Appendix IV (part 2)

Possibly, as Mr Coulton points out (Med. Studies, X, p. 26), this may account for the fact that evidence of girl pupils is wanting for some of the wealthier and more important nunneries; he instances Shaftesbury, Amesbury, Syon, Studley and Lacock. For the life of the nuns at Lacock and Amesbury we have very little information of any kind, but our information is fairly full for Shaftesbury, and very full for Syon and for Studley.

For a discussion of these charges and of other prices and payments, with which they may be compared, see J. E. G. de Montmorency in Journ. of Educ. (1909), pp. 429-30 and Coulton, op. cit. app. iv. (School Children in Nunnery Accounts), pp. 38-40.

Quoted in S. H. Burke, The Monastic Houses of England, their Accusers and Defenders (1869), p. 32. Compare the words of a Venetian traveller, Paolo Casenigo: “The English nuns gave instructions to the poorer virgins as to their duties when they became wives; to be obedient to their husbands and to give good example,” a curious note. Ib. p. 31.

Quoted in Fosbroke, British Monachism (1802), II, p. 35.

Ancren Riwle, ed. Gasquet, p. 319.

Notice the recognition of the financial reasons for taking schoolchildren. So also in 1489 the nuns of Nunappleton are to take no boarders “but if they be childern or ellis old persons by which availe by likelihod may grow to your place”—fees or legacies, in fact. Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 654.

Caesarius of Heisterbach gives a picture of a less disturbing child in quire (though she was more probably a little girl who was intended for a nun). This is the English fifteenth century translation: “Caesarius tellis how that in Essex” (really in Saxony, but the translator was anxious to introduce local colour for the sake of his audience), “in a monasterye of nonnys, ther was a litle damysell, and on a grete solempne nyght hur maistres lete hur com with hur to matyns. So the damysell was bod a wayke thyng, and hur maistres was ferd at sho sulde take colde, and she commaundid hur befor Te Deum to go vnto the dortur to her bed agayn. And at hur commandment sho went furth of the where, thuff all it war with ill wyll, and abade withoute the where and thoght to here the residue of matyns”; whereat she saw a vision of the nuns caught up to heaven praising God among the angels, at the Te Deum. An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S. 1905), II, p. 406.

Fuller, Church Hist. See p. above, note 3.

Quoted in Gasquet, Eng. Monastic Life, p. 177.

Hugo, Medieval Nunneries of Somerset (Minchin Buckland), p. 107.

G. Hill, Women in Eng. Life (1896), p. 79.

Times Educational Supplement (Sept. 4, 1919). This seems to be taken from Fosbroke, Brit. Monachism, II, pp. 6-7, who takes it from Sir H. Chauncey’s Hist. and Antiqs. of Hertfordshire, p. 423; it is the first appearance of dancing; as Fosbroke sapiently argued, “The dancing of nuns will be hereafter spoken of and if they dance they must somewhere learn how.”

Journ. of Education, 1910, p. 841. Mr Hamilton Thompson sends me this note: “Probably, so far as any systematic teaching went, they were taught ‘grammar’ and song, which would vary in quality according to the teacher. These are the only two elements of which we regularly hear in the ordinary schools of the day. I do not see any reason to suppose that they were taught more or less. Song (i.e. church song) takes such a very prominent part in medieval education that I think it would not have been neglected; it was also one of the things which nuns ought to have been able to teach from their daily experience in quire. Bridget Plantagenet’s book of matins (see below) would be an appropriate lesson book for both grammar and song, as nuns would understand them.”

An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S. 1905), p. 272, from Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialog. Mirac. ed. Strange, I, p. 196.

See e.g. the Knight of La Tour Landry, p. 178, “Et pour ce que aucuns gens dient que ilz ne voudroient pas que leurs femmes ne leurs filles sceussent rien de clergie ne d’escripture, je dy ainsi que, quant d’escryre, n’y a force que femme en saiche riens; mais quant a lire, tout femme en vault mieulx de le scavoir et cognoist mieulx la foy et les perils de l’ame et son saulvement, et n’en est pas de cent une qui n’en vaille mieulx; car c’est chose esprouvee.” Quoted in A. A. Hentsch, De la littérature didactique du moyen âge s’addressant spécialement aux femmes (Cahors, 1903), p. 133. So Philippe de Novare († 1270) refuses to allow women to learn reading or writing, because they expose her to evil, and Francesco da Barberino († 1348) refuses to allow reading and writing except to girls of the highest rank (not including the daughters of esquires, judges and gentlefolk of their class); both, however, make exception for nuns. Ib. pp. 84, 106-7.

See below, p. .

Archaeologia, XLIII (1871), p. 245 (Redlingfield and Bruisyard).

See below, p. .

Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, II, pp. 213-7.

Quoted Gasquet, Hen. VIII and the Eng. Monasteries (1899), p. 227.

The Catechism of Thomas Bacon, S.T.P., ed. John Ayre (Parker Soc. 1894), p. 377.

See above, p. .

Yorks. Archaeol. Journ. XVI, pp. 452-3. Unluckily among Archbishop Lee’s injunctions there remain only three sets addressed to nunneries; there are also two letters concerning an immoral and apostate ex-Prioress of Basedale. At the other two nunneries addressed, Nunappleton and Sinningthwaite, no specific accusations are made, but the Archbishop enjoins that the nuns shall “observe chastity” (§ IX, p. 440) and avoid the suspicious company of men (§ V, p. 441).

Aungier, Hist. of Syon Mon. p. 385. Compare also the regulations for behaviour in choir, “There also none shal use to spytte ouer the stalles, nor in any other place wher any suster is wonte to pray, but yf it anone be done oute, for defoylyng of ther clothes.” Ib. p. 320.

The hours seem to have varied in length according to the season; see Butler, Benedictine Monachism, ch. XVII.

Reg. W. de Stapeldon, p. 316.

Aungier, op. cit. pp. 405-9. It is unlikely, however, that Betsone actually invented any of the signs, for similar lists are to be found in the early consuetudinaries of Cluniac houses and other sources. The signs were probably to a great extent “common form.”

Ib. p. 298.

Bernold, Chron. (1083) in Mon. Germ. Hist. V, p. 439, quoted in Workman, The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, p. 157.

E.g. a nun asks that sufficient clothes and food be ministered to her “ut fortis sit ad subeundum pondus religionis et diuini seruicii.” Linc. Visit. II, p. 5. A bishop orders no nun to be admitted unless she be “talem que onera chori ... ceteris religionem concernentibus poterit supportare.” Ib. I, p. 53.

Vattasso, Studi Medievali (1904), I, p. 124. Quoted in Mod. Philology (1908), V, pp. 10-11. I have ventured to combine parts of two verses.

Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 1d; but some of these would be absent from the monastery.

Ib. ff. 71d, 72. For other injunctions against “cutting” services, see Heynings, 1351 and 1392 (Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d, and Bokyngham, f. 397), Elstow 1387 and 1421 (ib. Bokyngham, f. 343 and Linc. Visit. I, p. 51), Godstow 1279 and 1434 (Reg. J. Peckham, III, p. 846, Linc. Visit. I, p. 66), Romsey 1387 (New Coll. MS. f. 84), Cannington 1351 (Reg. R. of Shrewsbury, p. 684), Nunkeeling 1314, Thicket 1309, Yedingham 1314, Swine 1318, Wykeham 1314, Arthington 1318 (V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 120, 124, 127, 181, 183, 188), Sinningthwaite 1534 (Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 443), etc.

See e.g. Linc. Visit. II, pp. 1, 8, 67, 131, 133, 134-5, Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d, Sede Vacante Reg. (Worc. Hist. Soc.), p. 276, Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, pp. 651-2, etc.

V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 131. For other instances of lateness at matins, see Heynings 1442 (Linc. Visit. II, p. 133), Godstow 1432 (Linc. Visit. I, p. 66), Flixton 1514 (Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, p. 143), Romsey 1302 (Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 100), Easebourne 1478, 1524 (Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, pp. 17, 26-7), St Radegund’s, Cambridge (Gray, Prior of St Radegund, Cambridge, p. 36).

Linc. Visit. II, p. 48; Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, p. 209; Arch. XLVII, p. 55; compare Romsey 1387, 1507 (New Coll. MS. f. 84; Liveing, op. cit. p. 231), St Helen’s Bishopsgate, c. 1432 (Hist. MS. Com. Rep. IX, App. p. 57).

“These are they who wickedly corrupt the holy psalms: the dangler, the gasper, the leaper, the galloper, the dragger, the mumbler, the foreskipper, the forerunner and the over leaper: Tittivillus collecteth the fragments of these men’s words.” G. G. Coulton, Med. Garn. p. 423. He also collected the gossip of women in church. On Tittivillus see my article in the Cambridge Magazine, 1917, pp. 158-60.

Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. Blunt (E.E.T.S.), p. 54.

Greek ἀκηδία; whence acedia or accidia in Latin; English accidie. It is a pity that the word has fallen out of use. The disease has not.

An interesting modern study of this moral disease is to be found in a book of sermons by the late Bishop of Oxford, Dr Paget, The Spirit of Discipline (1891), which contains an introductory essay “concerning Accidie,” in which the subject is treated historically, with illustrations from the writings of Cassian, St John of the Ladder, Dante and St Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, Marchantius and Francis Neumayer in the seventeenth century, and Wordsworth, Keble, Trench, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson and Stevenson in the nineteenth century. See also Dr Paget’s first sermon “The Sorrow of the World,” which deals with the same subject. He diagnoses the main elements of Accidia very ably: “As one compares the various estimates of the sin one can mark three main elements which help to make it what it is—elements which can be distinguished, though in experience, I think, they almost always tend to meet and mingle, they are gloom and sloth and irritation.” Op. cit. p. 54. On Accidia, see also H. B. Workman, The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal (1913), pp. 326-31. During the great war the disease of accidie was prevalent in prison camps, as any account of Ruhleben shows very clearly. For a short psychological study of this manifestation of it, see Vischer, A. L., Barbed Wire Disease (1919).

See book X of Cassian’s De Coenobiorum Institutis, which is entitled “De Spiritu Acediae” (Wace and Schaff, Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., vol. XI, Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins and John Cassian, pp. 266 ff.; chapters I and II are paraphrased by Dr Paget, op. cit. pp. 8-10); Book IX, on the kindred sin of Tristitia is also worthy of study; the two are always closely connected, as is shown by the anecdotes quoted below.

Dante, Inferno, VII, l. 121 ff. Translation by J. A. Carlyle.

Chaucer, The Persones Tale, §§ 53-9.

See the translation of the episode (from Busch, Chronicon Windeshemense, ed. K. Grube, p. 395) in Coulton, Med. Garner, pp. 641-4. On the subject of medieval doubt and despair see Coulton in the Hibbert Journal, XIV (1916), pp. 598-9 and From St Francis to Dante, pp. 313-4.

Caes. of Heist. Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange, I, pp. 209-10.

Ib. I. pp. 210-11. For a case of doubt in an anchoress, which, however ended well, see ib. I, pp. 206-8.

Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, B, passus X, 300-5.

Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, B, passus V, ll. 153-65. The C text has a variant for the last four lines:

Thus thei sitte the sustres · somtyme, and disputen,
Til “thow lixt” and “thow lixt” · be lady over hem alle;
And then awake ich, Wratthe · and wold be auenged.
Thanne ich crie and cracche · with my kene nailes,
Bothe byte and bete · and brynge forthe suche thewes,
That alle ladies me lothen · that louen eny worschep.

It is strange that the same hand which wrote these lines should have written the beautiful description of convent life quoted on p. 297.

See above, p. and below, Note F.

From “Why can’t I be a nun,” Trans. of Philol. Soc. 1858, Pt II, p. 268.

Wykeham’s Reg. II, pp. 361-2 (1384). Compare case at Shaftesbury (1298) where the nuns had incurred excommunication. Reg. Sim. de Gandavo, p. 14.

Linc. Visit. II, p. 8. Compare Winchelsey’s injunctions to Sheppey in 1296. Reg. Roberti Winchelsey, pp. 99-100.

Liveing, op. cit. pp. 245-6. The “bad language” may be scolding or defamation rather than swearing. It is rare to find a nun accused of using oaths. But see the list of faults drawn up for the nuns of Syon Abbey; among “greuous defautes” is “if any ... be take withe ... any foule worde, or else brekethe her sylence, or swerethe horribly be Criste, or be any parte of hys blyssed body, or unreuerently speketh of God, or of any saynte, and namely of our blessyd lady”; among “more greuous defautes” is “yf they swere be the sacramente, or be the body of Cryste, or be hys passion, or be hys crosse, or be any boke, or be any other thynge lyke”; and among “most greuous defautes” is “yf any in her madness or drunkenesse blaspheme horrybly God, or our Lady, or any of hys sayntes” (Aungier, Hist. of Syon Mon. pp. 256, 259, 262). In 1331, on readmitting Isabella de Studley (who had been guilty of incontinence and apostasy) to St Clement’s York, Archbishop Melton announced that if she were disobedient to the Prioress or quarrelsome with her sisters or indulged in blasphemy he would transfer her to another house. V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 130.

V.C.H. Bucks. I, p. 383 and V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 155.

In 1311 Archbishop Greenfield issued a general order that nuns only and not sisters were to use the black veil; sisters wore a white veil (V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 188 note, and Journ. of Education, 1910, p. 841). This order was repeated at various houses, which shows that there must have been a widespread attempt to usurp the black veil (V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 124, 127, 175, 177, 188). At Sinningthwaite the Prioress was also ordered not to place the sisters above the nuns. A common punishment in this district was to remove the black veil from a nun and this was reserved for the more serious misdeeds.

York Reg. Giffard, pp. 147-8. For further instances, see Note C below.

Injunctions against dicing and other games of chance are common in the case of monks (see e.g. Linc. Visit. I, pp. 30, 46, 77, 89). I have found none in nunneries, but a more stately game of skill, the fashionable tables, was played by Margaret Fairfax with John Munkton. Above, p. .

Quoted from St Aldhelm’s De Laudibus Virginitatis in Eckenstein, Woman under Mon. p. 115. Compare Bede’s account of the nuns of Coldingham some years before: “The virgins who are vowed to God, laying aside all respect for their profession, whenever they have leisure spend all their time in weaving fine garments with which they adorn themselves like brides, to the detriment of their condition and to secure the friendship of men outside.” Ib. pp. 102-3.

For detailed examples, see Note D below.

Linc. Visit. II, p. 118. Similar detecta and injunctions at Catesby, Rothwell and Studley (ib. pp. 47, 52; Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 38, 26d) and at Ankerwyke (quoted above, p. ). Also at Studley (1531), Archaeol. XLVII, p. 55, and Romsey (1523), Liveing, op. cit. p. 244.

Archaeol. XLVII, p. 52. For an equally detailed account see the case of the Prioress of Ankerwyke, quoted above p. .

See below, p. .

See below, pp. 325-30.

For nunnery pets as a literary theme, see Note E and for pet animals in the nunneries of Eudes Rigaud’s diocese see below, p. .

“Ye shall not possess any beasts, my dear sisters, except only a cat.” Ancren Riwle, p. 316. At the nunnery of Langendorf in Saxony, however, a set of reformed rules drawn up in the early fifteenth century contains the proviso “Cats, dogs and other animals are not to be kept by the nuns, as they detract from seriousness.” Eckenstein, op. cit. p. 415.

“Mem. quod apud manerium de Newenton fuerunt quedam moniales.... Et postea contingit [sic] quod priorissa eiusdem manerii strangulata fuit de cato suo in lecto suo noctu et postea tractata ad puteum quod vocatur Nunnepet.” Quoted from Sprott’s Chronicle in The Black Book of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (British Acad. 1915), I, p. 283. In Thorn’s Chronicle, however, the crime is attributed to the prioress’ cook. See Dugdale, Mon. VI, p. 1620. The nuns were afterwards removed to Sheppey.

There really seems to have been a parrot at Fontevrault in 1477, to judge from an item in the inventory of goods left on her death by the Abbess Marie de Bretagne, “Item xviij serviecttes en une aultre piece, led. linge estant en ung coffre de cuir boully, en la chambre ou est la papegault (perroquet).” Alfred Jubien, L’Abbesse Marie de Bretagne (Angers and Paris 1872), p. 156. It is interesting to note that J. B. Thiers, writing on enclosure in 1681, mentions “de belles volieres à petits oiseaux” as one of those unnecessary works for which artisans may not be introduced into the cloister. Thiers, De la Clôture, p. 412.

Reg. Epis. Peckham (R.S.), II, p. 660.

Dugdale, Mon. II, p. 619 (Chatteris) and Camb. Antiq. Soc. Proc. XLV (1905), p. 190 (Ickleton).

A decree of the Council of Vienne (1311) complains that many church ministers come into choir “bringing hawks with them or causing them to be brought and leading hunting dogs.” Coulton, Med. Garn. p. 588. Similarly Geiler on the eve of the Reformation complains, in his Navicula Fatuorum, that “some men, when they are about to enter a church, equip themselves like hunters, bearing hawks and bells on their wrists and followed by a pack of baying hounds, that trouble God’s service. Here the bells jangle, there the barking of dogs echoes in our ears, to the hindrance of preachers and hearers.” He goes on to say that the habit is particularly reprehensible in clergy. The privilege of behaving thus was an adjunct of noble birth and in the cathedrals of Auxerre and Nevers the treasurers had the legal right of coming to service with hawk on wrist, because these canonries were hereditary in noble families. Ib. pp. 684-5. Medieval writers on hawking actually advise that hawks should be taken into church to accustom them to crowds. “Mais en cest endroit d’espreveterie, le convient plus que devant tenir sur le poing et le porter aux plais et entre les gens aux églises et ès autres assamblées, et emmy les rues, et le tenir jour et nuit le plus continuelment que l’en pourra, et aucune fois le perchier emmi les rues pour veoir gens, chevaulx, charettes, chiens, et toutes choses congnoistre.” Gaces de la Bugne gives the same advice. Le Ménagier de Paris (Paris, 1846), II, p. 296.

