THE MACHINERY OF REFORM
And whan they had resceyuede [t]her charge
They spared nether mud ne myer,
But roden over Inglonde brode and large,
To seke owte nunryes in every schyre.
_Why I can't be a Nun_ (15th century).
A community, living together under a somewhat rigid rule and obliged to
concern itself with a large measure of temporal business, has to face many
difficulties and abuses. The strictness of its discipline and the
prosperity of its affairs will necessarily depend very largely upon the
character and intelligence of the individuals who compose it. A diseased
limb may corrupt the whole body politic; or on the other hand a low state
of vitality in the body politic may render the limb liable to corruption.
Again rule and routine inevitably tend in the course of time to become
slackened, as human nature wins its way against the austerity of a
primitive ideal. Every community, therefore, needs some sort of machinery
on the one hand for keeping itself up to the mark and on the other for the
external inspection and regulation of its affairs. The monastic houses of
the middle ages were provided with internal machinery for self-reform in
the daily meeting of the whole convent in the chapter house, to transact
business and to denounce and punish faults. The external machinery was
provided by an elaborate system of visitation by ecclesiastical
authorities, sometimes by a parent house, sometimes by the chapter-general
of the order, sometimes by the bishop of the diocese; by means of such
visitation breaches of discipline and morality could be rectified and the
temporal business of the house could be scrutinised for evidence of
mismanagement.
The daily routine of the chapter house is too well known to need a
detailed description here. The whole monastic community was bound by the
rule to meet every day, usually after Prime, in the chapter house on the
east side of the cloister, with the head of the house (to use modern
terminology) in the chair. At this meeting a chapter of the Rule was
solemnly read, after which the corporate business of the house was
discussed. Leases, sales, and corrodies were approved or disapproved, and
the common seal of the convent was affixed to letters and grants, in the
presence of all the monks or nuns. The neglect to transact common business
by common advice in chapter was not infrequently a legitimate source of
complaint by a convent against its superior. Besides temporal business of
this kind, the moral and spiritual welfare of the convent was considered.
Wrongdoers publicly accused themselves of fault, or were publicly accused
by their fellows, and correction was administered by a "discipline," or by
some other penance. By means of the chapter, a convent of reasonable
seriousness and goodwill could keep up its own standard of life and
control its own backsliders.
Undoubtedly the chapter was a useful instrument of self-reform, but its
efficacy obviously depended entirely on whether the convent as a whole
were desirous of keeping the Rule and punishing black sheep. If the number
of sheep who were black, or even grey, preponderated and if laxity were
general in the community, the chapter would not concern itself to raise
its own standard. From the frequent injunctions of medieval bishops that
the daily meeting in the chapter should not be omitted, it would appear
that not only the public transaction of business, but also the public
confession and punishment of faults was sometimes neglected. Moreover,
unless entered into with modesty and a sense of responsibility, the right
of every member to charge another with fault was a sure source of discord,
for it certainly provided ample opportunity for frail human nature to
exhibit malice. The younger nuns were apt to indulge in what their elders
regarded as impudent criticism; private grudges found an opportunity to
vent themselves; and rival cliques sometimes turned the meeting into an
unseemly hubbub. It was perhaps for this reason that the Abbot of St
Albans, visiting Sopwell in 1338, decreed that
for the avoidance of evils and for the promotion and maintenance of
peace and charity, but three voices shall henceforth be heard in
chapter, to wit those of the president, of the subprioress or of
another official of the order, and of her who shall be challenged or
accused of a fault[1495].
Another common abuse was the gossip to which such revelations in chapter
sometimes gave rise, gossip which was not confined to the ears of the
nuns. Bishop Flemyng's injunction to Elstow in 1421-2 "that the Abbess
shall narrowly espy what secrets of chapter be in any way disclosed,
punishing severely also those who trangress in this matter"[1496] is only
one of many similar injunctions; and visitation reports sometimes show
considerable interference by lay folk in cloister disputes. During the
election quarrel which raged at Nunkeeling from 1316 to 1319 Archbishop
Melton accused certain nuns of revealing the secrets of the chapter to
seculars and adversaries outside, and during a similar quarrel at
Keldholme a number of laymen were cited, together with certain nuns, for
obstructing the appointment of a new prioress in 1308[1497]. One is left
with the impression that the nuns called in the support of their friends
and kinsfolk in the world, if they found themselves at odds with their
Prioress. In the feud between the wicked Prioress of Littlemore and her
nuns (1518) both parties had adherents in Oxford: the Prioress brought in
her friends to subdue the nuns and the nuns fled to theirs, when they
could no longer bear the Prioress[1498]. At Hampole, where Archbishop
Bowet found the Prioress and nuns out of all charity with each other in
1411, he even had to ordain that no nun, having any complaint against the
Prioress, was to ignore the Archbishop's authority and call in the aid of
any secular or regular person. If any sister wished to complain and could
find another to join with her, she was to have access to the Archbishop,
the necessary expenses being given her by the Prioress. If the Prioress
refused leave or delayed it beyond three days, the two nuns were to have
access to the Archbishop, without incurring the charge of apostasy[1499].
