is, as
has already been suggested, a difficult task. From the monastic standard
it cannot be said to have been high, but from the human standard it is not
difficult to excuse these women, professed so young and with so little
regard for vocation, _suos calores macerantes juveniles_. The nun was not
a saint; she was "a child of our grandmother Eve, a female, or for thy
more sweet understanding, a woman"; and only a habit of making allowances
for human nature can give a right understanding of her. The explanation of
the matter seems to be that monasticism as a career is not for _l'homme
moyen sensuel_, or even for _la femme moyenne sensuelle_; and in the later
middle ages many folk of average, or more than average, passions entered
it. Indeed its whole career is from the beginning a magnificent series of
recoveries from a melancholy series of relapses. Even in the Anglo-Saxon
period, the golden age of the English nunneries, the scandal of Coldingham
has to be set against the glory of Whitby[1486]. In the height of the
twelfth century the misdeeds of Amesbury provoke episcopal, royal, and
papal interference and nuns from the new order of Fontevrault are brought
in to reform the house[1487]. In the middle of the splendid thirteenth
century that hammer of the monks, Bishop Grosseteste, who _in religiosos
terribiliter et in religiosas terribilius consuevit fulgurare_, conceived
himself justified in employing measures of incredible brutality for
assuring himself of the virtue of his nuns[1488]; and the evidence of
bishops' registers for the second half of the century does not give an
impression of much greater strictness of life than is found in the
nunneries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when monasticism had,
by the admission of its apologists, passed its prime[1489].
Nevertheless there was a steady movement downhill in the history of the
monasteries during the last two centuries and a half before the
dissolution[1490]. They shared in the growing degradation of the Church in
its head and members. The "mighty lord who broke the bonds of Rome" may
have been actuated merely by a desire to break the bonds of matrimony, but
there was some need for reform among the monastic houses. It is true that
the so-called scandalous _comperta_ of Henry VIII's visitors cannot be
taken at their face value; these men had been sent to make a black case
and they made it, nor was their own character such as to encourage the
slightest belief in their words. Yet in those _comperta_ themselves there
is nothing which is unfamiliar to the student of episcopal registers for
two centuries before, and charges which a Layton made with levity, an
Alnwick was forced sometimes to make with despair[1491]. Yet this may be
said for the nunneries of the age, over and above the allowance for human
frailty: not all, nor even the majority, were tainted with serious sin,
though all were worldly. We think a house particularly disordered, only
because we have record of its failings; of its virtues we have no record
in inquisitions which were directed towards the discovery of abuses. It is
true that this cuts both ways, and that in dioceses where few or no
registers and reports remain the fair fame of the nuns remains
unblemished, whatever their lives may have been. Happy the nunnery that
has no history. Nevertheless in this as in so many other tales of human
endeavour
The evil that men do lives after them--
The good is oft interred with their bones,
and it will never be known what lives of self-sacrifice and devotion may
be hidden behind the _Omnia bene_ of an obscure visitation record. The
words of the sixteenth century poem are the wisest judgment on medieval
nuns:
For sum bene devowte, holy and towarde,
And holden the right way to blysse;
And sum bene feble, lewde and frowarde,
Now god amend that ys amys.
The dissolution of the monasteries amputated in England a limb of the
Church, which though diseased was yet far from putrid. We have no means of
guessing what the later history of the nunneries might have been. The
English nunneries compare on the whole favourably with contemporary French
and German houses, as revealed by the visitations of Rigaud and Busch, and
they certainly never reached such a laxity of morals and such a complete
absence of any spirituality as was reached by the convents of the Latin
countries at a later date. It was never, in the middle ages, the mode to
be a _monachino_ as it was later in France and Italy[1492]. The life of a
nun had not yet lost all of its original purpose and meaning and the
careers of a Virginia Maria de Leyva, of a Lucrezia Buonvisi, of an
Angelique d'Estrees, even of such a virtuous flirt as Felice Rasponi,
would not have been possible then[1493]. No Casanova could have found in
medieval England opportunity for those astounding intrigues with the M.M.
of Venice and the M.M. of Chambery, which fill so large a place in his
_Memoirs_ and are so significant a commentary upon monastic life in the
eighteenth century[1494]. The reason lies perhaps in the less inflammable
temperament of the North, but still more in the different standards of the
time. The middle ages expressed and satisfied their passions freely, but
debauchery was then less all-pervading and less elegant. Passion was not
yet degraded to fashion and the lover had not yet become the gallant. The
sins of these fifteenth century nuns are a matter of rude nature and not
of "all the adulteries of art." That which was expelled with a pitchfork
had not yet returned with a fan. The distinction is a relevant one. A vow
broken for love may yet have force and reality; a vow broken for amusement
has none. The medieval nunneries never sank to the moral degradation of a
more refined and artificial age.