Below, p. .

V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 168, 175.

New Coll. MS. ff. 88-88d, translated in Coulton, Soc. Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, p. 397.

Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. IX, app. pt. I, p. 57.

Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, p. 191.

Chaucer’s description of the monk is well known:

Therfore he was a pricasour aright;
Grehoundes he hadde, as swifte as fowel in flight;
Of priking and of hunting for the hare
Was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.

Compare Langland’s picture of the monk, riding out on his palfrey from manor to manor, “an hepe of houndes at hus ers as he a lord were” (Piers Plowman, C Text VI, ll. 157-61). Visitation documents amply bear out these accounts; in a single set of visitations (those by Bishops Flemyng and Gray of Lincoln during the years 1420-36) we have “Furthermore we enjoin and command you all and several ... that no canon apply himself in any wise to hunting, hawking or other lawless wanderings abroad” (Dunstable Priory 1432); “further we enjoin upon you, the prior and all and several the canons of the convent aforesaid ... that you utterly remove and drive away all hounds for hunting from the said priory and its limits; and that neither you nor any one of you keep, rear, or maintain such hounds by himself or by another’s means, directly or indirectly, in the priory or without the priory, under colour of any pretext whatsoever” (Huntingdon Priory 1432); “also that hounds for hunting be not nourished within the precinct of your monastery” (St Frideswide’s Oxford, 1422-3) and a similar injunction to Caldwell Priory. Linc. Visit. I, pp. 27, 47, 78, 97.

Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. Coll. I, p. 261. Compare also the provision in one of Charlemagne’s capitularies: “Ut episcopi et abbates et abbatissae cupplas canum non habeant nec falcones nec accipitres,” Baretius, Capit. Reg. Franc. (1853), p. 64. Some of the birds at Romsey may have been hawks, though it is more likely that they were larks and other small pets, such as Eudes Rigaud found in his nunneries.

V.C.H. Essex, II, p. 123, and see above, p. .

The nuns of St Mary de Pré, St Albans, kept a huntsman. V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 430 (note).

V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 431 (note); Dugdale, Mon. III, pp. 359-60.

Hereford Reg. Thome Spofford, p. 82. (This was combined with an injunction against going to “comyn wakes and festes, spectacles and other worldly vanytees” outside the convent. Below, p. .).

Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 554.

Quoted in Coulton, Med. Garn. p. 304.

See Chambers, op. cit. I, pp. 38-41.

Ib. I, p. 56 (note). “The bishops of Durham in 1355, Norwich in 1362, and Winchester in 1374, 1422, and 1481 had ‘minstrels of honour’ like any secular noble.”

Ib. I, pp. 39, 56 (notes).

Langland, Piers the Plowman, C, Text VIII, l. 97.

“Payments for performances are frequent in the accounts of the Augustinian priories at Canterbury, Bicester and Maxstoke and the great Benedictine houses of Durham, Norwich, Thetford and St Swithin’s, Winchester, and doubtless in those of many another cloistered retreat. The Minorite chroniclers relate how, at the coming of the friars in 1224, two of them were mistaken for minstrels by the porter of a Benedictine grange near Abingdon, received by the brethren with unbecoming glee, and when the error was discovered, turned out with contumely,” Chambers, op. cit. I, pp. 56-7. In the Register of St Swithun’s it is recorded under the year 1374 that “on the feast of Bishop Alwyn ... six minstrels with four harpers performed their minstrelsies. And after dinner in the great arched chamber of the lord Prior, they sang the same geste.... And the said jongleurs came from the household of the bishop,” ib. I, p. 56 (note). See extracts from the account books of Durham, Finchale, Maxstoke and Thetford Priories relating to the visits of minstrels, ib. II, pp. 240-6. At Finchale there was even a room called “le Playerchambre,” ib. II, p. 244. In 1258 Eudes Rigaud had to order the Abbot of Jumièges “that he should send strolling players away from his premises.” Reg. Visit. Arch. Roth. p. 607. At a later date, in 1549, a council at Cologne directed a canon against comedians who were in the habit of visiting the German nunneries and by their profane plays and amatory acting excited to unholy desires the virgins dedicated to God. Lea, Hist. of Sacerdotal Celibacy, II, p. 189.

“Histrionibus potest dari cibus, quia pauperes sunt, non quia histriones; et eorum ludi non videantur, vel audiantur vel permittantur fieri coram abbate vel monachis.” Annales de Burton (Ann. Monast. R. S. I, p. 485), quoted Chambers, op. cit. I, p. 39 (note).

Alnwick’s Visit. f. 83.

Aucassin and Nicolete, ed. Bourdillon (1897), p. 22.

See the well-known story of “Le Tombeor de Notre Dame” (Romania, II, p. 315), and “Du Cierge qui descendi sus la viele au vieleeux devant l’ymage Nostre Dame,” Gautier de Coincy, Miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. Poquet (1859), p. 310. Both are translated in Of The Tumbler of Our Lady and Other Miracles by A. Kemp-Welch (King’s Classics 1909).

For the following account, see A. F. Leach’s article on “The Schoolboy’s Feast,” Fortnightly Review, N.S. LIX (1896), p. 128, and Chambers, op. cit. I, ch. XV.

See below, p. .

Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, I, pp. 82-3. For a similar injunction to Godstow, see ib. III, p. 846. At Romsey the Archbishop forbade the festivities altogether: “Superstitionem vero quae in Natali Domini et Ascensione Ejusdem fieri consuevit, perpetuo condemnamus,” ib. II, p. 664. The superstition was probably the election of the youngest nun as abbess.

Norwich Visit. pp. 209-10.

Archaeol. XLVII, p. 56. On the Lord of Misrule, see Chambers op. cit. I, ch. XVII. There is a vivid account (from the Puritan point of view) in Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (1583) quoted in Life in Shakespeare’s England, ed. J. D. Wilson (1915), pp. 25-7.

Chambers, op. cit. I, p. 361 (note 1).

Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 360.

Cussans, Hist. of Herts., Hertford Hundred, app. II, p. 268.

Walcott, Inventory of Shepey, p. 23. There is perhaps another reference in the inventory of Langley in 1485: “iij quesyns (cushions) of olde red saye, ij smale quechyns embrodred and ij qwechyns namyde Seynt Nicolas qwechyns,” Walcott, Inventory of Langley, p. 6.

E.g. (besides the well-known case of Dr Rock in The Church of Our Fathers), Gayley, Plays of our Forefathers, pp. 67-8.

Leach, op. cit. p. 137.

Ib. p. 131.

Leach, op. cit. p. 137 (from Martène, III, p. 39). I have slightly altered the translation.

On Benedictine poverty, see Dom Butler, Benedictine Monachism, ch. X.

The alteration was made even by the Cistercians in 1335. See Linc. Visit. I, p. 238 (under Misericord). Among Black Monks it began much earlier.

Linc. Visit. I, p. 238. Alnwick’s visitations sometimes mention this division of the frater. “Also she prays that frater may be kept every day, since there is one upper frater wherein they feed on fish and food made with milk, and another downstairs, wherein they feed of grace on flesh” (Nuncoton 1440). “Also she says that they feed on fish and milk foods in the upper frater and on flesh in the lower” (Stixwould 1440). Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 71d, 76.

“Et qe nule Dame de Religion ne mange hors du Refreytour en chambre severale si ceo ne soit en compaignie la Priouresse, ou par maladie ou autre renable encheson.... Item, purceo qe ascune foitz ascunes Dames de vostre Religion orent lur damoiseles severales por faire severalement lur viaunde, si ordinoms, voloms et establioms qe totes celles damoiseles soyent de tut oste de la cusine, et qe un keu covenable, qi eit un page desoutz lui soit mys per servir a tut le Covent” (1319). Exeter Reg. Stapeldon, pp. 317-8. Compare V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 165 (Hampole 1411).

For the following references, see Linc. Visit. II, pp. 46, 89, 114, 117, 119, 121, 175; Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 71d, 76, 77, 83.

Pupils or boarders may account for these discrepancies.

Linc. Visit. I, p. 67 (and note 3); compare V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 181.

Walcott, M. E. C., Inventories of ... the Ben. Priory of ... Shepey for Nuns (Arch. Cant. 1869), pp. 23 ff.

E.g. at Gracedieu “The dorter, item ther three nunnes selles whyche as sould for 30s.” Nichols, Hist. and Antiq. of Leic. (1804), III, p. 653; at Catesby where the “sells in the dorter were sold at 6s. 8d. apiece,” Archaeologia, XLIII, p. 241. In theory the nuns were supposed to get up and lie down in full view of each other and curtains were forbidden by Woodlock at Romsey in 1311. Liveing, op. cit. p. 104. On the other hand at Redlingfield in 1514 a nun complained that “sorores non habent curricula inter cubilia, sed una potest aliam videre quando surgit vel aliquid aliud facit” and the Bishop ordered the Prioress to provide curtains between the cubicles in the dorter. Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich (Camden Soc.), pp. 139-40. Dom Butler thus traces the transition from the open dorter to private cells: open dorter; side partitions between the beds; curtains in front; a latticed door in front, making a cubicle; a solid door with a large window; the window grew smaller and smaller until it became a peephole; the dorter became a gallery of private rooms. Downside Review (1899), pp. 119-21.

Linc. Visit. II, pp. 51-2. See also among many other injunctions and references to the custom the following: Gracedieu (1440-1), ib. II, p. 125; Godstow (1432), ib. I, pp. 67-8; Barking (1279); Wherwell (1284), Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, I, p. 84, II, p. 653; Hampole (1311), V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 181; Swine (1318), ib. p. 163; Nunappleton (1346 and 1489), ib. pp. 171-2; Fairwell (1367), Reg. Stretton of Lichfield, p. 119; Romsey (1387 and 1492), New Coll. MS. ff. 85, 85d, 86, Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 218; Aconbury (1438), Reg. Spofford of Hereford, p. 224; Stixwould (1519), V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 148; Sinningthwaite (1534), Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 441. Sometimes the system can be traced in one house over a long period of years. At Elstow, for instance, in 1387, Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 343; in 1421-2, Linc. Visit. I, pp. 50, 51; in 1432, ib. I, p. 53; in 1442-3, ib. II, p. 89; and in 1531, Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 51. For an admonition to a nun by name see “Moneatis insuper dominam Johannam de Wakefelde commonialem quod illam cameram quam modo inhabitat contra debitam honestatem religionis predicte solitarie commorando omnino dimittat et sequatur conventum assidue tam in choro, claustro, refectorio et dormitorio quam in ceteris locis et temporibus opportunis, prout religionis convenit honestati” (Kirklees 1315), Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 359.

See, for instance, Longland’s careful injunction to Elstow in 1531: “Foras moche as the very ordre off sainct benedicte his rules ar nott ther obserued in keping the ffratrye att meale tymes ... butt customably they resorte to certayn places within the monasterye called the housholdes, where moche insolency is use contrarye to the good rules of the said religion, by reason of resorte of seculars both men women and children and many other inconvenyents hath thereby ensewed ... we inioyne ... that ye lady abbesse and your successours see that noo suche householdes be then kepte frome hensforth, butt oonly oon place which shalbe called the mysericorde, where shalbe oon sadde lady of the eldest sorte oversear and maistres to all the residue that thidre shall resorte, whiche in nombre shall nott passe fyve att the uttermoost, besides ther saide ladye oversear or maistres and those fyve wekely to chaunge and soo ... all the covent have kepte the same, and they agen to begynne and the said gouernour and oversear of them contynally to contynue in thatt roome by the space of oon quarter of a yere, and soo quarterly to chaunge att the nominacon and plesure of the ladye abbesse for the tyme being. Over this it is ordered undre the said payne and Iniunction that the ladye abbesse haue no moo susters from hensforth in hir householde butt oonly foure with hir chapleyne and likewise wekely to chaunge till they have goon by course thrugh the hole nomber off susters, and soo aȝen to begynne and contynue.” Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 51.

[1000] Wilkins, Conc. II, p. 16. See also “Et fetez qe lez deuz parties du covent a meyns mangent checun jour en le refreytour” (Wroxall 1338); Sede Vacante Reg. (Worc.), p. 276; cf. Elstow (c. 1432), Linc. Visit. I, p. 53. It is often accepted that the nuns shall keep frater only on the three fish days, but see Gray’s injunction to Delapré Abbey (c. 1432-3) enjoining its observance on the three accustomed days (Sunday, Wednesday and Friday) and on Monday as well. Linc. Visit. I, p. 45.

[1001] Ib. I, p. 68.

[1002] See, for instance, Bokyngham’s injunction to Heynings in 1392: “Item that no nun there shall keep a private chamber, but that all the nuns, who are in good health, shall lie and sleep in the dorter and those who are ill in the infirmary, saving dame Margaret Darcy, nun of the aforesaid house, to whom on account of her noble birth we wish for the time being to allow that room which she now occupies, but without any service of bread and beer, save in case of manifest illness,” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 397d. But see Gynewell’s injunctions to the convent in 1351. Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d. For the use of separate rooms allowed to ill nuns, see Nunappleton (1489), V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 172. At Romsey in 1507 the nuns, under the eye of the visitor, “concluded and provided that Joan Patent, nun, who had hurt her leg, by her consent shall in future have meals in her own chamber and shall daily have in her chamber the right of one nun.” Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 230. But usually the use of the common infirmary is enjoined. Separate lodgings were also allowed to ex-superiors after resignation. See above, p. .

[1003] P.R.O. Mins. Accts. 1257/10, ff. 46, 119, 170, 214.

[1004] P.R.O. Mins. Accts. 1260/14.

[1005] Gray, Priory of St Radegund, Cambridge, pp. 27, 147, 155, 163, 171.

[1006] Baker, Hist. of Northants. I, p. 280.

[1007] Reg. J. de Pontissara, I, p. 126. William of Wykeham writes to Wherwell in 1387 concerning the abbess’ illicit detention of “certain distributions and pittances as well in money as in spices,” which divers benefactors had endowed. New Coll. MS. f. 89 vº.

[1008] See below, p. .

[1009] Reg. Thome de Cantilupo, p. 202. Compare Archbishop Winchelsey’s injunction to Sheppey (1296) “ne qua monialis pecuniam vel aliam rem sibi donatam aut aliqualiter adquisitam sibi retineat sine expressa licencia priorisse” (a loophole). Reg. Roberti Winchelsey, p. 100.

[1010] W. Rye, Carrow Abbey, app. IX, p. xix.

[1011] Linc. Visit. I, p. 68.

[1012] See above, pp. , , .

[1013] Test. Ebor. I, pp. 296-7.

[1014] Ib. II, p. 97.

[1015] Lincolnshire Wills, ed. A. R. Maddison (1880), pp. 4, 6.

[1016] See, for example, Test. Ebor. I, pp. 6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 31, 43, 54, 62, 90, 98, 109, 143, 166, 179, 216, 292, 337, 345, 349, 363, 376, 382 (chiefly wills of clergy and country gentry); Nicolas, Test. Vetusta, I, pp. 52, 70, 76, 79, 85, 115, 116, 120, 121, 123, 137, 155, 170, 196, 300, 377 (chiefly wills of the aristocracy); Gibbons, Early Lincoln Wills, pp. 18, 21, 25, 26, 40, 41, 56, 60, 67, 71, 76, 80, 87, 97, 125, 138, 139, 150, 160 (chiefly wills of clergy and country gentry). The wills of the citizens of London preserved in the court of Husting contain many legacies to nuns, chiefly annual rents.

[1017] Gray, Priory of St Radegund, Cambridge, p. 156.

[1018] Test. Ebor. I, pp. 317, 322, 324. The items occur in the inventory of the Bishop’s goods and against each is written “Detur Priorissae de Swyna sorori meae.”

[1019] Ib. I, p. 332.

[1020] Test. Ebor. I, pp. 187-9. He also left the Prioress 13s. 4d. and each nun 6s. 8d. and each sister 3s. 4d. To certain nuns he left special bequests, to Margaret de Pykering, “one piece of silver, with the head of a stag in the bottom and 2s.,” to Elizabeth Fairfax 26s. 8d. and to Margaret de Cotam 13s. 4d.; also to the Prioress and convent “my white vestment with the gold stars and all the appurtenances thereof and my cross with Mary and John in silver and one gilt chalice.” Nor were his legacies confined to Nunmonkton; he left his two sisters at Sempringham 100s. and two nuns of Nunappleton and Marrick respectively, a cow each.

[1021] Ib. I, pp. 14-15. He also leaves 40s. to the Prioress and convent “for a pittance,” 20s. to another nun there and 6s. 8d. to a nun of Watton. He evidently had great confidence in Alice Conyers, for the injunctions of his will are to be carried out “according to the counsel and help of the said Alice Conyers and of my executors.” For other gifts of plate to individuals, see Test. Ebor. I, p. 216, Somerset Med. Wills, I, pp. 18, 144, Reg. Stafford of Exeter, pp. 392, 415, 416, Testamenta Leodiensia (Thoresby Soc. Pub. II, 1890), p. 108.

[1022] Sharpe, Cal. of Wills ... in the Court of Husting, I, p. 688. She also leaves Margaret and two other nuns a piece of blanket to be divided between them.