Sometimes the revelation of convent _secreta_ was made in a spirit of pure
gossip, rather than with the object of obtaining external aid; the
complaint of the nuns of Catesby in 1442 that the Prioress' mother "knows
well the secrets of the chapter and publishes them in the town; so also
does the Prioress publish them," and that of the nuns of Gracedieu in
1440-1 that "the Prioress makes the secrets of their religious life common
among the secular folk that sit at table with her" are typical of many
others[1500].
The meeting of the chapter, therefore, though a useful instrument of
self-reform, when the necessary goodwill was present, was liable to
abuses. It was apt to be neglected; it gave rise to ill-feeling; and it
sometimes led to undesirable gossip, both inside and outside the house. It
is obvious, moreover, that a measure of external control was necessary to
keep up the standard of life in the many monastic houses of Europe and to
reform common breaches of discipline. This external control was exercised
in the middle ages by three distinct authorities: (1) a parent house, (2)
the chapter general of the Order and (3) the diocesan of the see.
Certain houses, which had founded other houses as offshoots or colonies,
retained the right to visit and reform their daughter-houses. Some
monasteries had small outlying priories, known as "cells," founded
originally to look after distant estates of the house; sometimes such
cells contained only one or two monks, living in an ordinary dwelling
house, and had no real existence apart from the parent house. Sometimes,
however, the cells grew and achieved an independent existence, though
still maintaining their connection with their founders. This frequently
happened to the English cells of foreign houses, and certain cells of
English houses also grew into independent priories. Among nunneries,
originally founded as cells of foreign houses, may be mentioned Lyminster
in Sussex. Few English nunneries had cells; but Seton in Coupland was a
cell of Nunburnholme. The connection between mother house and cell is
illustrated by a licence granted by Archbishop Greenfield to the Prioress
of Nunburnholme in 1313 to visit, "your cell of Seton in Coupland, which
is subject to your monastery," taking with her two honest nuns of the
house, in order to visit the nuns of Seton, and returning without
delay[1501]. The visitation of the cell was usually included in that of
the mother house and the larger independent cells were often subject to
episcopal visitation.
Rather different in origin from a cell was a house founded by a monastery,
less as a colony than as a distinct but dependent institution. The most
interesting example of this is provided by the great Abbey of St Albans,
which founded two nunneries, St Mary de Pre and Sopwell. Both the
nunneries were always very dependent on St Albans and are often mentioned
in the chronicles of that house. St Mary de Pre, having been founded in
the twelfth century as a hospital for leprous women living under a rule,
became later an ordinary nunnery, containing nuns, and both lay sisters
and lay brothers; in the time of Abbot Thomas de la Mare (1349-96) the
rank of sister was abolished and a higher standard of education was
insisted upon for the nuns, who were to profess the rule of St
Benedict[1502]. Sopwell was also founded in the twelfth century as a
Benedictine nunnery[1503]. In both houses nuns were admitted only by
consent of the Abbot of St Albans, who also claimed the right to appoint
their prioress. In both the temporal affairs of the convent were
administered by wardens, appointed by the Abbot from among the monks of
the abbey[1504]. The close connection was not always maintained without
friction. At Sopwell the nuns more than once tried to elect their own
prioress and seem to have found the Abbot somewhat high-handed[1505]. In
1481 Abbot Wallingford sent the archdeacon and subprior of the house to
remove the prioress from office on account of her age and infirmities and
to put Elizabeth Webbe in her place, but some years later the archdeacon
deposed Elizabeth, whereupon she brought an action against him in the
Court of Arches and was reinstated. Thereupon "two monks of St Albans,
sent by the archdeacon, came to the nunnery, broke down Elizabeth's door
with an iron bar, beat her and put her in prison," after which she
appealed to Archbishop Morton as Chancellor[1506]. She may have been at
the bottom of the famous letter written by Morton to the Abbot of St
Albans in 1490, accusing him of changing prioresses at Pre and at Sopwell
as he pleased and deposing good and religious persons for the benefit of
the evil and vicious, and stating that the Prioress of St Mary de Pre,
Helen Germyn, was a married woman who had left her husband for a lover and
that she and some of her nuns were leading immoral lives with monks of St
Albans[1507]. The same letter accused the monks put in as wardens of using
their opportunities to dissipate the goods of the house, and the turbulent
Prioress of Sopwell, Elizabeth, is found complaining to the Chancellor
that a deed of lease by the convent had been secretly altered to their
disadvantage by their "keeper" and his clerk, who had been bribed by a
tenant[1508].
It is difficult to say how much truth there was in these charges and they
certainly do not seem to show overmuch care for the reform of the daughter
houses by their august parent. But it would not be fair to judge St Albans
by this quarrel at the end of its career, and there is evidence to show
that past abbots tried conscientiously to maintain good order in the
dependent nunneries. Among other rights the abbot possessed that of
visitation, and chance has fortunately preserved an interesting set of
injunctions sent by Abbot Michael to Sopwell, after a visitation held in
1338[1509]. The orders given to the Warden of Sopwell by Abbot Thomas
(1349-96) have also been preserved in the _Gesta Abbatum_[1510].