[1023] Test. Ebor. I, p. 179. He also leaves her 40s. and a silver cup.

[1024] Somerset Medieval Wills, I, p. 47. Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, left a bed among other things to her daughter, a nun of the house of Minoresses without Aldgate (1399). Nicolas, Test. Vetusta, I, p. 148.

[1025] Test. Ebor. I, p. 382.

[1026] Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 194.

[1027] Test. Ebor. I, p. 51.

[1028] Reg. Stafford of Exeter, p. 392. For other gifts of clothes see Rye, Carrow Abbey, app. p. xix (a habit cloth), Lincoln Wills, ed. Foster, p. 84 (“a fyne mantyll of ix yerds off narow cloth”), Test. Ebor. I, p. 59 (my two robes with mantles), ib. II, p. 255 (my best harnassed belt).

[1029] At Hampole in 1320 he warned the prioress to correct those nuns who used new-fangled clothes, contrary to the accustomed use of the order, “whatever might be their condition or state of dignity,” V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 164 (where the date is wrongly given as 1314).

[1030] See e.g. Wilkins, Conc. I, p. 591; V.C.H. Bucks. I, p. 383; Linc. Visit. I, p. 52; ib. II, pp. 3, 8.

[1031] See above, p. .

[1032] See above, p. . For other bequests of rings, see the wills of Sir Guy de Beauchamp, 1359 (his fourth best gold ring to his daughter Katherine at Shouldham), Robert de Ufford, Earl of Suffolk, 1368 (“to the Lady of Ulster, a Minoress ... a ring of gold, which was the duke’s, her brother’s”), Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, 1369 (rings to his daughter and granddaughter at Shouldham). Nicolas, Test. Vetusta, I, pp. 63, 74, 79. But rings might be put to pious uses. The inventory of jocalia in the custody of the sacrist of Wherwell (c. 1333-40) contains the item, “a small silver croun, with eleven gold rings fixed in it, for the high altar; another better croun of silver, with nineteen gold rings.” V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 135.

[1033] Linc. Dioc. Doc. ed. A. Clark (E.E.T.S.), p. 50.

[1034] Reg. Stafford of Exeter, p. 415.

[1035] Gibbons, Early Linc. Wills, p. 5. In the Prioress’ room at Sheppey at the Dissolution were found “iiij payre of corall beds, contaynyng in all lviij past gawdy (ed.).” Walcott, Invent. of ... Shepey, p. 29.

[1036] Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, p. 8.

[1037] See pp. 272-3.

[1038] Another nun says that she has nothing at all for raiment and another deposes, “seeing that the revenues of the house are not above forty pounds and the nuns are thirteen in number with one novice, so many out of rents so slender cannot have sufficient food and clothing, unless some help be given them from other sources by their secular friends.” Linc. Visit. II, pp. 184, 186.

[1039] For these references, see Linc. Visit. II, pp. 7, 47, 92, 117, 184, 186; Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 6, 71d, 76, 83. Also injunctions as to food at Elstow ib. II, p. 39 (and note).

[1040] Baker, Hist. and Antiq. of Northants. I, pp. 280, 282-3.

[1041] Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 359.

[1042] Temp. Henry VII the Abbess of Elstow’s account records the payment of double commons of 1s. a week to the Prioress and 6d. a week single commons to each of the nuns. Pittances (double to the prioress) are paid on days of profession and on the greater feast. The nuns also had dress allowances in money. C. T. Flower, Obedientiars’ Accounts of Glastonbury and other Relig. Houses (St Paul’s Ecclesiol. Soc. VII, pt II, 1912), pp. 52, 55.

[1043] Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp, p. 290.

[1044] Eng. Hist. Rev. VI, p. 34.

[1045] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 176, 177.

[1046] Reg. J. de Pontissara, I, p. 125.

[1047] Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 103.

[1048] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 164.

[1049] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 397d. Compare Eudes Rigaud’s difficulties with the hens at Saint-Aubin, below, p. .

[1050] E.g. in the will of Agnes de Denton, 1356 (Item to dame Cecilie de Hmythwayt two cows), Testamenta Karleolensia, p. 12; Sir John Fairfax, 1393 (Item I bequeath to dame Katherine de Barlay, nun of Appleton, one cow. Item to dame Custance Colvyll, nun of Marrick, one cow); Sir William Dronsfeld, 1406 (Item I bequeath to dame Alice de Totehill, nun, one cow. Item I bequeath to dame Margaret de Barneby, one cow); Sir Thomas Rednes 1407 (Item to Alice Redness nun [of Hampole] one cow and one fat pig). Test. Ebor. I, pp. 189, 345, 349.

[1051] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 72.

[1052] Wilkins, Conc. I, p. 593.

[1053] New Coll. MS. ff. 85d, 86. The sin of proprietas seems to have been serious in this house, for the Bishop couples his prohibition of wills with a prohibition of private rooms and pupils, and later (f. 86d) makes a general injunction against private property.

[1054] V.C.H. Dorset, II, p. 78.

[1055] Wilkins, Conc. I, p. 592.

[1056] In connection with this, see Wickwane’s injunction to Nunappleton in 1281, “We also forbid locked boxes and chests, save if the prioress shall have ordained some seemly arrangement of the kind and shall often see and inspect the contents.” Reg. Wickwane (Surtees Soc.), p. 141. Also Newark’s injunction to Swine in 1298 that “the Prioress and two senior nuns should cause the boxes of any nuns of whom suspicion [of property] should arise to be opened in her presence and the contents seen. And if anyone will not open her box ... then let the prioress break it open.” Reg. of John le Romayn and Hen. of Newark (Surtees Soc.), II, p. 223; compare Eudes Rigaud’s struggle against locked boxes, below, p. .

[1057] Wilkins, Conc. II, p. 16.

[1058] “Where the lawe and the professyon of yche religyouse person that thei have shuld have one fraitoure and house to ete in in commyn and not in private chaumbers, and so to lygg and slepe in one house, in youre said covent sustren reteynen money and proveis thame selfe privatly ayensthe ordir of religion, etc.” The injunction is coupled with a strong injunction against dowries. Hereford Reg. T. Spofford, p. 224. Compare the injunction to Lymbrook, p. above.

[1059] V.C.H. Dorset, II, p. 77.

[1060] For other references to the peculium for clothing, see Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp, p. 274; Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, p. 23; Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 130.

[1061] Thus William of Wykeham, in the course of his severe injunction against proprietas at Romsey (1387), thus defines it: “Vt autem quid sit proprium vobis plenius innotescat, nos sancti Benedicti regulam imitantes, id totum proprium siue proprietatem fore dicimus et eciam declaramus, quicquid videlicet dederitis vel receperitis sine iussu vestre Abbatisse aut retinueritis sine permissione illius.” New Coll. MS. f. 86d.

[1062] Reg. Wickwane (Surtees Soc.), p. 140.

[1063] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 174.

[1064] Ib. III, p. 164.

[1065] Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, p. 143.

[1066] Linc. Visit. II, p. 8.

[1067] “The monastery, however, itself ought if possible to be so constructed as to contain within it all necessaries, that is, water, mill, garden and [places for] the various crafts which are exercised within a monastery, so that there be no occasion for monks to wander abroad, since this is in no wise expedient for their souls.” Rule of St Benedict, tr. Gasquet, pp. 117-8.

[1068] Chap. L, ib. p. 88.

[1069] Chap. LI, ib. p. 89.

[1070] Chap. LXVII, ib. p. 118. This, however, is clearly exceptional; the regulation comes in a later chapter and not in the first edition of the rule. The translations of the rule made at a later date for nuns, sometimes specify visits “to fadir or moder or oþer frend” not mentioned in the original.

[1071] In some reformed orders founded at a later date the formula of profession actually contained a vow of perpetual enclosure, e.g. the Poor Clares, whose vow, under the second rule given to them by Urban IV in 1263, comprised obedience, poverty, chastity and enclosure. Thiers, De la Clôture (1681), pp. 41-2. Compare the formula given in the rule of the Order of the Annunciation, founded at the close of the fifteenth century by Jeanne de France, daughter of Louis XI. Ib. p. 55. The nuns of the older orders did not make any specific vow of enclosure, and it was enforced upon them only as an indispensable condition for the fulfilment of their other vows, which accounts for the obstinacy of their opposition; some jurisconsults, indeed, were of the opinion that the Pope could not oblige a nun to be enclosed against her will. Ib. p. 50.

[1072] The passage is quoted in the preface to Thiers, op. cit. For the Church’s view of virginity, see especially St Jerome’s famous Epistola (22) ad Eustochium.

[1073] Thiers, op. cit. p. 245. Quoting the jurisconsult Philippus Probus. For a good example of the mixture of ideas, see Mr Coulton’s account of the arguments used by the monk Idung of St Emmeram in favour of enclosure: “He begins with the usual medieval emphasis on feminine frailty, of which (as he points out) the Church reminds us in her collect for every Virgin Martyr’s feast ‘Victory ... even in the weaker sex.’ Then comes the usual quotation from St Jerome, with its reference to Dinah, which Idung is bold enough to clinch by a detailed allusion to Danae. This, of course, is little more than the usual clerkly ungallantry; but it is followed by a passage of more cruel courtesy. The monk must needs go abroad sometimes on business, as for instance, to buy and sell in markets; ‘but such occupations as these would be most indecent for even an earthly queen, and far below the dignity of a bride of the King of Heaven.’” Coulton, Med. Studies, No. 10, “Monastic Schools in Middle Ages” (1913), pp. 21-2.

[1074] Words which Menander puts in the mouth of one of his characters. Compare the famous Periclean definition of womanly virtue, which is “not to be talked about for good or for evil among men.”

[1075] Coulton, Chaucer and his England, p. 111.

[1076] The following references will be found conveniently collected in Part I chs. 1-16 of a very interesting little book, the Traité de la Clôture des Religieuses, published in Paris in 1681 by Jean-Baptiste Thiers, “Prestre, Bachelier en Theologie de la Faculté de Paris et Curé de Chambrond.” The treatise is divided into two parts, one of which shows “that it is not permitted to nuns to leave their enclosure without necessity,” the other “that it is not permitted to strangers to enter the enclosure of nuns without necessity.” The author contends that enclosure was the immemorial practice of the Church, though the first general decree on the subject was the Bull Periculoso; but what he proves is really that the demand grew up gradually and naturally out of the effort to reform the growing abuses in conventual life, which sprang from too free an intercourse with the world.

[1077] Sext. Decret. lib. III, tit. XVI. Quoted in Reg. Simonis de Gandavo, pp. 10 ff.; from which I quote. See also Thiers, op. cit. pp. 45-9.

[1078] See Thiers, op. cit. pp. 53-60 for these, except the reforms of Busch, for which see below, App. III. Three papal bulls were published in the sixteenth century reinforcing Periculoso, viz. the Bull Circa pastoralis (1566) and Decori et honestati (1570) of Pius V and the Bull Deo sacris of Gregory XIII (1572).

[1079] “Cependant il n’y a gueres aujourd’hui de point de Discipline Ecclesiastique qui soit ou plus negligé, ou plus ignoré que celui de la clôture des Religieuses; et quoique les Conciles, les Saints Docteurs et les Pères des Monasteres, ayent en divers temps et en divers rencontres, employé leur zèle et leur authorité pour en établir la pratique; nous ne laissons pas neanmoins de voir souvent avec douleur qu’on le viole empunément, sans scrupule, sans réflexion et sans necessité. L’Eglise gemit tous les jours en veuë de ce desordre qui la deshonore notablement; et c’est pour compatir en quelque façon à ses gemissemens, que j’entreprens de le combattre dans ce Traité.” Op. cit. Preface.

[1080] Wilkins, Concilia, II., p. 18.

[1081] See, however, the injunctions of Thomas of Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, to Lymbrook in 1277, which are in part a recital of Ottobon’s Constitutions. Reg. Thome de Cantilupo, p. 201. Peckham, in the injunctions which he sent to Barking and Godstow in 1279, states that they are based respectively upon those issued by John de Chishull, Bishop of London, and by Robert de Kilwardby, his predecessor as Archbishop of Canterbury, and it is probable that both of these prelates had attempted to enforce Ottobon’s Constitutions. Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, I, p. 81; II, p. 846.

[1082] He visited Wherwell in the same year, but his injunctions to that house dealt with the entrance of seculars into the nunnery, not with the exit of nuns.

[1083] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, p. 247.

[1084] Ib. I, pp. 85-6.

[1085] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, I, pp. 265-6, and in Wilkins, op. cit. II, p. 61.

[1086] Wilkins, op. cit. II, pp. 53-9. Thiers’ remarks on the practice of begging by nuns are interesting in this connection. He contends that only sheer famine justifies the breach of enclosure and adds: “C’est pourquoy je ne comprends pas d’où vient que nous voyons à Paris et ailleurs, tant de Religieuses, quelquefois assez jeunes et assez bien faites qui sous pretexte que leurs Monasteres sont dans le besoin, demandent l’aumône aux portes des Eglises, qui courent par les maisons des seculiers et qui demeurent un temps considerable hors de leurs Monasteres, le plus souvent sans sçavoir ne la vie ni les moeurs des personnes qui exercent l’hospitalité envers elles. On rendroit, ce me semble, un grand service à l’Eglise si on les reduisoit aux termes de la Bulle de Gregoire XIII. Deo sacris, qui leur procure les moyens de subsister honnestement dans leurs Monasteres, sans rompre leur clôture. Car ainsi les gens de bien ne seroient point scandalisez de leurs sorties ne de leurs courses, et elles feroient incomparablement mieux leur salut dans leurs Convents que dans le Monde, où je n’estime pas qu’elles puissent rester en seureté de conscience.” He quotes an ordinance of the General of the Franciscan Order in 1609, forbidding even the sisters of the Tertiary Order to beg. Thiers, op. cit. pp. 167-9.

[1087] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, pp. 659, 664-5.

[1088] Ib. II, pp. 707, 806.

[1089] Reg. Simonis de Gandavo, pp. 10 ff., 109.

[1090] Reg. Godfrey Giffard, II, pp. 515, 517.

[1091] Reg. J. de Pontissara, p. 546.

[1092] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, f. 9.

[1093] Ib. ff. 9d, 10d, 11, 12d, 15d.

[1094] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, f. 10d.

[1095] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, f. 35d.

[1096] Ib. f. 16. See below, p. .

[1097] Ib.

[1098] Agnes Flixthorpe. See below, p. .

[1099] Ib. f. 152.

[1100] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton, ff. 5d, 32d, 154. For these and other cases of apostasy see Chap. XI, passim.

[1101] Lyndwood, Provinciale (1679), Pt II, p. 155. Quoted by Mr Coulton in Med. Studies, No. 10, “Monastic Schools in the Middle Ages,” p. 21.

[1102] Apparently friends and relatives in the world outside sometimes intervened, by threats or prayers, to save a nun from punishment. A compertum of Archbishop Giffard’s visitation of Swine in 1267-8 runs: “Item compertum est that the Prioress is a suspicious woman and far too credulous, and easily breaks out into correction, and often punishes some unequally for equal faults, and follows with long dislike those whom she dislikes until occasion arise to punish them; hence it is that the nuns, when they suspect that they are going to be troubled with excessive correction, procure the mitigation of her severity by means of the threats of their kinsfolk.” Reg. Walter Giffard, p. 147.

[1103] Reg. Walter de Stapeldon, p. 317. Cf. p. 95. When the London mob had beheaded Stapeldon in Cheapside, his place was filled (after the short rule of Berkeley) by an even greater bishop, John Grandisson, who, in the year of his consecration, directed a mandate to the nuns of Canonsleigh in which he attempted to carry out more closely than his predecessor, though still not exactly, the terms of Periculoso. He forbade the abbess to allow any nuns to leave the precincts before his visitation “that is to such a distance that it is not possible for them to return the same day.” This was on June 23rd 1329; a month later he was obliged to compromise, for on July 18th he sent a licence to Canonsleigh, recapitulating his former mandate but adding a special indulgence, permitting (“for certain legitimate reasons”) the nuns to absent themselves from the monastery “with honest and senior ladies to visit near relatives and friends of themselves and of the house, who are free from all suspicion,” and fixing the limit of their visit at fifteen days, an improvement on Stapeldon’s month, but still far removed from the spirit of Boniface VIII’s bull. Reg. John de Grandisson, I, pp. 508, 511.

[1104] See e.g. Wroxall 1338, “Et vous emouvums [? enioiniums], dame prioresse, qe vous ne seyez mes si legere de doner licence a vos soers de isser de le encloystre et nomement la priourie cume vous avez este en ces houres saunz verreye et resonable enchesun et cause.” Worc. Reg. Sede Vacante, p. 276; and St Radegund’s, Cambridge, 1373: “Item, the Prioress is too easily induced to give permission to the nuns to go outside the cloister.” Gray, Priory of St Radegund’s, Cambridge, p. 36.

[1105] See e.g. Fairwell, 1367. Reg. Robert de Stretton, p. 118. The necessity for an injunction against favouritism is shown by the comperta of Archbishop Langham’s visitation of St Sepulchre, Canterbury, in 1367-8. “Prioressa non permittit moniales ire in villam ad visitandum amicos suos nisi Margeriam Child et Julianam Aldelesse que illuc vadunt quociens eis placet.” Lambeth Reg. Langham, f. 76d. She was also charged with allowing them to receive suspected visitors. See below, p. .

[1106] An example of such a licence for a particular nun to leave her house is printed in Fosbroke, British Monachism (1817), p. 361 (note g) and also in Taunton, Engl. Black Monks of St Benedict, I, p. 108, note 2. It is said to be granted on the prayer of “Lady J. wife of Sir W. knight, of our diocese,” whom the nun is to be allowed to visit, with a companion from the same priory and to go thither on horseback “notwithstanding your customs to the contrary.”

[1107] But Archbishop Melton said twice a year at Arthington in 1315. V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 188.

[1108] See e.g. Bishop Spofford’s regulation at Lymbrook in 1437: “nor to be absent lyggyng oute by nyght out of their monastery, but with fader and moder, excepte causes of necessytee.” Hereford Epis. Reg. Spofford, I, f. 77; and Archbishop Lee’s injunction to Sinningthwaite in 1534: “that she from henceforth licence none of her susters to go fourth of the housse, onles it be for the profitt of the house, or visite their fathers and modres, or odre nere kynsfolkes, if the prioresse shall think it conuenient.” Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 442. Compare Bishop Gynewell’s injunction to Godstow (1358), “par necessarie et resonable cause ouesque lour parents, honestement au profit de vostre mesoun.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 100d. Sometimes, however, friends were mentioned, e.g. at Nunkeeling (1314) none was to go out “except on the business of the house or to visit friends and relations.” V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 120. Sometimes the sickness of friends was specified. At Marrick (1252) none was to go out unless “the sickness of friends or some other worthy reason” demanded it, ib. p. 117; and at Studley in 1530-1 Bishop Longland ordained “that ye lycence not eny of your ladyes to passe out of the precincte of our monastery to visite their kynsfolks or frendes, onles it be for ther comforte in tyme of ther sikenes, and yett not than onles it shall seme to you, ladye priores, to be behouefull and necessarye, seing that undre suche pretence moche insolency have been used in religion,” Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 54. One of the nuns of Legbourne in 1440 complained bitterly that “the Prioress will not suffer this deponent to visit her parent who is sick [even] when it was thought that he would die.” Linc. Visit. II, p. 186.

[1109] As, needless to say, she sometimes did. In 1351 Bishop Gynewell was obliged to write to Heynings rebuking such disobedience: “encement si auoms entenduz que les dames de dit mesoun sount acustumez demurrer od lour amys outre le terme par vous, Prioresse, assigne, nous commandoms a vous, Prioress auant dit, qe taunt soulement une foith en 1 an donez conge a les dames de visiter lour amys, et certeyn terme resonable pur reuenir, outre qeule terme sils facent demoer, saunz cause resonable par vous accepte, les chastes pur le trespasse solonc les obseruances de vostres ordre saunz delay.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d. At Ivinghoe in 1530 it was discovered that one of the nuns had gone on a visit to her friends without permission and had stayed away from the Feast of St Michael to Passion Sunday in the following year (i.e. over six months), which came perilously near to apostasy, V.C.H. Bucks. I, p. 355. In the Vitae Patrum, XC, 206, however, there is a tale of a nun who was lent by her Abbess to a certain religious matron and lived with her for a year. See the version in Exempla e sermonibus, etc. ed. T. F. Crane, pp. 26-7.

[1110] V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 120, 128, 175, 177, 178.

[1111] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 100d.

[1112] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 118, 122, ff. 6-7, 25, 72, 83, 109. At Godstow the prioress said “that the nuns have often access to Oxford under colour of visiting their friends,” p. 114; and at Heynings a discontented nun said “that sisters Ellen Bryg and Agnes Bokke have often recourse to Lincoln and there make long tarrying.” They denied the charge, but a note in the register states, “The nuns have access too often to the house of the treasurer of Lincoln, abiding there sometimes for a week.” The Bishop forbade “accesse suspecte to Lincolne,” pp. 132, 133, 135.

[1113] Ff. 28d, 77d, 95d. To Catesby, op. cit. p. 51. Compare injunctions to Godstow, Gracedieu, Nuncoton and St Michael’s, Stamford, pp. 116, 125.

[1114] Above, p. . And compare William of Wykeham’s injunction to Romsey, which repeats Peckham’s constitution on this point word for word. New Coll. MS. f. 85.

[1115] See e.g. Drokensford’s injunction to Minchin Barrow [i.e. Barrow Gurney] in 1315: “quod tunc bene incedant et in habitu moniali et non ad alia loca quam se extendit licencia se diuertant quoque modo, et ultra tempus licencie sue se voluntarie non absentent.” Hugo, Med. Nunneries of Somerset, Barrow, App. II, p. 81.

[1116] See e.g. the synodal Constitutions of c. 1237, Wilkins, Concilia, I, p. 650. Archbishop Courtenay in 1389 sent an interesting injunction to Elstow Abbey, which had evidently been remiss in offering hospitality to travelling nuns: “Inasmuch as it has happened that nuns coming to the monastery on their return from a visit to their friends, have been refused necessities for themselves and for their horses, inhumanly and contrary to the good repute of religion, which we wish to remedy, we order that for each nun thus tarrying provision be made according to the resources of the house, for four horses at least if by day for a whole day, and if [she come] by night or after the hour of nones for the rest of the day and for the night following.” Lambeth Reg. Courtenay, I, f. 336. Injunction repeated by Bishop Flemyng of Lincoln in 1421-2. Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Linc. I, pp. 50-1.

[1117] See e.g. Peckham’s injunctions to Barking and Godstow. Above, p. . Religious houses of men were sometimes specially ordered not to receive them, e.g. Bridlington in 1287. Reg. John le Romeyn, I, p. 200. The necessity for such an order appears below, pp. ff.

[1118] E.g. Peckham to St Sepulchre, Canterbury (1284): “Nullum quoque potum aut cibum ibidem sumat, moram non protrahat, sed statim expedita causa accessus hujusmodi redeat indilate.” Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, p. 707; and Bokyngham to Elstow (1387): “Cum vero recreacionis causa, obtenta superioris licencia, moniales antedicte egrediuntur monasterii sui septa, incedant cum familiarium honesta comitiua et sufficiente, ad idem monasterium, redeuntes de eodem citra solis occasum.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 343.

[1119] At Wroxall in 1338 it was specially ordered “qe deux jeunes ne issent poynt ensemble pur male suspecioun qe de ceo purra legerement sourdre, ke Dieuz defent.” Worc. Reg. Sede Vacante, p. 276. At Lymbrook in 1437 Bishop Spofford ordered that no nun was to go out without a companion, and “in case they lygge owte be nyght, two sustres to lye togeder in on bed,” a practice which (according to the usual custom) he forbids in the dorter. Hereford Epis. Reg. Spofford, f. 77.

[1120] See Thiers, op. cit. Pt I, chs. XVIII, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXXI. He quotes the stories of the nuns of Arles in the fifth century and of Marcigny in the eleventh century, who refused to break their enclosures even for fire and were miraculously preserved, pp. 12-13, 32-5.

[1121] The rhymed Northern Rule of St Benedict for nuns (l. 2094) says that when they go away into the country they should wear “more honest” clothes. “In habitu moniali” is one of the conditions imposed on the nuns of Barrow Gurney in 1315. See above, p. , note 4. The necessity for such a regulation appears in the decree made by Henry Archbishop of Cologne, executing an enactment of the Provincial Council of Cologne (1310), promulgating Periculoso. “Nevertheless we often see that having come out of their monasteries they [the nuns] wander about the roads and public places and frequent the houses of secular persons. And, what is more deplorable, having put off their religious habit, they appear in secular dress and bear themselves in public with so much vanity that their conduct may justly be considered suspicious, although their conscience be really pure and without sin. And although hitherto they have been menaced with divers penalties, nevertheless the more strictly they are forbidden to live after this fashion, the more eagerly they disobey, so strongly do they hanker after forbidden things.” The whole injunction is worthy of study. Thiers, op. cit. pp. 491-3. Discipline was laxer in German convents than in those of England. In England, however, there are sometimes complaints that male religious leave their convents in secular attire; see a case at Huntingdon Priory in 1439, Linc. Visit. II, pp. 154-5.

[1122] See ib. XXV, XXVI, XXVII. A few examples may be given of nuns leaving their houses to become superiors elsewhere: Basedale got prioresses from Rosedale in 1524 and 1527 (Yorks. Arch. Soc. XVI, p. 431 note); Rosedale from Clementhorpe in 1525 (Dugdale, Mon. IV, pp. 317, 385); Kington from Bromhale in 1326 (ib. IV, p. 398) and Ankerwyke from Bromhale in 1421 (Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Linc. I, p. 156). Sometimes the prioress of one house left it to rule another, e.g. Elizabeth Davell, Prioress of Basedale, became Prioress of Keldholme in 1467 (V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 169). Alice Davy, who occurs as Prioress of Castle Hedingham in 1472 and was afterwards Prioress of Wix (V.C.H. Essex, II, p. 123), and Eleanor Bernard, Prioress of Little Marlow (c. 1516) became Abbess of Delapré (Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 149). For a form of licence from a prioress, permitting a nun to accept the office of prioress elsewhere, see MS. Harl. 862, f. 94 (“Literae Priorissae de Bromhale quibus licenciam impertit Clementiae Medforde ejusdem Domus, consorori et communiali, ut Prioratui de Ankerwyke sicut Priorissa praeesse valeat”); and compare the reply of the Prioress of St Bartholomew’s, Newcastle, to the Bishop of Durham about the election of Dame Margaret Danby, a nun of her house, to be Prioress of St Mary’s, Neasham, “Whilk Postulacion I graunt fully with assent of my chapiter atte Reverence of God and in plesing of yor gracious lordship; not wythstondyng yat she is ful necessarye and profitable to us both in spirituall governance and temporall” (1428). (V.C.H. Durham, II, p. 107.) Sometimes a mother house from over the sea tried to assert its right to nominate the head of one of its daughter houses, but Cluniacs, Cistercians, Premonstratensians and houses affiliated to Fontevrault were all extremely jealous of French interference. See the letter written by Mary, daughter of Edward I, a nun of Amesbury, to her brother the King in 1316 protesting against the action of the Abbess of Fontevrault, who was reputed to be sending “a prioress from beyond the sea,” instead of acceding to the convent’s request that one of their own number might succeed to the office. Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, I, pp. 60-63. It was always held desirable if possible to take a superior from among the nuns of the house in which the vacancy occurred, but sometimes no suitable person could be found.

[1123] See Thiers, I, ch. XXII, who mentions the corollary that the superior of another house may be called in to correct rebellious nuns if their own head is unable to do so. See below, p. . In 1501 Emma Powes, then at Romsey, is said to have been professed at King’s Mead near Derby “and from that place had been removed to another priory in the Hereford diocese, where she had been prioress, and thence had come to this house.” A charge of incontinence was made against her, and we know from another source that she had been prioress of Lymbrook (she was deprived on or about 24 Nov. 1488, Hereford Reg. Myllyng, p. 112). It is interesting that in 1492 one of the nuns had asked that “a nun who has been brought in, be restored to the place to which she is professed.” Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, pp. 219, 225. One of Alnwick’s injunctions to Clemence Medforde, Prioress of Ankerwyke in 1441, was “that henceforth she should not admit that nun of Hinchinbrooke either into the house or to dwell among them, and also that she should not deliver to her that bond which she has from the house of Hinchinbrooke, or any other goods which she has of the same house.” Linc. Visit. II, p. 6. In a list of the nuns of Thetford in 1526 occurs the name of “Domina Elianora Hanam, professa in Wyke (Wix).” Jessopp, Visit. in Dioc. Norwich, p. 243.

[1124] Such, for instance, as leprosy. In 1287 Archbishop John le Romeyn sent a request to the master of Sherburn Hospital, Durham, to receive Basilia de Cotum, a nun of Handale, “quia, ... lepre deformitate aspersa, propter suspectam morbi contagionem, morari non poterit inter sanos, devocionem vestram rogamus quatinus ipsam in hospitali vestro velitis recipere et seorsum in necessariis exhibere, ita, tamen, quod sub religioso habitu quem gerit Deo serviat dum subsistit.” Reg. John le Romeyn, I, p. 163. Richard de Wallingford, the great abbot of St Albans, was a leper, but remained in his house.

[1125] Dugdale, Mon. V, p. 493. Dugdale remarks that “a little scandal also appears to have been attached to her character.” She finally resigned on account of old age in 1320, and perhaps the leave of absence referred to accounts for the appearance of another Prioress in 1308 who resigned in 1309. V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 180-1.

[1126] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 127, note 13.

[1127] V.C.H. Dorset, II, p. 78. In 1427 the papal licence was granted to one Isabel Falowfeld, nun of St Bartholomew’s, Newcastle on Tyne, to transfer herself to another monastery of the same order, on account of her weak constitution and the inclemency of the air near St Bartholomew’s. Cal. of Papal Letters, VII, p. 516. See Thiers on the subject, op. cit. pp. 140-2, 213-5. He quotes the decision of the University of Salamanca on the question as to whether the General or any minor official of the Minorites had the power to give permission to a nun of the order who was dangerously ill, to leave her house and enter another of the same order, so as to recover her health. “Exactissima discussione facta circa praesentem difficultatem, omnes unanimiter atque uno ore responderunt atque dixerunt, non posse id fieri stando in jure communi, quod et multis juribus atque rationibus comprobarunt” (p. 214). He also quotes the case of a nun of the Annunciation of Agen, of whom the doctors said that if she stayed in her house she would infallibly die, but if she went out for a change of air and medicinal baths she would infallibly be cured. To which alternative the General of the Order, on being asked to give her a dispensation to go out, replied in one word “Moriatur” (p. 217). But these were both strictly enclosed orders.

[1128] “Si quae vero moniales ad balnea qualitercumque processerint extra monasteria, irremissibiliter priventur habitu regulari; et licentiantes easdem ut praedicta petant balnea, sententiam excommunicationis incurrant.” Nomasticon Cisterciense, p. 533, also in Thiers op. cit. p. 220; cf. pp. 216 ff. But the public baths were of notoriously bad reputation.

[1129] See Thiers, op. cit. Pt I, ch. XLII-XLVII. From the fact that he thinks it necessary to devote five chapters to the subject and from the evidence which he adduces and the language which he uses, it is clear that the practice was very prevalent.

[1130] Decret. III, tit. XXXI, c. 18. See Thiers, op. cit. pp. 161-2. Licences to migrate to a convent professing a stricter rule are sometimes found in episcopal registers. See e.g. Hereford Reg. Caroli Bothe, p. 241.

[1131] See his letter to a superior, quoted by Thiers: “Je suis tout-à-fait d’avis que l’on n’ouvre point la porte au changement des Maisons pour le souhait des filles: car ce changement est tout-à-fait contraire au bien des Monasteres qui ont la clôture perpetuelle pour article essentiel. Les filles comme foibles, sont sujettes aux ennuis et les ennuis leur font trouver des expediens et importuns et indiscrets. Que les changemens doncques procedent des jugemens des superieurs et non du désir des filles, qui ne sçauroient mieux declarer qu’elles ne doivent point estre gratifiées, que quand elles se laissent emporter a des desirs si peu justes. Il faut donc demeurer là, et laisser chaque rossignol dans son nid; car autrement le moindre deplaisir qui arriveroit à une fille, seroit capable de l’inquieter et luy faire prendre le change: Et au lieu de se changer elle-même, elle penseroit d’avoir suffisament remedié à son mal, quand elle changeroit de Monastere.” Thiers, op. cit. pp. 160-1.

[1132] Plainly she regarded the things as her own private property and was thus guilty of the sin of proprietas as well. Compare the evidence of the Abbot of Bardney concerning one of his monks in 1439-40. “Also he deposes that brother John Hale sent out privily all his private goods, with the mind and intent, as it appeared, to leave the house in apostasy and especially a silver spoon and a mazer garnished with silver; and yet he has not yet gone, nor will he disclose to the abbot where such goods are.” Linc. Visit. II, p. 26.

[1133] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 127-9.

[1134] The three anchoresses of The Ancren Riwle and their maids will be remembered.

[1135] Raine, Letters from Northern Registers (Rolls Ser.), pp. 196-8. See also Rotha Clay, Hermits and Anchorites of England, pp. 93-4.

[1136] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 113 (cf. Test. Ebor. II, p. 98). Two other Yorkshire nuns are found as anchoresses in the first part of the fourteenth century. Joan Sperry, nun of Clementhorpe, was anchoress at Beeston near Leeds in 1322, and in 1348 Margaret la Boteler, nun of Hampole, was anchoress at the chapel of East Layton, Yorks. Clay, op. cit. pp. 254-5, 256. See also the curious case of Avice of Beverley, a nun of Nunburnholme, concerning whom “the Prioress and nuns say that Avice of Beverley, sometime professed nun of Nunburnholme, thrice left the house to the intent that she might lead a stricter life elsewhere. They say that fourteen years at least have passed since she last went away; howbeit they believe her to have lived in chastity. They say that she was disobedient every year and very often while she was with them. They say that she dwelt with them for thirty years before she left the monastery for the first time.” The inquiry which elicited this information was made because she wanted to return (1280). Reg. Wm. Wickwane, p. 92. She had probably tried being an anchoress.

[1137] Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Linc. I, pp. 113-15. The prioress’ licence addressed to Beatrice is also printed. It may be well here to repeat the editor’s warning that “acts of this description probably form the foundation for the ridiculous superstition, made famous by a striking passage of Scott’s Marmion, that nuns and others who had broken the laws of the church were commonly walled up and left to perish.” Another and perhaps more probable explanation of the superstition is that Scott probably, and certainly others after him, misinterpreted the words immuratio, emmurer, which are constantly used of strict imprisonment by inquisition officials and others. See on the subject, H. Thurston, S.J., The Immuring of Nuns (Catholic Truth Soc. Historical Papers, No. V).