Another nunnery founded by a famous abbey of monks was St Michael's,
Stamford, founded by William of Waterville, Abbot of Peterborough in
1155; and this house remained for long dependent upon its parent
abbey[1511]. In its early years it was customary for the prioress in the
name of the chapter to pay an annual pension of a mark of silver to the
Abbot and to make formal recognition of subjection, once every year, on
the morrow of the Feast of St Michael. The Abbot had the right of
receiving the profession of the sisters and his consent was necessary to
the election of the prioress. He also had the appointment of the warden or
prior, who looked after the temporalities of the house. In 1270 Bishop
Gravesend sanctioned the personal visitation of the house once a year by
the abbot and two or three monks, with power to correct and reform, and
the Register of the Abbey records such visitations in 1297, 1300, 1303 and
1323. The tendency was, however, for the diocesan to oust the abbey from
the control of the house; from time to time he claimed and exercised the
right of instituting the warden, and from the end of the thirteenth
century he regularly instituted the prioress. From this time the bishops'
registers show that the regulation and reform of the house were in the
hands of the bishop and it was duly visited by Alnwick in the fifteenth
century. The accounts of St Michael's, Stamford, show that the nuns still
had dealings with the Abbey; but Peterborough did not retain over this
nunnery the exclusive rights of appointment and visitation, which St
Albans, owing to its exemption from diocesan control, exercised to the end
over Sopwell and St Mary de Pre. There is no mention of either of these
houses in the episcopal registers.
Nunneries subject to visitation by a parent abbey were highly exceptional.
Another exceptional method of external control was visitation by the
chapter-general of the order, to which the nunnery belonged. Nuns as well
as monks were constantly legislated for by these chapters-general, but
they were very rarely visited, because (as we shall see) they were almost
all subject to visitation by the bishop of their diocese. A trace of
visitation by order of the chapter-general seems to survive in a letter
from the Abbot of Stratford (4 December, 1491), preserved among the
Cistercian documents in the archives at Dijon[1512]. The Abbot relates
that he had visited Cokehill, found it in a very unsatisfactory condition
and tried in vain to depose the prioress; at other times, however,
Cokehill was visited by the Bishops of Worcester. The Cistercian order
claimed exemption from episcopal visitation for male houses and we shall
see that it made occasional attempts to exert its right over nunneries
too.
By far the most common method of reforming nunneries from outside was by
means of the control of the bishop of the diocese[1513]. It is an
interesting fact that not even the greatest and most important Benedictine
abbeys of women, such as Shaftesbury, Amesbury and Romsey, succeeded in
obtaining an exemption from episcopal jurisdiction such as was enjoyed by
St Albans and some other houses; and nunneries belonging to "exempt"
orders were invariably under episcopal control. Bishops, who would never
have dreamed of interfering with houses of Cistercian or Cluniac monks,
visited the nuns of those orders as a matter of course and no objection
was as a rule raised by the houses or by the orders. There is, it is true,
one extremely interesting case in which this right of visitation was
contested. In 1276 the nuns of Sinningthwaite contested the right of
Archbishop Giffard of York to visit them and appealed against him to the
Pope. Unfortunately the papal decision is not recorded, but as they were
regularly visited until their dissolution, it was evidently against them.
They possibly acted in collusion with the Cistercian abbots of their
diocese, for in the same year Archbishop Giffard ordered them to have
Friars Minor as their confessors, in spite of the inhibition of Cistercian
abbots, who had no jurisdiction over them[1514]. The Cokehill case quoted
above may represent a similar attempt of the Cistercian chapter-general
to control a nunnery belonging to the order. For the historian of the
English nunneries it is an exceedingly fortunate thing that the diocesans
enjoyed this unchallenged right of visitation over almost all the
nunneries in the kingdom; for the episcopal registers are the best source
of monastic history and an exempt house (save when it was a famous abbey
with a chronicle) is not infrequently a house without history, because
without visitation records.
Since the periodical visitation by the diocesan was not only the main
method of external control and reformation, but also incidentally gave
rise to the records on which so much of this history of nunneries is
based, it is worth while to study what exactly happened when a bishop, or
his commissioners, came to inspect a nunnery. A regular routine was
followed, which can easily be reconstructed from such full records as
those kept by Bishop Alnwick of Lincoln[1515]. A formal summons was sent
by the bishop to the house to be visited, warning the convent to hold
itself in readiness for visitation by himself, or by one or more
commissioners (named). On the appointed day he rode up to the house,
accompanied by his clerks, and was met at the door of the church by the
convent and conducted to the high altar. Here high mass was celebrated and
the bishop, his clerks and the convent then adjourned to the chapter house
for the business of visitation. The proceedings began with the preaching
of a sermon by one of the bishop's clerks; in houses of monks this was
given in Latin until the end of our period, but knowledge of Latin had
died out in nunneries before the fifteenth century and at Alnwick's
visitation the sermon was always preached in the vulgar tongue, on some
such text as "_Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion and behold king Solomon_"
(Cant. iii. 11), "_Present your bodies a living sacrifice ... unto God_"
(Rom. xii. 1), or others less specifically appropriate to nuns. When this
had been finished, the head of the house was required to present a
certificate of receipt of the summons to visitation, which had to be drawn
up according to a common form; and this not infrequently caused some delay
in nunneries, where the inmates were often too ignorant of Latin to draw
up the document correctly, unless they could call in the help of a
clerk[1516]. The head of the house then produced the certificate of her
election, confirmation by the diocesan and installation. Here again there
was sometimes a delay, for prioresses were occasionally all at sea over
documents and the necessary certificates were apt to be lacking at the
last minute. Thus Dame Alice Dunwyche, the incompetent old Prioress of
Gracedieu, was unable to produce any evidence of her confirmation in 1440
and the bishop had to appoint a special commissary to inquire into the
matter; three months later the commissary examined two laymen brought by
her as witnesses to her confirmation and installation[1517]. Meanwhile the
visitation would continue; and the last formality to be observed was the
production by the prioress of the foundation charter of the house, and the
financial balance sheet (or _status domus_) for the year, this last an
important item, since it enabled the bishop to see at a glance whether the
financial affairs of the convent were in a satisfactory condition[1518].