[1138] Celestria (? Celestina), nun, and Adilda, nun, are mentioned as anchoresses there. Clay, op. cit. pp. 222-3.

[1139] Ib. p. 184. An “ancress” was found at this house at the time of the Dissolution.

[1140] For her works see Revelations of Divine Love, recorded by Julian, Anchoress at Norwich, ed. Grace Warrack (1901). She is apparently not to be confused with another famous anchoress, Julian Lampet, bequests to whom are often recorded in Norwich wills between 1426 and 1478. The priory seems to have had a succession of two or even three anchoresses named Julian. See Rye, Carrow Abbey, pp. 7-8 and App. IX, passim. For anchoresses enclosed at conventual houses of men, see Clay, op. cit. pp. 77-8; anchoresses are sometimes described as “nun,” ib. pp. 224, 232, 238, 244. Matilda Newton, a nun of Barking, who had been appointed to rule the new Abbey of Syon, but for some reason did not become abbess, returned to her own house as a recluse in 1417. Ib. p. 144.

[1141] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, f. 10 (date 1300). The author of Dives and Pauper declares that such secessions were rare among women: “We se that whanne men take thē to be ankeris and reclusys withinne fewe yerys comonly eyther they falle in reūsys or eresyes or they breke out for womās loue or for inkyede of ther lufe or by some gile of þe fend. But of wimē ancres so inclusid is seldome herde any of these defautys, but holely they begīne and holely they ende.” Dives and Pauper, com. VI, ch. B.

[1142] See above, pp. 69-71.

[1143] Wilkins, Concilia, II, p. 18. Compare William of Wykeham’s injunctions to Romsey in 1387: “Constitutiones bone memorie domini Othoboni quondam sedis apostolice in Anglia legati in hoc casu editas ut conuenit imitantes, vobis sub penis infrascriptis districcius inhibemus, ne ad officinas aliquas aut alias cameras quascumque forinsecas extra septa claustri, vel ad alia loca in villam vel alibi extra vestrum monasterium, illis quibus hoc ex officio competit dumtaxat exceptis ... exeatis.” New Coll. MS. f. 84. Compare also the injunctions (likewise modelled on Ottobon’s constitution) sent by Thomas of Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, to Lymbrook about 1277. Reg. Thome de Cantilupo, p. 201.

[1144] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 122, 125.

[1145] Cistercian Stat. A.D. 1257-88, ed. J. T. Fowler, 1890, p. 106.

[1146] Blunt, Myroure of Oure Ladye (E.E.T.S.), Introd. pp. xxviii, xxxii.

[1147] P.R.O. Mins. Accts. 1260/3.

[1148] “Paid for the hire of three horses for six days going to London for our tithes ..., paid for the hire of a serving-man and for his expenses going with the said horses 2/3, item sent to Dame Katherine Fitzaleyn at the same time 6/8” (Prioress’ Account), ib. 1260/4. The treasuress’ account for the same year throws further light upon her movements. “Paid for the expenses of Dame Katherine Fitzaleyn and Dame Ida going to London and for the hire of their horses going and returning, for our tithes £2. 11. 0. ... In the expenses of the sub-Prioress and Dame Katherine Fitzaleyn and two men and three horses going to Fleet for rent and for salt 3/8. In the expenses of Dame Katherine Fitzaleyn and dame Joan Fishmere [the treasuress] for hire of horses 8d.” Ib. 1260/5. Dame Katherine also went to the Bishop to get a certificate and in 1377-8 she went with the treasuress Dame Margaret Redinges to Corby and to Sempringham (perhaps to visit the Gilbertine nuns there) and Dames Margaret Redinges and Joan Fishmere went with Robert Clark to Clapton. Ib. 1260/7

[1149] Reg. of John de Sandale and Rigaud de Asserio, p. 418. Similar letter to Prior and Convent of the Cathedral Church, p. 576.

[1150] Wilkins, Concilia, II, p. 18.

[1151] Reg. Thome de Cantilupo, p. 201.

[1152] New Coll. MS. f. 85d.

[1153] Quoted in Thiers, op. cit. p. 133, who considers the question in his ch. XIX.

[1154] Archaeologia, XLVII, pp. 52-3.

[1155] See illustration of Henry VI being received as a Confrater at Bury St Edmunds, reproduced in Gasquet, Engl. Mon. Life, facing p. 126, from Harl. MS. 2278, f. 6.

[1156] Amundesham, Annales (Rolls Ser.), I, pp. 65-9, passim.

[1157] V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 424.

[1158] “I will that Ilke prior and priores that comes to my beryall at yt day hafe iii s iiij d and Ilke chanon and Nune xij d ... and Ilke prior and priores that comes to the xxx day [i.e. the so-called “month’s-mind”] hafe vj s viij d and Ilke chanon or none that comes to the said xxx day haf xx d.” Lincoln Diocese Documents, ed. A. Clark (E.E.T.S.), pp. 50, 53.

[1159] P.R.O. Mins. Accts. 1260/20. This was probably Constance of Castile, second wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who died on March 24, 1394, and was buried with great magnificence at The Newarke, Leicester. S. Armitage Smith, John of Gaunt (1904), pp. 357-8. The date of the account roll is unfortunately illegible, but from this internal evidence it should probably be dated 1393-4. There is another entry “paye a couent pur lalme le Duk de Lancastre vij s iij d,” in which “Duk” is possibly a slip for “Duchesse.”

[1160] There were over seventy places of pilgrimage in Norfolk alone. Cutts, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages (3rd ed. 1911), p. 162.

[1161] Jacques de Vitry does not mince his words: “I have seen many pilgrims who, weary of wayfaring, used to drink themselves tipsy.... You will find many harlots and evil women in the inns, who lie in wait for the incautious and reward their guests with evil, even as a mouse in a wallet, a serpent in the bosom.” Etienne de Bourbon has the same tale to tell: “A pilgrimage should be sober, lest the pilgrims be despoiled and slain and turned to scorn, both materially and spiritually. For I have seen a person who had laboured greatly making a pilgrimage overseas lose both his virtue and his money, when drunk and lying with a chambermaid in an inn.” Anecdotes Historiques etc., d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. Lecoy de la Marche (1877), pp. 167-8. Mine Host’s words to the drunken cook (Manciple’s Prol. II, pp. 15-19) are significant in the light of these quotations. So also are the adventures of “that loose fish the Pardoner” with the tapster Kit at the Chequer Inn. Tale of Beryn, ed. Furnivall and Stone (Chaucer Soc. 1887). See also An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 258, No. CCCLXXVI.

[1162] Compare the words of the Lollard William Thorpe in 1407: “Such fond people waste blamefullie Gods goodes in their vaine pilgrimages, spending their goods upon vitious hostelars, which are oft uncleane women of their bodies.... Also, sir, I knowe well that when divers men and women will goe thus after their oun willes and finding, out on pilgrimage, they will ordaine with them before to have with them some men and women that can well sing wanton songes; and some other pilgrimages will have them with bagge-pipes,” etc. This and other information about pilgrimages may be found in Coulton, Chaucer and his England, pp. 138-43. See also The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry (E.E.T.S.), pp. 47 ff.

[1163]

The wyff of bath was so wery, she had no will to walk;
She toke the Priores by the hond; “madam, wol ye stalk
Pryuely in-to þe garden, to se the herbis growe?
And aftir, with our hostis wyff, in hir parlour rowe,
I wol gyve ȝewe the wine, and yee shull me also:
ffor tyll wee go to soper, wee have nauȝt ellis to do.”
The Priores, as womman tauȝt of gentil blood and hend,
Assentid to hir counsell; and forthe (tho) gon they wend
Passyng forth (ful) softly in-to the herbery:
ffor many a herbe grewe, for sewe and surgery;
And al the Aleyis fair I-parid, I-ralid and I-makid:
The sauge and the Isope, I-frethid and I-stakid.

Tale of Beryn, p. 10. Cf. p. 6 for the scene with the holy water sprinkler.

[1164] Langland, Piers Plowman, B Text, Passus XII, 36-38.

[1165] “Let it never be permitted to any abbess or any other nun, whosoever she may be, to undertake the journey to Rome or to any other holy places; for it is the Devil, taking the form of an angel of light, who inspires such pilgrimages under a false pretext of piety: and there is no one so foolish and so devoid of reason as not to know how irreligious and blameworthy a thing it is for Virgins vowed to God to hold converse with men, through the necessity of a journey. If after the prohibition of this venerable Council, there be found anyone so bold as to disobey this ordinance, which has been promulgated by unanimous consent, let him be punished according to the rigour of the canons, to wit let him be excommunicated.” Thiers, op. cit. p. 135.

[1166] Wilkins, Concilia, I, p. 502.

[1167] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 172. Compare Bishop Gynewell’s injunction to Heynings in 1351: “Item pur ceo que ascun de les dames de dit mesoun sount trop acustumez de faire auowes de pilgrimage et dautres abstinences, saunz conge de lour souerayn, par quar ils ount souent occasion de les retrer de lour religion; si vous comandoms sur peyn descomengement que nul de vous face tiel maner auowe en destourbance de vostre religion, saunz especial conge de vostre souereyn. Et que nul tiel auowe soit fait par ascun de vous, pur faire paregrinage ou autre abstinence a quel il nest pas tenuz par sa religion, nous lui relessoms tut maner de tel auowe, issint qil se poet doner entirement a sa religion parfaire.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d.

[1168] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 172, and Dugdale, Mon. V, p. 654.

[1169] V.C.H. Essex, II, p. 124.

[1170] Archaeologia, XLVII, pp. 56-7.

[1171] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 183. This episode is a striking illustration of the complaint made about those Jubilee pilgrimages by the abbots of Fountains, St Mary Graces and Stratford, who had been appointed by the Abbot and Chapter-General of Cîteaux to report on the condition of English monasteries of that order. Writing to the Abbot of Cîteaux in 1500, they beg that several bulls of Jubilee indulgence should be sent to England, adding, “for many lesser religious of the order, under pretext of obtaining the grace of this indulgence, led by a spirit less of devotion than of levity and curiosity, are begging their superiors for licence to go to the Roman curia, and we have besought them to remain at home in the hope of obtaining this jubilee [indulgence]. For we rarely see, in this country of ours, any good and devout secular or religious man visiting the Mother City (most justly though it be accounted holy), who returns home again in better holiness and devotion.” Mélanges d’Histoire offerts à M. Charles Bémont (Paris, 1913), p. 429.

[1172] Quoted in Gregorovius, Hist. of Rome in the Middle Ages, III, p. 78 note. See the fifteenth century Florentine carnival song, quoted below, pp. 617-8.

[1173]

Les blanches et les grises et les noires nonains
Sont sovent pelerines aus saintes et aus sainz;
Les Diex lor en set gre, je n’en suis pas certains,
S’eles fussent bien sages eles alassent mains.

Quant ces nonains s’en vont par le pays esbatre
Les unes a Paris, les autres a Montmartre,
Tels foiz enmaine deus qu’on en ramaine quatre,
Quar s’on en perdroit une il les covenroit batre.

From “De la vie dou Monde,” Rustebeufs Gedichte hg. v. Adolf Krefaner (1885), p. 185.

[1174] And of such specific decrees as that of the Council of Oxford (1222) which forbade them to go merely to visit relatives or for recreation except (there was always a saving clause under which nuns and bishops alike could shelter) in such case as might arouse no suspicion. Wilkins, Concilia, I, p. 592.

[1175] Reg. Walter de Stapeldon, p. 95. Cf. injunctions to Polsloe, above, p. .

[1176] All the Familiar Colloquies of Erasmus, ed. N. Bailey, 2nd ed. 1733, p. 379.

[1177] Hereford Epis. Reg. Spofford, p. 81. Compare the charge made against the clergy of Ripon Minster in 1312: “Vicarii capellani, et caeteri ministri ... spectaculis publicis, ludibriis et coreis, immo teatricalibus ludis inter laicos frequentius se immiscent.” J. T. Fowler, Memorials of Ripon Minster (Surtees Soc.), II, p. 68. Also one of the comperta at Alnwick’s visitation of Humberstone Abbey in 1440, “He says that Wrauby answered the abbot saucily and rebelliously when [the abbot] took him to task for climbing up a gate to behold the pipe-players and dancers in the churchyard of the parish church.” Linc. Visit. II, p. 140.

[1178] Manners and Meals in Olden Time, ed. Furnivall (E.E.T.S.), p. 40.

[1179] See above, p. , and compare the injunctions sent by Cardinal Nicholas of Cues to the Abbess of Sonnenburg, c. 1454, forbidding her to go on pilgrimages or to visit health resorts or to attend weddings. Eckenstein, Woman under Monasticism, p. 425.

[1180] Quoted in Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities (ed. 1877), pp. 382, 394. Compare the almost precisely similar account given by Erasmus in his Guide to Christian Matrimony (1526), quoted in Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, pp. 439-40.

[1181] See above, p. and below, p. .

[1182] Coulton, Chaucer and his England, pp. 108-9. Weddings were, however, occasionally celebrated in convent churches, e.g. on Jan. 3rd, 1465-6 the Bishop of Ely addressed a licence to Thomas Trumpington, “President of religion of the Minoresses of the convent of Denny,” authorising him to celebrate matrimony in the convent church between William Ketterich junior and Marion Hall, domestic servants in the monastery, the bans to be put up in the parish church of Waterbeach. Ely Epis. Records, ed. Gibbons, p. 145. Compare case at Crabhouse in 1476, V.C.H. Norfolk, II, p. 409. Dugdale notes that Henry VIII is said to have married one of his wives in the Chapel at Sopwell. Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 364. Such weddings would necessarily have taken place in convent churches where the nave was also used as a parish church, but this was not so at Denny. Wriothesley’s Chronicle contains an account of a triple wedding held at Haliwell in 1536. “This yeare, the 3 daye of July, beinge Mondaye, was a greate solempnytie of marriage kept at the nonnerye of Halywell, besyde London, in the Erle of Ruttlandes place, where the Erle of Oxfordes sonne and heyer, called Lord Bulbeke maryed the Erle of Westmorelandes eldest daughter named Ladye Dorytye and the Erle of Westmorelandes sonne and heyre, called Lord Nevell, maryed the Erle of Ruttlandes eldyste daughter, named Ladye Anne, and the Erle of Rutlandes sonne and heire called Lord Roosse maryed the Erle of Westmorelandes daughter, named Ladye Margaret; and all these three lordes were maryed at one masse, goinge to churche all 3 together on by another and the laydes, there wyfes, followinge, one after another, everye one of the younge ladyes havinge 2 younge lordes goinge one everye syde of them when they went to church and a younge ladye bearinge up everye of their gowne traynes; at wh. maryage was present all the greate estates of the realme, both lordes and ladyes.” Afterwards they all went home and had a great feast, followed by a dance, to which the King came dressed as a Turk. Wriothesley’s Chronicle, ed. W. D. Hamilton (Camden Soc. 1875), I, pp. 50-1. A reference may also be made to No. XLVI of Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, ed. Th. Wright, t. I, p. 284: “Or advint toutesfoiz ung jour que une des niepces de madame l’abbesse se marioit et faisoit sa feste en l’abbaye; et y avoit grosse assemblée des gens du païs; et estoit madame l’abbesse fort empeschée de festoyer les gens de bien qui estoyent venuz à la feste faire honneur à sa niepce.”

[1183] From “Proofs of Age, temp. Henry IV,” quoted in Trans. R. Hist. Soc. N.S. XVI (1902), p. 163.

[1184] “Or viennent commeres de toutes pars; or convient que le pauvre homme [i.e. the husband] face tant que elles soient bien aises. La dame et les commeres parlent et raudent, et dient de bonnes chouses et se tiennent bien aises, quiconques ait la peine de le querir, quelque temps qu’il face ... et tousjours boyvent comme bottes.... Lors les commeres entrent, elles desjunent, elles disnent, elles menjent a raassie, maintenant boivent au lit de la commere, maintenant à la cuve, et confondent des biens et du vin plus qu’il n’en entreroit en une bote; et à l’aventure il vient à barrilz ou n’en y a que une pipe. Et le pauvre homme, qui a tout le soussy de la despense, va souvent veoir comment le vin se porte, quant il voit terriblement boire.... Briefment tout se despend; les commeres s’en vont bien coiffées, parlant et janglant, et ne se esmoient point dont il vient.” Les Quinzes Joyes de Mariage (Bib. Elzevirienne, 1855), pp. 27-8, 30, 37-8.

[1185] G. G. Coulton, French Monasticism in 1503 (Medieval Studies No. XI. 1915), p. 22 note 2.

[1186] New Coll. MS. f. 87. On the other hand such connections with rich families might be a source of wealth to a house. Mr Coulton draws attention to “the letter of an abbot at Bordeaux in Father Denifle’s Désolation des Eglises, etc. I, p. 583 (A.D. 1419). The abbey had been so impoverished by war that the Abbot begged for a papal indult permitting him to stand godfather to forty children of noble or wealthy families.” Coulton, loc. cit.

[1187] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 77d.