This completed the preliminary business.
There now followed the main business of the visitation, the verbal
examination of the nuns, in order to detect what abuses might stand in
need of reform. Some abuses were patent to the eyes of the bishop; he
could see garments in holes, and veils spread wide to show fair foreheads;
he might have caught the scuttle of little dogs round corners as he rode
in at the gates, or the whisk of a boarder's murrey-coloured skirts behind
a pillar. But the bulk of his information had to be obtained by careful
cross-examination. The chapter house was cleared and he proceeded to
question the nuns separately and in private, beginning with the prioress.
Experience would teach him what were the most common breaches of
discipline about which to make specific inquiry, but the nuns were
encouraged to complain freely and the bishop's clerks were kept busy
scribbling notes of what each shrill tale-bearer told, to be written out
afterwards under her name as _detecta_, or things discovered to the
bishop.
These _detecta_ are an amusing commentary on life in a community and grist
(it must be admitted) to the cynic's mill. Serious charges of immorality
are mingled with trivialities, much as the chroniclers of the period
mingle battles, monastic gossip and sea monsters cast upon the shore. The
beer is too light; swine do come into the churchyard and root up the earth
and befoul the churchyard; all corrections are made with so great
harshness and so much ado that charity and loving-kindness are banished
from the house; the nuns do hold drinkings of evenings in the
guestchamber, even after Compline; the prioress has pawned the jewels of
the house; sister so-and-so is defamed with sir so-and-so, sometime
chaplain in that place and did conceive of him and bear a child; the
buildings and tenements of the priory are dilapidated and many have fallen
to the ground because of default in repairs; secular persons do lie in the
dorter near the nuns; the nuns wear silken veils and robes; in the
prioress' default six nuns have now left the house in apostasy; the nuns
frequent taverns and continually go into town without leave; silence is
not observed in due places; the nuns do help secular folk in garnering
their grain during the autumn season; the nuns are somewhat sleepy and
come late to matins; the prioress does not render an account. Besides this
infinite variety of complaint, the _detecta_ exhibit also an infinite
variety of motive, ranging from the disciplinarian's zeal for reform to
the private grudge of one individual against another. Sometimes the
prioress and the nuns engage in mutual recriminations: she is harsh, or
autocratic, or incompetent, they are lax or disobedient. Sometimes, on the
other hand, a whole convent declares _omnia bene_. About some houses there
still hangs a gentle atmosphere of peace and goodwill, others are rent
with feud and petty bickering, others are in a condition of very lax
morality. Human nature is truly unchanging, for all the types to be met
with in a modern community, be it school or college, ship or government
office, have their prototypes among these medieval monks and nuns. The
amateur in human nature and the social historian alike may find in these
little studied monastic _detecta_ material of more absorbing interest and
entertainment than is to be found in any other class of medieval
documents.
After the bishop had heard the evidence of the nuns, given thus
chaotically, the next business was to summarise, in some sort of order,
the result of the inquiry. Such complaints of the nuns as the bishop
considered worthy of notice were therefore classified as _comperta_, or
things discovered by the bishop. If any member of the convent had been
accused of serious breaches of the rule, she was summoned and the articles
of accusation were read to her, and one by one she was invited to admit or
to deny them. If she pleaded guilty, a penance was enjoined upon her. If
she denied the charge, she was ordered to find a certain number of
compurgators, who would swear to her innocence, and to produce them by a
certain hour. The number of cases in which misconduct was sufficiently
serious to make this necessary was not great. During Alnwick's visitation
it happened at Catesby, where the prioress and Isabel Benet were charged
with immorality; the prioress denied the charge, but was unable to find
four sisters to vouch for her and was adjudged guilty; Isabel Benet
admitted misconduct, but not with the man whose name was coupled with
hers, and she seems to have cleared herself of intercourse with him by the
oath of four of the nuns[1519]. Usually the bishop showed himself lenient
and allowed the agitated sinner an extension of time, if she could not
find her compurgators within the period allotted to her[1520]. Whether
this leniency is to be attributed to Christian charity, or to a desire to
avoid scandal, is not clear; but if a prioress could not in two hours find
four nuns to swear that she was not guilty, the value of their oaths, when
they appeared after four hours' canvassing, would not appear to be very
great. Yet it is impossible not to understand the bishop's desire to give
a sinner the benefit of the doubt; fright and admonition alone might
reform her, and it was exceedingly difficult to deal with a really bad
prioress, when she could not be ejected from her order.
The bishop having dealt with individual offenders, the whole convent was
summoned once more to the chapter house. The _detecta_ and _comperta_ were
read aloud to the nuns and the bishop made verbal injunctions upon points
which stood in special need of reform. He then dissolved the visitation;
or, if any further business remained to be dealt with, prorogued it until
a later date. Then he rode away again, and the fluttered convent settled
down again to gossip and to await further injunctions. For the admonitions
of the bishop at the visitation were only _interim_ injunctions; his
business was not finished until he had sent to the nunnery a set of
written injunctions, embodying the reforms shown to be necessary by the
_comperta_. These written injunctions were sent to the convent shortly
after the visitation. Sometimes the clerk who brought them was ordered to
expound them, or some reverend commissioner was sent to complete at the
same time any special business arising out of the visitation. For
instance, when Peckham sent a set of injunctions on April 20th, 1284, to
the Priory of the Holy Sepulchre, Canterbury, which had been visited by
commissioners on his behalf, he also addressed a letter to his commissary
Martin, bidding him go in person to the house and expound the injunctions
to the nuns. At the same time he was ordered (1) to appoint two
coadjutresses to the prioress, who had been wasting the goods of the
house; one of these was named and Martin was particularly warned against
appointing another nun, who was said to be contumelious; (2) to beseech
the Vicar of Wickham on behalf of the Archbishop to undertake the office
of master of the house, so as to order its temporal affairs; (3) to
receive the compurgation of Isabella de Scorue, who was defamed with the
cellarer of the cathedral church and to forbid all the nuns access to the
cathedral and the cellarer access to the priory[1521]. These pieces of
specific and administrative business were not mentioned in Peckham's more
general injunctions. The injunctions were left in the hands of the convent
and from that moment became as canonically binding upon the nuns, as was
their original rule; any breach of them was liable to punishment by
excommunication. The prioress was usually ordered to display them in a
place where they could be easily read by the sisters, or to have them
solemnly read aloud in chapter a certain number of times each year.
It was by this machinery of visitation and injunction that the diocesans
endeavoured to control and reform the nunneries. But how far was the
control adequate and the reform successful? It is obvious that the
efficacy of the visitation system depended on three things: (1) the
success of the cross-examination in drawing the real state of the convent
from the nuns, (2) the regularity with which visitation was repeated, (3)
the ability of the bishop to enforce his injunctions. As to the first of
these conditions, the extent to which breaches of discipline came to light
depended on the skill of the bishop in cross-examination on the one hand,
and on the other the honesty of the nun's desire to assist him. If a
convent were seriously discontented the chances were that charges would be
freely made: thus Alnwick experienced no difficulty in extracting an
almost unanimous testimony against the Prioress of Catesby. But this did
not always happen; as is shown by Gray's letter bidding his commissary
visit Markyate in 1433:
When we some time ago made actual visitation ... of the priory of the
Holy Trinity of the Wood by Markyate ..., we, making anxious inquiry
touching the state of the same priory and the concerns of religion in
the same, found that in such our visitation certain crimes,
transgressions and offences worthy of reformation were discovered to
us, by occasion whereof ... we enjoined upon the prioress and convent
of the same place certain injunctions.... But ... it has lately come
to our hearing, as loud whispering abounds and the notoriousness of
the fact has made public, that more grievous offences than were
discovered to us in the same our visitation were before the beginning
of the same unhappily brought to pass and done in the same priory, the
which the said prioress and her sisters of their design aforethought
concealed from us undiscovered at the time of such our
visitation[1522].
One of the matters thus concealed was the immorality of the prioress with
the steward of the house, a fact which seems to have been notorious
throughout the neighbourhood.
When such a grave defect could be successfully hidden from the bishop at
his visitation, it is obvious that he could do little against a unanimous
determination on the part of a convent to keep him in the dark. He was
really dependent upon disagreement within the house; a conscientious nun
or a nun with a grudge served him equally well. But it seems likely that
concealment was not seldom practised, for, as Mr Coulton points out,
"among the earliest and most frequently-repeated general chapter statutes
are those providing against (_a_) conspiracy of the Religious against
reformation, or (_b_) vengeance wreaked afterwards upon brethren who have
dared to reveal the truth"[1523]. Some of the _detecta_ at Alnwick's
visitation throw light on the efforts made (usually by the prioress) by
conspiracy and by vengeance to prevent the nuns from testifying. At
Catesby the evil prioress, Margaret Wavere, had excellent reasons for
fearing a disclosure of her way of life. Sister Juliane Wolfe deposed
"that the prioress did threaten that, if the nuns disclosed aught in the
visitation, they should pay for it in prison." Dame Isabel Benet (by no
means a paragon of virtue herself) deposed that "in the last visitation
which was made by the Lord William Graye, the prioress said that for a
purse and certain moneys a clerk of the said bishop made known what every
nun disclosed in that visitation." Sister Alice Kempe said that "because
the nuns at the last visitation disclosed what should be disclosed, the
prioress whipped some of them." All of these articles the prioress denied,
but she was undoubtedly guilty and was unable to find compurgators[1524].