[1188] “That frome hensforthe ye give noo more licence ne suffre eny of your susters to be godmother to eny child, nither at the christening nother at the confirmacon, and undre like payne chardge you nott to be godmother to eny child in christening nor confirmacon.” Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 54. Compare similar prohibitions by Eudes Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen, addressed to the nuns of Montivilliers in 1257 and 1265. Reg. Visit. Archiepis. Rothomag. ed. Bonnin (1852), pp. 293, 517. The prohibition was frequently broken by monks as well as by nuns. See e.g. the comperta at Alnwick’s visitation of Higham Ferrers College in 1442: “Also Sir William Calverstone haunts suspect places and especially the house of Margery Chaumberleyn, for whose son he stood sponsor at his confirmation, and, though warned by the master, he does not desist. The same does also haunt the house of one Plays, for whose son he likewise stood sponsor.” Linc. Visit. II, p. 138. Also the complaint of Guy Jouenneaux, Abbot of St Sulpice de Bourges in his Defence of Monastic Reform (1503): “Sometimes they eat in the houses of their gossips, though the law forbids them such relationships, or again among citizens, at whose houses they are as frequent guests, or more frequent, than even worldly-minded folk.” Coulton, loc. cit. It is interesting that Barbara Mason, ex-Prioress of Marham, who died shortly after the dissolution in 1538, mentions two god-daughters. “I wyll Barbara Barcom my goddowter and seruant, shall haue my wosted kyrtyll and clothe kyrtell and my frok in Hayll. Itm. I bequeth to Elyn Mason’s chyld, my goddowter xij d.” Bury Wills and Inventories, ed. S. Tymms (Camden Soc.), p. 134. Henry VIII’s visitors gave her a bad character.

[1189] For her life see M. A. E. Green, Lives of the Princesses of England, II, pp. 404-42.

[1190] Their gardens are often mentioned, e.g. at Nuncoton in 1440 it was complained that the nuns had private gardens and that some of them did not come to Compline, but wandered about in the gardens, gathering herbs. Alnwick’s Visit. f. 72. At Stainfield in 1519 a similar complaint was made that on feast days they did not stay in the church and occupy themselves in devotion, between the Hours of Our Lady and High Mass, but came out and walked about the garden and cloisters. V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 131. The nuns of Sinningthwaite (1319) were ordered to provide themselves with a competent gardener for their curtilage, so that they might always have an abundance of vegetables. V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 177. Christine de Pisan’s description of the great gardens of the convent of Poissy is most attractive. See below, p. .

[1191] Quoted in Gasquet, English Monastic Life, p. 177.

[1192] One of the charges against Eleanor Prioress of Arden in 1396 was that “she compelled three young nuns to go out haymaking very early in the morning and they did not come back before nightfall and so divine service was not yet said.” Test. Ebor. (Surtees Soc.), p. 283.

[1193] Alnwick’s Visit. f. 71d.

[1194] Ib. pp. 120, 121, 123, 125. At Bishop Atwater’s visitation of Legbourne in 1519 it was stated that the nuns often worked at haymaking, but only in the presence of the Prioress. V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 154.

[1195] See below, p. .

[1196] See below, p. .

[1197] See Thiers on the subject: “Si les Religieuses estoient aussi soigneuses de leur honneur et de leur reputation comme elles devroient, si elles vouloient asseurer la grace de leur vocation et de leur election ... elles ne nourriroient point de vaches dans leur clôture, estant indecent que les Religieuses s’occupent à les mener paistre, à les retirer des pasturages, et à faire tout ce qui est necessaire pour en recevoir quelque profit. Je dis la même choses des asnesses, qu’elles y retiennient pour en prendre le lait dans leurs infirmitez. Car elles peuvent les avoir au dehors et en tirer à peu près les mêmes avantages, que si elles les renoient au dedans. Aussi est-il dit dans les Statuts du Couvent de Saint Estienne de Reims, de l’ordre des Chanoinesses regulieres de Saint Augustin: Il ne sera loisible de recevoir dans le Monastere aucun gros bestail: ce qui est parfaitement conforme à cette défense du 1. Concile Provincial de Milan en 1565. Moniales ne intus in septis Monasterii boves, equos et jumenta cujusvis generis alant.” Op. cit. p. 415.

[1198] Ancren Riwle (King’s Classics), pp. 316-7.

[1199] Lambeth Reg. Courtenay, I, f. 336. The injunction was repeated by Bishop Flemyng in 1421-2. Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Lincoln, I, p. 52. At Godstow Peckham made the following order concerning the conversations of nuns with seculars: “Cum insuper talia sunt colloquia terminata, inhibemus decetero ne moniales hujusmodi pro colloquentium conductu, locutorii januam exeant ullo modo, nec etiam stent exterius in atrio, ubi saecularium est concursus, sed interius tantum in hortis et pomeriis quatenus requirit necessitas et honestas patitur, si non desit omnimoda securitas, consolentur.” Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, III, p. 848. At Romsey in 1311 Bishop Woodlock ordered that “there shall be an entrance into the garden by a gate or postern for the sick in loco non suspecto for their recreation and solace.” Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 104. At Clementhorpe in 1310 a nun confined to the cloister for penance might “for recreation and solace go into the orchard and gardens of the nunnery accompanied by nuns.” V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 129.

[1200] Hereford Epis. Reg. Spofford, p. 82.

[1201] William Salt Archaeol. Soc. Coll. New Series, VIII, pp. 118-9.

[1202] Coulton, Chaucer and his England, p. 109. He quotes one such rule from the “Ménagier de Paris.” “When thou goest into town or to church, walk with thine head high, thine eyelids lowered and fixed on the ground at four fathoms distance straight in front of thee, without looking or glancing sideways at either man or woman to the right hand or the left, nor looking upward.”

[1203] V.C.H. Essex, II, p. 124.

[1204] Cf. Coulton, Medieval Studies (first series, 2nd ed., p. 61) and Bishop Hallam’s admonition to Shaftesbury in 1410. V.C.H. Dorset, II, p. 78. Also Peckham’s Constitution in 1281. Wilkins, Concilia, II, p. 58.

[1205] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 239.

[1206] Reg. Godfrey Giffard, p. 267.

[1207] Reg. Sede Vacante (Worc. Hist. Soc.), p. 276.

[1208] Reg. Ralph of Shrewsbury, p. 241.

[1209] Reg. Walter de Stapeldon, p. 317.

[1210] A Boke of Precedence, ed. F. J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. Extra Ser. VIII), p. 39.

[1211] The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, ll. 545-7.

[1212] Reg. Epis. Peckham (Rolls Ser.), II, p. 664.

[1213] Linc. Visit. II, p. 114. Cf. Gray’s injunction in 1432. Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. of Linc. I, p. 67.

[1214] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 139d.

[1215] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 343.

[1216] Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Linc. I, pp. 25, 51.

[1217] Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 57.

[1218] Reg. Johannis de Pontissara, pp. 251-2.

[1219] Reg. Epis. Peckham (Rolls Ser.), II, p. 707.

[1220] Linc. Visit. II, p. 50. With this account of the entertainment provided by the Friars of Northampton for their visitors, compare the evidence given at Bishop Nykke’s visitation of the Cathedral priory of Norwich in 1514. “Item, the Brethren are wont to dance in the guesten-house, by favour of the guest-master, by night (and) up to noon.” Visit. of the Dioc. of Norwich (Camden Soc.), p. 75. One of the Bishop’s comperta was that suspicious women had access to the house of the guest-master, which throws further light on the Catesby case. Incidentally the latter bears out Chaucer’s description of the Friar, who was so fond of harping.

[1221] Exempla e sermonibus vulgaribus Jacobi Vitriacensis, ed. T. F. Crane, p. 131.

[1222] Anecdotes Historiques, etc. d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. Lecoy de La Marche, p. 229.

[1223] See below, p. .

[1224] See also below, pp. 448-50.

[1225] Dugdale, Mon. V, p. 654.

[1226] Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 218.

[1227] Poetical Works of John Skelton, ed. Dyce, I, p. 95.

[1228] Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, Text B, Passus V, ll. 304 ff.

[1229] See above, p. .

[1230] Songs and Carols, ed. Th. Wright (Percy Soc.), pp. 91-5.

[1231] Gower, Mirour de l’Omne, ed. G. C. Macaulay, p. 289. Translated in Coulton, Med. Garn. pp. 577-8.

[1232] At Esholt in 1535 Archbishop Lee even had to enjoin “that the prioress suffer no ale house to be kept within the precinct of the gates of the saide monasterie.” Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 452. An explanation of this may be found by comparing the evidence at Archbishop Warham’s visitation of the Hospital of St James outside Canterbury in 1511. “The Prioress complains that Richard Welles stays and talks in the precincts of the house and his wife sells beer in the precincts. They are very quarrelsome people, brawlers and sowers of discord. There is always a crowd of people at the house of Richard.” E.H.R. VI, p. 22. At both these houses the nuns probably employed a secular alewife to make their beer and she sold also to other customers within their precincts. Compare Peckham’s injunction to Wherwell in 1284: “Iterum ob Dei reverentiam et ecclesiae honestatem perpetuo inhibemus ne mercatores sedere in ecclesia cum suis mercibus permittantur.” Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham (Rolls Ser.), II, p. 654. Also Bishop Bokyngham’s letter forbidding merchants to sell their wares in the conventual church or churchyard of Stainfield under pain of excommunication (1392). V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 131. Medieval churches were put to strange uses. They served sometimes as a market-place, sometimes as a granary, sometimes as a playground, sometimes as a stage.

[1233] Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, II, p. 35, note b.

[1234] Wood, op. cit. pp. 35-6.

[1235] Wood, op. cit. pp. 36-37 (No. XV).

[1236] On this subject see Part II of Thiers’ treatise De la Clôture, pp. 265-497.

[1237] Ancren Riwle (King’s Classics), p. 67.

[1238] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 46-7. The Benedictine rule runs: “It is by no means lawful, without the abbot’s permission, for any monk to receive or give letters, presents and gifts of any kind to anyone, whether parent or other.” Cap. LIV.

[1239] V.C.H. Oxon. II, p. 104.

[1240] Liveing, op. cit. p. 232.

[1241] Hist. MSS. Com. Report, IX, App. p. 57 (early fifteenth century).

[1242] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, III, p. 847. From a letter which he wrote to the Abbess on Nov. 12, 1284, it appears that the Prioress had been defamed of incontinence, for, while professing his belief in her innocence, he repeated his prohibition of casual conversation between nuns and seculars, adding “Oveke ceo nous defendons de part Deu ke nule nonein ne parle a escoler de Oxeneford, se il nest sun parent prechein, e ovekes ceo saunz le conge la abbesse especial. E ceo meismes entendons nous de touȝ prestres foreins, le queus font mout de maus en mout de lus, e aussi de touȝ religieus ki ne venent pur precher u pur confesser oue lautorite le apostoile e le eveske de Nichole.” Ib. III, p. 851. Compare an injunction to Nunmonkton in 1397: “Item non permittatis clericos prioratum vestrum frequentare absque causa rationabili.” Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 194.

[1243] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 67-8.

[1244] Ib. p. 65.

[1245] See below, p. .

[1246] Linc. Visit. II, p. 114. Alnwick made a very strong injunction: “For as mykelle as your saide monastery and diuerse singulere persones ther of are greuously noysed and sclaundred for the grete and contynuelle accesse and recourse of seculere and regulere persones, and in specyalle of scolers of Oxenford to your said monastery and seculere persones ther of, that fro hense forthe ye suffre no seculere persones scolers no othere ... to hafe any accesse or recourse to your said monastery ne to any singulere persone ther of, ne there to abyde nyght ne daye, etc.” Ib. pp. 115-6.

[1247] Ib. II, p. 218.

[1248] See V.C.H. Oxon. II, pp. 76-7.

[1249] Op. cit. f. 26d.

[1250] Gray, Priory of St Radegund, Cambridge, p. 35.

[1251] Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 190. See below p. .

[1252] Lambeth Reg. Langham, f. 76d. Compare the note in Alnwick’s visitation of Studley (1445): “Sister Isabel Bartone. It is said that there is great recourse of seculare guests to the aforesaid Isabel and to her chamber.” Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 26d.

[1253] Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 57.

[1254] A few more examples may be quoted. At Swine one of the comperta of Giffard’s visitation in 1267-8 runs: “The household of Sir Robert de Hilton, knight, wanders about far too freely (nimis dissolute) in the cloister and parlour, and often holds very suspicious conversations with the nuns and sisters, whence it is feared that harm may come. And this same Robert is very injurious and dangerous to them, wherefore, for fear of his oppression, the canons of the house lately, without the consent of the convent, gave him a barn full of corn, with which the convent should have been maintained.” Reg. Walter Giffard, p. 148. At Nunmonkton in 1397 the Prioress, Margaret Fairfax, was ordered to see that John Munkton (the same who scandalised the convent by feasting and playing tables with her in her room), Sir William Aschby, chaplain, William Snowe and Thomas Pape held no conversation nor kept company with her, nor with any nun of her house, except in the presence of two of the elder nuns, and she was warned not to allow clerks to frequent the priory without reasonable cause. Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 194. At Rusper in 1524 “a certain William Tychenor has frequent access to the said priory and there sows discord between the prioress and sisters and others living there.” Sussex Arch. Coll. V, p. 257. It will be noticed how often these suspected visitors are clerics; the prefix “sir” in the Nuncoton extract quoted in the text almost certainly denotes a churchman and the persons mentioned are probably secular clergy or canons from neighbouring houses such as Newhouse, probably chantry-priests and parish chaplains. See below, p. .

[1255] The following examples are typical of a host of others. At Nunappleton (1281) external visitors come into frater and cloister. Reg. William Wickwane, p. 141. At Rosedale (1306) the infirmary is to be kept from the passing to and fro of seculars; at Arthington (1318) they are not to frequent cloister, infirmary or other private places; at Nunburnholme (1318) there is scandal from the frequent access and gossiping of seculars with certain of the nuns. V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 119, 174. At Ickleton (1345) the precincts are not to be made the resort of any secular woman, nor is any such person to come into the choir during the hours of service. Goddard, Ickleton Church and Priory (Cambridge Antiq. Soc. Proc. XLV, p. 190). At Gracedieu (1440-1) seculars and nuns eat together commixtim in the Prioress’ hall. Linc. Visit. II, p. 122. At Heynings (1440) the infirmary was occupied by secular folk, “to the great disturbance of the sisters.” Ib. p. 133. At Romsey (1492) people stand about chatting in the middle of the choir. Liveing, op. cit. p. 220.

[1256] On the right of the patron or founder of a monastery, or of persons of noble birth, to enter the cloistral precincts, see Thiers, op. cit. pp. 296-309. He quotes the rule of Fontevrault (cap. VII): “If the most Christian King, the Queen, the Dauphin and other princes of the blood-royal, the founders and foundresses, being instantly besought, refuse nevertheless to desist from entering the precincts, let them enter with as small a suite of attendants as you can arrange, in long and decent garments and not otherwise; but let them not seek to pass the night on pain of excommunication.” Ib. p. 297. It was never possible in practice to keep out great lords and ladies.

[1257] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d.

[1258] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 133-5, passim. Compare the injunctions to some Yorkshire houses: at Marrick (1252) the nuns were forbidden to sit with guests or anyone else outside the cloister after curfew, or for a long time unless the guests arrived so late that it was impossible to serve them sooner, nor was a nun to remain alone with a guest. At Hampole (1302) no nun except the hostillaria was to eat or drink in the guest-house, save with worthy people, and at Wilberfoss (1302) they were forbidden to linger in the guest-house or elsewhere, for amusement with seculars. V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 117, 126, 163. At Elstow in 1432, however, Bishop Gray enjoined “that when parents or friends or kinsfolk of nuns, or other persons of note and honesty, shall journey to the same monastery to visit any nuns of the said monastery, the same nuns be nowise bound for that day to observance of frater, but be excused to this end by grace of the abbess or president.” Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Linc. I, p. 54.

[1259] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, III, pp. 851-2.

[1260] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 100d.

[1261] Wykeham’s Reg. II, pp. 73-4. The special prohibition of friars is significant, for their reputation was growing worse and worse throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. See also V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 164, 171, 181 and Arch. XLVII, p. 57. On the other hand it should be noted that “during the later thirteenth and earlier fourteenth centuries the bishops in many dioceses made a point of insisting that the confessors to the nuns should be chosen, not from the secular clergy, but from the Mendicant Orders, especially from the Minorites.” A. G. Little, Studies in English Franciscan Hist. (1917), p. 119 (and the references which he gives).

[1262] Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Linc. I, p. 66.

[1263] Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 441. Compare Alnwick’s injunctions to Catesby (1442), Langley (1440-1) and St Michael’s, Stamford (1440). Linc. Visit. II, pp. 51, 117, Alnwick’s MS. f. 83d.

[1264] Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 452 (cf. p. 440). These injunctions were very common, for the rule was often broken. Peckham’s regulation for Wherwell (1284) was that no man was to enter after sunset at night, or before the end of chapter (which followed directly after Prime) in the morning. Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, p. 653. For other examples see Romsey (1302-11), Liveing, op. cit. pp. 102, 103; Moxby (1318), V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 239; Sopwell (1338), Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 366; Wroxall (1338), Worc. Reg. Sede Vacante, p. 275; Heynings (1351), Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d; Elstow (1387), ib., Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 343: St Mary’s Neasham (1436), V.C.H. Durham, II, p. 107; St Helen’s, Bishopsgate (1439), Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 552; Nunappleton (1489), V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 172; Studley (1530-1), Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 59; Nuncoton (1531), ib. pp. 56, 59.

[1265] This certainly seems very strict, for (as appears from the injunctions quoted) it was customary to order the doors to be shut when the bell rang for Compline, the last office of the day. Vespers was the service immediately before supper.

[1266] Cantarista usually means a chantry-priest. The more usual word is Precentrix.

[1267] Chaucer, Boke of the Duchesse, ll. 300-4.

[1268] E.H.R. VI, pp. 33-4.