At Legbourne the prioress took a course with which one cannot avoid a
certain sympathy. Dame Joan Gyney deposed that
the prioress, after she received my lord's mandate for the visitation,
called together the chapter and said, if there were aught in need of
correction among them, they should tell it her; because she said it
was more suitable that they should correct themselves than that others
should correct them[1525].
At Ankerwyke Prioress Clemence Medforde, conscious of many misdeeds and of
the cordial dislike of her nuns, "did invite several outside folk from the
neighbourhood to this visitation at great cost to the house, saying to
them, 'Stand on my side in this time of visitation, for I do not want to
resign.'" She admitted the entertainment of her friends, "but it was not
to this end"[1526]. Recriminations after the visitation are even commoner
than preliminary attempts to circumvent it. At Gracedieu the ill-tempered
old prioress confessed, on being confronted with the _detectum_ of one of
her nuns to that effect, that she
since and after the visitation last held therein by his [Alnwick's]
predecessor, did reproach her sisters, because of the disclosures at
the same visitation and did blame them therefore and has held and
holds them in hatred, by reason whereof charity and loving-kindness
were utterly banished and strivings, hatreds, back-bitings and
quarrellings have ever flourished[1527].
The second condition for the efficacy of episcopal visitation as a method
of reform is the regularity of such visitation. Obviously if visitations
are very rare the hold of the diocesan on a house will be weak; for much
water may flow under the bridge between one visitation and the next. The
general rule in vogue in the middle ages was that each house should be
visited once in every three years, which was in theory a very adequate
arrangement. It seems clear, however, that it was not always carried out.
The work was done by one overworked bishop in person or by commissioners
specially appointed by him for the visitation of each house. In a big
diocese, such as Lincoln or York, which abounded in monastic houses, the
work of visitation was a really considerable labour, for it was only one
part of the bishop's multifarious duties; and it is impossible not to
conclude that the regularity of visitation differed very much from diocese
to diocese and from time to time. The bishops themselves varied very much
in energy and conscientiousness, but on the whole it is evident that they
took their duties seriously and honestly endeavoured to keep up the
standard of life in their dioceses. No one can put down the record of
Rigaud's visitations of the diocese of Rouen, Greenfield's visitations of
the diocese of York, and Alnwick's visitations of the diocese of Lincoln,
without a profound respect for those prelates. But though they did much,
they could not do enough.
There is a good deal of incidental evidence in the visitation reports,
which shows that visitations were held too seldom to be really effectual.
Gracedieu, for instance, had not been visited between 1433, when Gray
came, and 1440-1; and by this last date it had fallen into such laxity
that reform must have been difficult. Markyate was unvisited between 1433
and 1442, in spite of the deprivation of the prioress for immorality and
the apostasy of one of the nuns in 1433. There are few houses in the
annals of English nunneries in so bad a state as Littlemore was in 1517;
yet the Prioress, forced at last to confess her misdeeds, which comprised
not only habitual incontinence but the persecution of her nuns, stated
that though these things had been going on for eight years, yet no inquiry
had been made and, as it seems, no visitation of the house had been held;
only on one occasion certain injunctions of a general kind had been sent
her[1528]. On the other hand the registers show that a real attempt was
often made to grapple with a really serious case. St Michael's, Stamford,
for instance, was visited by Alnwick in 1440 and found to be in a
disorderly state; he gave careful _interim_ injunctions on the spot and
sent written injunctions afterwards. The house, however, was ruled by a
thoroughly incompetent prioress, and the bishop seems to have made
inquiries and found that his reforms had not been carried out, for in 1442
he came again,
and then after the cause of such his visitation had been set forth and
explained to the said prioress and nuns by the same reverend father,
to wit because his injunctions at his first visitation ... were not
duly kept, he proceeded to his preparatory inquiry.
This inquiry showed that matters were if anything worse than before; and
in 1445 the bishop visited the house again[1529]. Similarly, when once
Bishop Atwater had awakened to the moral condition of Littlemore in the
next century, he took pains to reform it. The scandals were brought to
light at the visitation by his commissary Dr Horde in 1517; a few months
later the bishop summoned the prioress before him to answer the charges
made against her and after a lapse of nine months the house was visited
again in 1518[1530].
But if visitations were sometimes not held regularly enough to be really
effective, a still greater cause of weakness was the great difficulty
experienced by the bishops in controlling the religious houses in the
period between one visitation and the next and in enforcing their
injunctions. A bishop might send a set of the most salutary injunctions to
an undisciplined house; but how was he to secure that the nuns followed
them, save by the most solemn threats of excommunication, which they seem
often enough to have disregarded. Markyate, St Michael's, Stamford, and
Littlemore went steadily from bad to worse between each of the visitations
made by Gray, Alnwick and Atwater respectively. In 1442
Dame Elizabeth the prioress [of St Michael's], being asked whether she
has observed and caused to be observed by the others my lord's
injunctions made to them at another time, says that, so far as she has
been able she has kept them and caused them to be kept by the others:
howbeit she says that she does not lie in the dorter, or keep frater,
or even keep cloister or church according to my lord's injunction and
this because of her bodily incapacity. And she avers that my lord
granted her a dispensation touching these things, the which my lord
utterly disavows[1531].
These were comparatively trivial faults; since the last visitation one of
the nuns had had a child; and at the next visitation, three years later,
the same fate was found to have overtaken another, which is a significant
commentary on the effectuality of episcopal control.
The fundamental difficulty was that the bishop was obliged in the nature
of things to trust largely to the prioress and to the nuns themselves to
enforce his decrees. _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ Sometimes the very
women whom he singled out for special trust were subsequently found to be
worse than their sisters. Indeed it is sometimes difficult to account for
the principle on which coadjutresses were appointed. It surely seems
somewhat like tempting providence that Alnwick should have selected Isabel
Benet, the only other nun in the house who was defamed of incontinence, to
be administrator in place of the suspended Prioress of Catesby, and it is
not surprising to read of the later escapade of that lady at a dance with
the friars of Northampton and of their refusal to obey his ordinance
against private rooms[1532]. The only intelligible principle of the bishop
would appear to have been that applied by Henry VII to the Earl of
Kildare, "All Ireland cannot rule this man; then he shall rule all
Ireland." It is moreover significant (as has already been pointed
out)[1533] that in the majority of cases a prioress, however wicked, was
suspended rather than deprived; even Denise Loweliche and Katherine Wells
remained in office after their resignation. It was indeed too embarrassing
to know what to do with a sinner. She could not be expelled from her
order; if she were kept in the same house in a subordinate position she
would probably make her successor's life a burden; if she were transferred
to another house she would probably corrupt a hitherto unblemished flock.
The bishops did their best in the face of great difficulties, but it is
plain that the prioresses sometimes thought little enough of their
authority. The rather disreputable old Abbess of Romsey, Joyce Rowse, said
openly to her nuns that when the inquiry (held in 1492) was finished she
would do as she had done before; and she kept her word[1534]. At Ankerwyke
in 1441 one little nun of tender age explained to the bishop "that the
prioress doth not provide this deponent with bed-clothes, insomuch that
she lies in the straw; and when my lord had commanded this deponent to lie
in the dorter, and this deponent asked bed-clothes of the prioress, she
said chidingly to her, 'Let him who gave you leave to lie in the dorter
supply you with raiment'"[1535].
Though the bishops for the most part did their work conscientiously it is
difficult, in the light of the considerations which have been urged above
to conclude that their visitations had a lasting effect. But if the
visitations and the injunctions based on them were sometimes of small
value for their purpose, they have an incidental value to historians which
cannot be overestimated. There have come down to us in the bishops'
registers a comparatively small number of complete visitation reports,
comprising _detecta_ and _comperta_ (or sometimes _comperta_ only) and
injunctions[1536], and a much larger number of injunctions, without the
_comperta_ on which they were based. The similarity in wording of
episcopal injunctions, combined with the fact that the most important
collection of complete reports (Alnwick's visitations) was until recently
unknown, has led many writers to argue that injunctions were mere general
"common form," without any relation to specific abuses found at the house
to which they were sent, "left," as Mr Hamilton Thompson says, "like
portentous visiting cards upon a convent, to show that the diocesan had
duly called"[1537]. The point is of great importance, for it involves the
reliability of injunctions as evidence of the state of a particular
convent at a particular time.
The answer to this view of "common form" is easily found if we study the
process by which injunctions were composed, as revealed in the great
series of visitations by Bishop Alnwick. They were drawn up with great
care by the bishop's registrar and he based them upon two sources, the
_detecta_ and _comperta_ of each visitation, which had been noted down on
the spot by clerks, and the sets of injunctions sent to other religious
houses, which were regularly copied into the episcopal register as models
for future use. It is inherent in the nature of the case that monasteries
subject to the same original rule and statutory regulations and living
under almost identical conditions, should be subject to similar breaches
of discipline. It is only necessary to study those _detecta_ which have
been preserved to perceive how universal, in all dioceses and among both
sexes, were (for instance) the customs of drinking after Compline, forming
separate "households," taking unlicensed boarders, making unwise grants of
corrodies and long leases, wandering abroad in the world, and wearing
worldly garments. The registrar did not wish to invent new wording every
time these offences occurred; he used a common form for them. But "common
form" has here a different sense from that in which it is used by those
who question the value of injunctions as evidence. The registrar never
made an injunction which was not based upon a _detectum_ made at the house
to which the injunction was directed. Injunctions are common form only
because they deal with common errors. If an almost similar set be sent to
two houses, it is because the houses have displayed (as is indeed only
natural) almost similar faults; and where the two sets differ, they differ
not accidentally, but of careful purpose. It was the business of the
registrar to express the injunctions in general terms, even though a fault
may have been that of a single individual, because they were intended to
be canonically binding upon the whole convent. The reason why injunctions
have survived in much greater numbers than the _detecta_ upon which they
were based, is that the clerks copied into the bishop's register only
common forms, which would be likely to be useful. The record of individual
evidence would not help them; but a carefully worded injunction might be
used over and over again, whenever the fault with which it dealt recurred
at the same or another house. No one who has studied the relation of
_detecta_ and injunctions in Alnwick's book of visitations can doubt the
value of the latter as evidence, when they appear alone; the very process
by which "Dame Alice Decun says that only two little girls, of six or
seven years, do lie in the dorter" is transmuted into the common
injunction "that ye suffre ne seculere persones wymmen ne childern lyg by
nyghte in the dormytory" is patent in the register.