[1269] This was reiterated in Ottobon’s Constitutions and in the Bull Periculoso. See also Thomas of Cantilupe’s letter to Lymbrook in 1277 (Reg. Thome de Cantilupo, p. 201) and Archbishop Peckham’s injunction to Godstow, both based upon Ottobon. Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, III, p. 848. Also Bishop Brantyngham’s commission concerning the nuns of Polsloe in 1376, which is based upon Periculoso. Reg. of Bishop Brantyngham, pt. II, pp. 152-3.

[1270] Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, II, pp. 652-3. Compare injunctions to Barking, ib. I, p. 84, and to St Sepulchre’s, Canterbury, ib. II, p. 706.

[1271] Ib. II, p. 663 “volentes ibi moniales curiose respicere vel cum eis garrulas attemptare.”

[1272] Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 52. Compare Bishop Gray’s injunction to Godstow in 1432-4. “Also that all the doors of the nuns’ lodgings towards the outer court, through which it is possible to enter into the cloister precinct, even if the other doors of the cloister be shut for the time being, be altogether blocked up, or that such means of barring or shutting be placed upon them that approach or entrance through the same doors may not be given to secular folk.” Linc. Visit. I, p. 68. Compare also Dean Kentwode’s injunction to St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in 1432: “Also we injoyn yow, Prioresse, that there may be a doore at the Nonnes quere, that noo straungers may loke on them, nor they on the straungers, wanne thei bene at dyvyne service. Also we ordene and injoyne yow, prioresse, that there be made a hache of conabyll heythe, crestyd with pykys of herne to fore the entre of yowre kechyne, that noo straunge pepille may entre with certeyne cleketts avysed be yow and be yowre steward to suche personys as yow and hem thynk onest and conabell. Also we injoyne yew, prioresse, that non nonnes have noo keyes of the posterne doore that gothe owte of the cloystere into the churche yerd but the prioresse, for there is moche comyng in and owte unlefulle tymys.” Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 554.

[1273] Loc. cit. With this compare Alnwick’s visitation of Ankerwyke in 1441, at which one of Margery Kyrkeby’s charges against the Prioress Clemence Medeforde was: “Also she has ... blocked up the view Thamesward, which was a great diversion to the nuns. She confesses blocking up the view, because she saw that men stood in the narrow space close to the window and talked with the nuns.” Linc. Visit. II, p. 3.

[1274] Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 452-3. Compare Bishop Stapeldon’s injunction to Canonsleigh in 1320: “Et pur ceo que nous avoms oyi et entendu par ascune gent qe par my deus us dedenȝ vostre abbeye ileoqes plusours mals esclandres et deshonestetes sunt avenues avant cest hure, et purront ensement avenir apres, si remedie ne soit mys, ceo est asavoir, un us qe est en lencloistre au celer desouz la Sale la Abbesse devers la court voloms, ordinoms et comaundoms qe meisme ceux deus us soyent bien estupees par mur de pere, entre cy et la Paske procheyn avenir.” Reg. W. de Stapeldon, p. 96.

[1275] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 172. He also said that “No man loge undir the dortir nor oon the baksede, but if hit be such sad persones by whome your house may be holpyne and socured wtout slaundir or suspicion.”

[1276] Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 366. But at Barking Peckham ordered in 1279: “In officiis, autem, quae per foeminas fieri nequeunt, operariorum cum eisdem cautelis introitus admittatur.” Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, I, p. 84. On the entrance of carpenters, masons and other workmen into convents see Thiers, op. cit. II, ch. xxvi. He insists that the work must be a necessity and something which could not be done by the nuns themselves. “Ainsi les artisans sont coupables du violement de la clôture, lorsqu’ils entrent pour des ouvrages de bienseance ou de commodite, pour des decorations ou des embelissemens; en un mot, pour des ouvrages dont les Religieuses se peuvent passer; et je ne vois pas en quelle seurete de conscience les abbesses, les Prieures et les autres superieures des Religieuses, les y laissent entrer, soit pour polir des grilles, pour tendre et pour detendre des chambres et des lits, pour faire et pour peindre des plat-fonds et des alcoves, pour boiser des chambres, des galleries et des cabinets, pour faire de beaux vitrages, de belle volieres à petits oiseaux et d’autres choses semblables. Car outre que tout cela est directement opposé à la modestie et à la pauvreté, dont elles font profession, quel pretexte peuvent-elles alleguer pour se mettre à couvert de l’excommunication que les Conciles, les Papes et les Eveques ont fulminée contre les Religieuses, qui laissent entrer les personnes étrangeres dans leur clôture sans necessité.” Op. cit. pp. 412-3. He is particularly urgent that nuns should cultivate their own gardens and should have their vegetable gardens outside the precincts: “par ce moyen elles ne seroient point obligées d’ouvrer et fermer si souvent les portes de leur clôture, à des jardiniers qui ne sont pas toûjours exempts de scandale” (ib. p. 414), which recalls a famous story of Boccaccio’s. Decameron, 3rd day, novel I.

[1277] Loc. cit. and compare his injunction to Wherwell, ib. p. 268. Bishop Flemyng’s introduction to Elstow is rather contradictory: “Also that no nun admit secretly to her chamber any seculars or other men of religion and that if they be admitted she do not keep them there too long.” Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Lincoln, I, p. 51. At Godstow (1432) the injunction ran: “Also that the beds in the nuns’ lodgings be altogether removed from their chambers, save those for small children and that no nun receive any secular people for any recreation in the nuns’ chambers under pain of excommunication.” Ib. I, p. 67.

[1278] As at Godstow in 1432, Linc. Visit. I, p. 67, or Romsey in 1523, Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 244.

[1279] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, p. 664. Cf. his injunctions to other nunneries.

[1280] Linc. Visit. II, p. 116. Compare injunctions to Catesby, Langley, Markyate and St Michael’s, Stamford. Ib. pp. 51, 177, and Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 6, 83d. For other examples see Lymbrook (1277), Reg. Thome de Cantilupo, p. 201; Polsloe (1319), Reg. W. de Stapeldon, p. 317; Studley (1530), Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 54.

[1281] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 83d, cf. f. 6, and Linc. Visit. II, p. 177.

[1282] Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 554. Compare Romsey (1387), New Coll. MS. f. 86; Nuncoton (1531), Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 60. St Benedict’s Rule forbids all letters (cap. LIV).

[1283] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 46, 177; Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 39d, 76, 95d.

[1284] Ib. p. 119.

[1285] Linc. Visit. II, p. 185.

[1286] Ib. p. 133.

[1287] Ib. pp. 113, MS. ff. 71d, 72, 77.

[1288] For other examples see Romsey (1311), Liveing, op. cit. p. 104; Clementhorpe (1317), Hampole (1308, 1314), Nunappleton (1346), Rosedale (1315), Arthington (1315, 1318); V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 129, 163-4, 172, 174, 188. Sopwell (1338), Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 366; Heynings (1392), Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 397d; Lymbrook (1437), Hereford Epis. Reg. Spofford, p. 81; Burnham (1432-6), Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Lincoln, I, p. 24; Redlingfield (1514), Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, pp. 139-40; Flamstead (1530), V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 433; Nuncoton (1531), Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 58; Sinningthwaite (1534), Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 440-1. The injunction to St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in 1432 has an odd variation: “withowte specialle graunte hadde in the chapetter house, among yow alle.” Dugdale, Mon. IV, pp. 553-4.

[1289] Reg. of John of Drokensford, p. 81. The Isabel Fychet mentioned in 1336 was probably one of these ladies.

[1290] Wykeham’s Reg. II, pp. 162-3. On this couple, see Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, pp. 364 ff.

[1291] Reg. Ralph of Shrewsbury, pp. 277, 278, 744-5. A few out of many other examples may be quoted: Alice, wife of John D’Aumarle, domicellus, may stay at Cornworthy from January till September (1333), Reg. of J. de Grandisson, pt. II, p. 724; Beatrix Paynell, sister of Sir John Foxley, may stay at Whitney from December to the Feast of St John the Baptist (1367), Wykeham’s Reg. II, p. 7; Avice de Lyncolnia, niece of William de Jafford, may stay for four years in Nunappleton (1309); he was the Archbishop’s receiver. V.C.H. Yorks. III, 171; Alice, wife of Alan of Ayste, may spend two years in Godstow (1363), V.C.H. Oxon. II, p. 73. It will be noted that nearly all these are great folk, who cannot lightly be refused.

[1292] Reg. J. de Grandisson, pt. I, p. 190.

[1293] V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 355.

[1294] Reg. John le Romeyn, I, p. 114.

[1295] See the list in Rye, Carrow Abbey, pp. 48-52, passim. Some of the men also brought servants or chaplains with them, e.g. William Wryght and servants, William Wade and William his chaplain, John Bernard and John his chaplain. The men must have been lodged outside the cloister precincts.

[1296] Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner (1900 ed.), II, p. 390 (no. 633). See also no. 617 and Introd. pp. ccxc-ccxcii.

[1297] Linc. Visit. II, p. 175 (at this house there were also three women boarding with the Prioress and one with the Subprioress). Compare the case of Agnes de Vescy at Watton in 1272. The King wrote to the sheriff of Yorkshire that “Agnes de Vescy has been to the house of Watton with a great number of women and dogs and other things, which have interfered with the devotions of the nuns and sisters.” Graham, St Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines, p. 83. The fact was that no one had any real control over these great ladies, least of all their hostesses.

[1298] Linc. Visit. II, p. 185.

[1299] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 76. Compare a compertum at St Sepulchre, Canterbury, in 1367-8. “Perhendinantes male fame steterunt cum priorissa, ad quas habebatur eciam accessus nimium suspectus,” Lambeth Reg. Langham, f. 76d.

[1300] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 120, 122.

[1301] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 71d, 72. Compare the state of affairs at Hampole in 1411, when the Archbishop ordered the removal of “secular servants and corrodiarii who attracted to themselves other secular persons from the country, by whom the house was burdened.” V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 165. When Bishop Grandisson of Exeter licensed the reception of Alice D’Aumarle at Cornworthy (1333) he added “proviso quod ad vos, per moram hujusmodi, secularium personarum non pateat suspectis horis liberior frequencia vel accessus.” Reg. Grandisson, pt. II, p. 724.

[1302] Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. of Lincoln, I, p. 87.

[1303] Note for instance the Archbishop of York’s injunction when mitigating a severe penance on a nun of St Clement’s, York, which is clearly for immorality: “That twice a year if necessary she might receive friends ... but she was to have nothing to do with Lady de Walleys and if Lady de Walleys was then in their house, she was to be sent away before Pentecost (1310),” V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 129.

[1304] V.C.H. Yorks. II, p. 165.

[1305] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 39d.

[1306] Possibly a priest.

[1307] Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, p. 18.

[1308] Wilkins, Concilia, I, p. 592.

[1309] Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Lincoln, I, pp. 48-9. Compare Gray’s injunction, laying more stress on married boarders. Ib. p. 53.

[1310] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d.

[1311] Visit. Linc. II, p. 135. For other injunctions against boarders see Godstow, Gracedieu, Harrold, Langley, Nuncoton, Stixwould, ib. pp. 115, 124-5, 131, 177, Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 77d, 75d; Wherwell, Romsey (1284), Sheppey (1286), Reg. Epis. Peckham, II, pp. 653-4, III, p. 924; Wilberfoss, Nunkeeling and Nunappleton (1281-2), Reg. William Wickwane, pp. 112-3, 140-1; Polsloe (1319), Reg. W. de Stapeldon, p. 317; Canonsleigh (1391), Reg. of Brantyngham, pt. II, p. 724; Farwell (1367), Reg. R. de Stretton, p. 119; Polesworth (1352, 1456), V.C.H. Warwick, II, p. 63. These are only a few examples taken at random; the registers of the Archbishops of York and of the Bishops of Lincoln alone record many more. (See the V.C.H. for the counties in these dioceses, passim.)

[1312] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, p. 664; Liveing, op. cit. pp. 102, 165.

[1313] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 100d; Linc. Visit. I, p. 67; II, p. 115.

[1314] Gynewell, f. 139d, V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 355; Linc. Visit. I, pp. 48-9, 53.

[1315] “That ye receyve ne holde no suiournauntes, men, women ne childerne, wyth ynne your place, and thoe that nowe are there, ye voyde thaym wythe yn a quartere of a yere after the receyvyng of thise our lettres, but if ye here yn hafe specyalle licence of hus or our successours, bysshops of Lincolne, except our wele belufede doghters, dame Elizabeth Dymmok and dame Margaret Tylney, by whose abydyng, as we truste, no greve but rathere avayle is procured to your place.” Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 75d.

[1316] Reg. of Brantyngham, pt. II, p. 724.

[1317] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 173.

[1318] See examples above, p. .

[1319] See Ch. VI, passim.

[1320] Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich (Camden Soc.), p. 290.

[1321] Cal. of Papal Letters, IV, pp. 37-8.

[1322] Ib. IV, p. 212.

[1323] Ib. IV, p. 167.

[1324] Ib. IV, p. 182.

[1325] Ib. IV, p. 394.

[1326] For example, ib. I, pp. 522, 526; IV, p. 38; VII, pp. 70, 440, 617. Sometimes, too, they were ordered to pay their own expenses, e.g. ib. VI, p. 293.

[1327] Ib. VI, p. 132.

[1328] Ib. VII, p. 220.

[1329] Ib. V, p. 91.

[1330] I.e. Jean de Dormans, bishop of Beauvais 1360-8, cardinal 1368, d. 1373.

[1331] Cal. of Papal Letters, IV, p. 170.

[1332] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 126. Sewardsley was near Grafton Regis, where Jacquetta, then widow of Richard Wydville, earl Rivers, lived. This recalls the more famous case of Eleanor de Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester. It is worth noticing also that on the eve of the Reformation the famous Elizabeth Barton, called “the Holy Maid of Kent,” found refuge for a part of her short career in the nunnery of St Sepulchre’s, Canterbury. Archbishop Warham secured her admission there in 1526, and she became a nun and remained there for seven years, until the fame of her outspoken condemnations of the royal divorce finally brought about her execution in 1533. See Gasquet, Hen. VIII and the English Monasteries (Pop. Edit. 1899), ch. III, passim.

[1333] Le Livere de Engletere (Rolls Series), p. 344.

[1334] Cal. of Close Rolls (1318-23), p. 428.

[1335] Ib. (1323-7), pp. 88-9; cf. Le Livere de Engletere, p. 350.

[1336] V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 184.

[1337] Cal. of Close Rolls (1307-13), p. 114.

[1338] Ib. (1302-7), p. 419.

[1339] Cal. of Close Rolls (1313-18), p. 43. Sometimes the King sent his friends as well as his enemies to board in a convent and occasionally he endeavoured to do so without paying for them. In 1339 he sent first to Wilton and then to Shaftesbury “Sibyl Libaud of Scotland who lately came to England to the king’s faith and besought that he would provide for her maintenance, requesting them to provide her and her son Thomas, who is of tender age, with maintenance from that house, in food and clothing, until Whitsuntide next, knowing that what they do at this request shall not be to the prejudice of their house in the future.” Cal. of Close Rolls (1339-41), pp. 261, 335. John of Gaunt made use of the convent of Nuneaton to provide a home for five Spanish ladies, who had doubtless come to England with his duchess Constance of Castile; early in 1373 he wrote to his receiver at Leicester bidding him pay the prioress for their expenses 13s. 4d. each week; but evidently they found the convent too dull for their tastes, for in August one of them was “demourrant a Leycestre ovesque Johan Elmeshalle,” and in December the Duke wrote to his receiver again to say that he had heard “que noz damoisels d’Espaigne demurrantz a Nouneton ne voullont pas illoeques pluis longement demurrer”; so it was “Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies” at Nuneaton. It is probable that these “damoisels” were quite young girls, and had been placed at the convent to learn “nortelry.” John of Gaunt’s Reg. (R. Hist. Soc.), II, pp. 128, 231, 276-7. See, for more about these ladies, pp. 320-1, 328, 338.

[1340] Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi.

[1341] V.C.H. Norfolk, II, p. 352. This case is particularly interesting, because it would seem to show that “benefit of clergy” was not claimed by nuns. On this point see Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of Engl. Law, 2nd ed. I, p. 445. “There seems no reason for doubting that nuns were entitled to the same privilege, though, to their credit be it said, we have in our period, found no cases which prove this.” Maitland cites Hale, Pleas of the Crown, II, p. 328, as saying: “Nuns had the exemption from temporal jurisdiction but the privilege of clergy was never granted them by our law”; but elsewhere (Pleas of the Crown, II, p. 371): “Anciently nuns professed were admitted to privilege of clergy”; he cites a case from 1348 (Fitzherbert’s Abridgment Corone, pl. 461) which speaks of a woman, not expressly called a nun, being claimed by and delivered to the ordinary. Stephen, Hist. of Crim. Law of England, II, p. 461, thinks that “all women (except, till the Reformation, professed nuns) were for centuries excluded from benefit of clergy, because they were incapable of being ordained.”

[1342] Mr Hamilton Thompson thinks that “Mestowe” is probably the hundred of Meon-Stoke (Hants.), in a distant part of the county; it is difficult to see why the Abbess made a general claim there and in any case Wherwell, where Henry Harold lived, is in Wherwell Hundred.

[1343] V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 135.

[1344] Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 369.

[1345] Gibbons, Ely Epis. Records, p. 406.

[1346] Cal. of Pat. Rolls (1381-5), p. 355.

[1347] On the other hand for a case of spoliation in which Juliana Yong, a nun, was involved as one of the aggressors see Cal. of Pap. Petit. I, pp. 333-4.

[1348] Linc. Reg. Dalderby, f. 16.