If the reliability of the injunctions be thus accepted, it is almost
unnecessary to point out what an invaluable source of evidence is to be
found in the bishops' registers. Controversialists have fought _ad
nauseam_ over the truth or falsehood of the "scandalous _comperta_" of
Henry VIII's commissioners, without understanding that for nearly three
hundred years before the Dissolution the _comperta_ and injunctions in the
registers give a picture of English monasticism coloured by no ulterior
motive. Even after a large number of the registers have been published,
historians are still content to paint monastic life in the later middle
ages from the monastic rule, ignoring the evidence of practice which is
always necessary to supplement the evidence of theory. Not even the
chronicles of an earlier age are more interesting; the record of Alnwick
is as valuable as that of Jocelin of Brakelonde. In dioceses where
registers were regularly kept and have survived uninjured and where
injunctions were punctiliously copied, the history of a house may be
traced throughout the whole period covered by this book. The dioceses of
Winchester, Lincoln and York are most fortunate in this respect. To select
a few examples at random, there are extant records of the visitation of
Romsey Abbey by Archbishop Peckham in 1284, by Bishop John of Pontoise in
1302, by Bishop Henry Woodlock in 1311, by Bishop William of Wykeham in
1387, by Archbishop Morton (through his vicar-general, Robert Shirbourne)
in 1492, by Dr Hede, commissary of the Prior of Canterbury, during the
vacancies of the sees of Canterbury and Winchester in 1502, by Bishop Fox
(through his vicar-general, John Dowman) in 1507, again (through Master
John Incent) in 1523 and again (through the vicar-general) in 1527[1538].
It is thus possible to describe with approximate accuracy the life of
this great convent during the whole period from 1284 to the Dissolution.
Similarly records have survived of visitations of Elstow Abbey by Bishop
Gynewell in 1359, Bishop Buckingham in 1387, Archbishop Courtenay in 1389,
Bishop Flemyng in 1421-2, Bishop Gray in 1434, Bishop Alnwick in 1442-3,
and Bishop Longland in 1530 and 1531. Of Nunappleton Priory there are
recorded visitations by Archbishop Wickwane in 1281, Archbishop Melton in
1318, Archbishop Zouche in 1346, Archbishop Rotherham in 1489 and
Archbishop Lee in 1534. Moreover mandates concerning isolated pieces of
business, elections, permits to receive boarders, orders to reform
specific abuses, are scattered through the registers and provide useful
supplementary information.
All houses are not as well represented. In some dioceses injunctions are
rarely recorded: the fine series of registers for Hereford yield
surprisingly few. Some houses emerge only rarely into the light with a
single set of injunctions; others (and among them important houses such as
Lacock and Amesbury) lack even a single visitation report to rescue their
inmates from oblivion. But the geographical range of the surviving reports
is sufficiently great to enable the formation of an accurate general
account of English nunneries during the later middle ages. One warning
only must be borne in mind by the reader. If it is unhistorical to write
an account of monastic houses based solely upon the rule, it is also
unhistorical to write one based solely on visitation documents. The
_detecta_ made to a bishop were, and were intended to be, revelations of
faults; it was not the function of the bishop's clerk to catalogue
virtues, though sometimes a string of "_omnia bene_," or a curt note to
the effect that my lord, finding little in need of reformation, passed on,
bears positive witness to a convent's good life. It must always be
remembered, in estimating the state of a house from a set of _detecta_ and
injunctions, that though they are indubitably the truth, they are not the
whole truth. Goodness is after all largely a matter of proportion; and
though convents are to be found which were positively bad, in others there
were probably virtues of kindness, piety and a brave struggle against
poverty, which would counterbalance (if we knew them), the unfavourable
impression left by a string of accusations. Moreover by far the larger
number of the _detecta_ witnesses to a growing worldliness and to minor
breaches of the rule, rather than to serious moral defects. If the
community concerned were other than a nunnery ostensibly following a
strict rule, we should hardly consider the faults to be faults at all. The
immorality, bad temper and financial mismanagement revealed at some houses
would be reprehensible in all communities at all ages; but in themselves
boarders, pretty clothes, pet dogs and attendance at christenings are not
heinous crimes. It is necessary, in dealing with medieval nuns as with all
other subjects, to preserve a sense of proportion and a firm hold upon
human nature.