[1349] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 108-9. Compare a case in 1375 at Romsey when certain persons broke into the houses of the Abbess within the Abbey and carried off Joan, late the wife of Peter Brugge, and her property, consisting of her gold rings, gold brooches or bracelets with precious stones, linen and woollen clothes and furs; her chaplain aiding. Liveing, op. cit. p. 166.

[1350] Cal. of Pat. Rolls (1340-3), p. 127.

[1351] Ib. (1367-70), p. 10. The Abbess was the worldly Joan Formage. Licences for crenellating monasteries are rather unusual; but cathedral closes were very generally crenellated at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries, e.g. Lincoln, York, Lichfield, Wells and Exeter. There is a good example of a crenellated monastery at the Benedictine Priory of Ewenny near Bridgend, Glamorgan, a cell of Gloucester. This is near the south coast of Wales, where, as along the Welsh border, towers either crenellated or with certain defensive features are common. Cf. the numerous fortified churches in the south of France, e.g. Albi Cathedral (Tarn) and Les Saintes-Maries (Bouches-du-Rhône), the latter close to the shore of the Mediterranean. (For this note I am indebted to Mr A. Hamilton Thompson.)

[1352] Froissart, tr. Berners, I, ch. xxxviii. For the sufferings of other monasteries on the south coast see P. G. Mode, The Influence of the Black Death on the English Monasteries, p. 31.

[1353] See Denifle, La Désolation des Eglises ... pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans (1899). In t. I is a long list of monasteries which had been ruined during the fourteenth century. The following (no. 176) is typical: “Monasterium monialium B. Mariae de Bricourt O.S.B. Trecen. dioec., causantibus a 40 annis guerris desolatum et destructum, libris aliisque destitutum et ab omnibus monialibus derelictum 1442” (pp. 55-6).

[1354] Dugdale, Mon. II, pp. 316, 452, 636.

[1355] Serjeantson, Delapré Abbey (1909), pp. 21-3.

[1356] Graham, Essay on Engl. Monasteries (Hist. Ass. 1913), p. 29. The text of the assessment is given in the notes to the Taxatio Ecclesiastica Pape Nicholai (Record Com. 1802).

[1357] The Chronicle of Lanercost, translated by Sir Herbert Maxwell [1913], p. 136.

[1358] Reg. Palat. Dunelm. I, p. 353. In 1291 the number of nuns was twenty-seven, together with four lay brothers, three chaplains and a master. Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 197.

[1359] Hist. Letters from the Northern Reg. ed. Raine, pp. 319-23.

[1360] V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 175, 240.

[1361] Froissart, tr. Berners, I, ch. cxxxvii. The English army on its way to Neville’s Cross was also a sore burden to the religious houses of the neighbourhood. See the very interesting document about Egglestone Abbey quoted from Archbishop Zouche’s Register (under the date 1348) by A. Hamilton Thompson, The Pestilences of the Fourteenth Century in the Diocese of York (Archaeol. Journ. vol. LXXI, New Series, vol. XXI, p. 120, n. 4). It is probable that this campaign, together with the Black Death, which followed hard upon it, brought about the final ruin of the little nunnery of St Stephen’s near Northallerton, which is not heard of after 1350. See ib. p. 121, n. 12, and V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 116.

[1362] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 160, cp. the case of Armathwaite below. The muniments of Carrow were burnt during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Hoare, C. M., Hist. of an East Anglian Soke (Bedford 1918), p. 112. “The destruction of charters, privileges and muniments was a severe loss; evidence for the holding of each strip of land and in support of every custom was of the utmost importance.” Graham, St Gilb. of Semp. and the Gilbertines, p. 138.

[1363] V.C.H. Cumberland, II, p. 190, and Dugdale, Mon. III, pp. 271-2.

[1364] Aug. Off. Misc. Books, 281, f. 11 [P.R.O.]. For the sufferings of Northern monasteries from the Scots 1330-50 see references collected from the patent rolls in P. G. Mode, op. cit. p. 32.

[1365] Chronicon Angliae, ed. E. M. Thompson (R.S. 1874), pp. 247-53.

[1366] It is extremely difficult to identify the nunnery spoken of in the story. According to Froissart the expedition sailed from Southampton (Froissart, Chron. I, ch. ccclvi); according to another account the port of departure was Plymouth (see J. H. Ramsay, The Genesis of Lancaster, II, p. 131). If Southampton be correct, Romsey Abbey would be the nearest nunnery answering to the description in the text, though it stands some miles from the coast. If Sir John sailed from Plymouth the only nunnery in the vicinity would be the little priory of Cornworthy, which certainly never contained a large number of nuns and boarders (though as to this the chronicler may be exaggerating). It is strange that no record of the crime appears to have survived in episcopal registers or in any official document; but it seems unlikely that the story is pure invention, since we know from other sources that the troops were notorious for general depredations along the coast. A petition presented to the King in Parliament (1379/80) runs: “Item, beseech the commons and the good folk who dwell near the coasts of the sea, to wit, of Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset and Cornwall: That whereas they and their chattels have oftentimes been robbed, and are destroyed and spoiled by men-at-arms, archers and others coming and going by the said ports to the service of our Lord the king at the war and by their long sojourn; and chiefly the people of Hampshire during the last expedition which was ruled and ordered, for by the sojourn and destruction made by men ordered upon the said expedition, the goods and chattels of the good people of Hampshire are destroyed, spoiled and annihilated, to the very great abashment and destruction of all the Commons of those parts, as well folk of Holy Church as others; and they will lodge themselves of their own authority, having no regard to the billets (herbegage) assigned to them by our lord [the king], to the destruction of the common people, if it be not remedied as soon as may be.” (Rot. Parl. III, p. 80.) The other nunneries in Hampshire were St Mary’s Winchester, Wherwell, and Whitney.

[1367] Dugdale, Mon. II, pp. 452, 636.

[1368] To show how a twelfth century baron might speak to a cloistered nun, the mother of one of his knights, his words deserve quotation:

Voir, dist R. vos estes losengiere.
Je ne sai rien de putain, chanberiere,
Qi est este corsaus ne maaillere,
A toute gent communax garsoniere.
Au conte Y. vos vi je soldoiere,
La vostre chars ne fu onques trop chiere;
Se nus en vost, par le baron S. Piere!
Por poi d’avoir en fustes traite ariere.
Raoul de Cambrai, ll. 1328-1335.

[1369] Raoul de Cambrai, pub. P. Meyer et A. Longnon, Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr. 1882, stanzas LXIII-LXXI, passim (pp. 42-50).

[1370] “Incontynent it was taken by assaut and robbed and an abbey of ladyes vyolated and the town brent.” Froissart, Chronicles, tr. Berners.

[1371] See M. K. Brady, Psycho-Analysis and its Place in Life [1919], p. 117; H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind [2nd ed., 1914], I, ch. XX.

[1372] See above, p. . For the effects of this at a later period in Italy see J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy. VI. The Catholic Reaction, pt. I (1886), pp. 339 ff.

[1373] See below, p. .

[1374] See above, pp. ff.

[1375] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton, ff. 5d, 32d.

[1376] The unions were sometimes referred to as “marriages” and a priest unaware of the facts of the case may have been got to celebrate them. For instance Bishop Gynewell recites how Joan Bruys, nun of Nuneaton, was abducted by Nicholas Green of Isham and “postmodum se in nostram diocesim divertentes matrimonium de facto in eadem nostra diocesi scienter inuicem contraxerunt et incestum ibidem commiserunt et in ea cohabitant indies vir et vxor.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 102. Marriage is also referred to in the case of Joyce, an apostate from St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in 1388. Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. IX, App. pt. I, p. 28. At Atwater’s visitation of Ankerwyke in 1519 it was stated “Domina Alicia Hubbart stetit ibidem in habitu per quatuor annos et tunc in apostasiam recessit et cuidam ... Sutton consanguineo Magistri Ricardi Sutton Senescalli de Syon fuit nupta et cum eo in patria ipsius Sutton remanet in adulterio.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Visit. Atwater, f. 42.

[1377] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, f. 16. Translated in R. M. Serjeantson, Hist. of Delapré Abbey, Northampton, pp. 7-8.

[1378] P.R.O. Chancery Warrants, Series I, File 1759; Cal. of Patent Rolls (1381-5), p. 235. This file of Chancery Warrants contains a large number of petitions for the arrest of vagabond monks and nuns. These petitions usually emanate from the head of the apostate’s house, but occasionally from the Bishop of the diocese, as in another warrant in the same file in which the Bishop of Norwich petitions for the arrest of Katherine Montagu, Benedictine nun of Bungay (1376). Other petitions besides those quoted in the text concern Alice Romayn, Austin nun of Haliwell (1314, ib.), Matilda Hunter, Austin nun of Burnham (1392), (File 1762); Alice de Everyngham, Gilbertine nun of Haverholm (1366), (File 1764); and the following sisters of Hospitals, Agnes Stanley of St Bartholomew’s, Bristol (1389), Johanna atte Watre of St Thomas the Martyr at Southwark (1324) and Elizabeth Holewaye of the same house (File 1769, nos. 1, 15, 18). On receipt of these petitions the writ De apostata capiendo would be issued and the royal commissions for the arrest of the delinquents are sometimes found enrolled on the patent rolls, as in the cases quoted in the text. Alice Everyngham was excommunicated by the master of Sempringham; but on her case being brought to the papal court and committed by the Pope to the dean and two canons of Lincoln, she was absolved by them. The master appealed to the Pope against her absolution, and the case was committed for trial to the Archbishop of York. Cal. of Papal Letters, IV, pp. 69-70. For a royal commission to arrest Mary de Felton of the House of Minoresses at Aldgate, see Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1385-9, p. 86.

[1379] P.R.O. Chancery Warrants, Series I, File 1759; Cal. of Pat. Rolls, 1401-5, pp. 418, 472.

[1380] There are several references to this ceremony: “Dictam igitur commonialem vestram, iniuncta ei penitencia seculari pro suis reatibus atque culpis, ad vos et domum vestram, a qua exiit, remittimus absolutam; deuocionem vestram firmiter in Domino exhortantes quatinus ... dictam penitentem ... si in humilitatis spiritu, reclinato corpore more penitencium, pulset ad portam, misericordiam deuote postulans et implorans, si suum confiteatur reatum, si signa contricionis ac correccionis appareant in eadem, secundum disciplinam vestri ordinis, filiali promptitudine admittatis” (Maud of Terrington at Keldholme, 1321), Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 456-7. Compare ib. XVI, p. 363 (Margaret of Burton at Kirklees, 1337); Wm. Salt Archaeol. Soc. Coll. I, p. 256 (case against Elizabeth la Zouche who, with another nun, had escaped from Brewood in 1326; she was not recovered until 1331).

[1381] V.C.H. Lincs. II, pp. 99-100.

[1382] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 159.

[1383] V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 138. The surname “Suffewyk” should probably read Luffewyk, i.e. Lowick.

[1384] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 171.

[1385] Ib. III, p. 177.

[1386] See for Renaissance Italy, J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy (1886), VI, p. 340; A. Gagnière, Les Confessions d’une Abbesse du xvie siècle (Paris, 1888), pp. 128 ff. (Felice Rasponi); G. Marcotti, Donne e Monache (Firenze, 1884); but ecclesiastics were found among these monachini. In France the same pursuit became fashionable under the League. For a later date the Memoirs of Casanova provide the most striking illustrations.

[1387] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 39d.

[1388] Linc. Visit. I, p. 84.

[1389] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 113.

[1390] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 83, 83d.

[1391] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 181.

[1392] “En visitaunt vostre mesun por plusure fiez truuames nus ke Johan de Seuekwurth, clerk, se auoit si mauuesement porte en demurant en la mesun ke il esteit atteint de folie de cors od vne de vos nuneins e vne autre esteit de ly atteinte, par defaute de purgaciun ke ele ne se poeit de li purger. Par quei nus defendimes a vus ke vus no le suffrissez en vostre mesun demurer, e a li ke la euene demurast.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton, f. 129d.

[1393] V.C.H. Somerset, II, p. 157.

[1394] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 240.

[1395] Linc. Visit. II, p. 47.

[1396] See below, p. .

[1397] Gascoigne accuses John Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury, of having had sons and daughters by a nun at a time when he was Bishop of Bath and Wells. “In diebus meis, anno Domini 1443, electus fuit, vel verius intrusus, unus archiepiscopus qui fuit genitus ex manifesto adulterio, et existens genuit filios et filias ex una moniali, in episcopali gradu existens antequam fuit archiepiscopus.” Loci e Libro Veritatum, ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers (1881), p. 231. Gascoigne was a learned Doctor of Theology and Chancellor of the University of Oxford. His theological dictionary gives an extraordinarily vivid and gloomy picture of the corruptions of the church in his day. It must be noted however that Stafford’s support of the heretical Bishop Reginald Pecok (author of the Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy) made Gascoigne his implacable enemy, while there is no foundation for his statement that Stafford was of illegitimate birth. His charge is therefore unworthy of belief. The scandal which later connected the name of John Stokesley, Bishop of London, with Anne Colte, Abbess of Wherwell, seems likely to be equally devoid of foundation, though she was several times summoned before the Council in 1534; the King and Cromwell evidently resented her refusal to give a farm to one of their protégés. L. and P. Hen. VIII, VI, 1361, VII, 527-9, 907; V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 136.

[1398] See, besides the references given above, cases in which a priest or chaplain was implicated at St Stephen’s Foukeholm (abduction of Cecilia by William, Chaplain of Yarm, 1293), V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 113; Nunkeeling (Avice de Lelle had confessed to incontinence; ordered not to talk to Robert de Eton, chaplain, or any other person, 1318), ib. p. 121; Keldholme, 1318 (Mary de Holm and Sir William Lely, chaplain, 1318), ib. p. 169; Kirklees (Joan de Heton and Sir Michael, called the Scot, priest, 1315), Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 361; Godstow (Sir Hugh Sadylere of Oxford, chaplain, and Alice Longspee, 1445), Linc. Visit. II, p. 114; Littlemore (Prioress Katherine Wells and Richard Hewes, priest of Kent, 1517), V.C.H. Oxon. II, p. 76; Wintney (Prioress and Thomas Ferring, a secular priest, 1405), Cal. Papal Letters, VI, p. 55; Romsey (charge against Emma Powes and the vicar of the parish church, 1502), V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 130; Easebourne (Sir John Smyth, chaplain, concerned in abduction of two nuns, 1478), Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, p. 17; and various other instances of suspicious behaviour or of chaplains and priests warned off the premises. Some of these cases are described in detail below, passim.

[1399] E.g. “Fatebatur se carnaliter cognitam a D.B. apud S. in domo habitacionis sue ibidem situata,” Linc. Visit. I, p. 71. “Item dicit quod priorissa consueuit sola accedere ad villam de Catesby ad gardinas cum vno solo presbytero.” Ib. II, p. 47.

[1400] E.g. “Domina Agnes Smyth inquisita dicit quod Simon Prentes cognovit eam et suscitavit prolem ex ea infra prioratum, extra tamen claustrum.” Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. Norwich, p. 109. There are many references to and injunctions against suspicious confabulations with men in the nave and other parts of the priory church.

[1401] See above, pp. 386-9, .

[1402] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, p. 708.

[1403] Reg. Thome de Cantilupo, Epis. Herefordensis (Canterbury and York Society), p. 265.

[1404] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 181.

[1405] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 83. See above, p. .

[1406] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 91, 116.

[1407] R. E. G. Cole, The Priory of Brodholme (Assoc. Architec. Soc. Reports and Papers, XXVIII), p. 66.

[1408] At Markyate in 1336 “an apostate nun was received back again and absolved by Bishop Burghersh and three others sought absolution at the same time for having aided and abetted her in her escape.” V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 360.

[1409] It must be conceded that the Church gave the nuns every inducement to take measures to prevent such disasters; for instance in the Liber Poenitentialis of Theodore the Anglo-Saxon nun guilty of immorality is given eight years of penance and ten if there be a child; a married layman and a nun who are lovers have six years of penance and seven if there be a child. Here, as ever, the Church went on the principle that sin was bad but scandal worse; si non caste tamen caute. Of the practice of abortion I find no record in English pre-Reformation documents, though Henry VIII’s disreputable commissioner, Dr Layton, accused the Yorkshire nuns of taking potations “ad prolem conceptum opprimendum.” Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Soc. 1843), p. 97. There is a proved case of it in Eudes Rigaud’s visitation of St-Aubin (1256), and a suspicion at St Saëns (1264), Reg. Visit. Rigaud, ed. Bonnin, pp. 255, 491. See below, p. . One of Caesarius of Heisterbach’s exempla hangs upon it. Caes. Heist. Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange, II, p. 331. In seventeenth and eighteenth century Italy the practice seems to have been common, witness Casanova.

[1410] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 96.

[1411] Wykeham’s Reg. II, pp. 114-5.

[1412] “Et proles obiit immediate post.” Jessopp, op. cit. p. 109.

[1413] See e.g. faculty given “to dispense twenty persons of illegitimate birth of the realms of France and England, whether sons of priests or married persons, or monks, or nuns, to be ordained and to hold two benefices apiece.” Cal. of Papal Letters, IV, p. 170.

[1414] M. E. Lowndes, The Nuns of Port Royal (1909), p. 13. The Abbess in question was Angélique d’Estrées, sister of Gabrielle, Henry IV’s mistress, and famous for her scandalous life and her struggle with her successor, the famous Mère Angélique (Jacqueline Arnauld) of Port Royal.

[1415] Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Soc. 1843), p. 58. But it must be remembered that we cannot believe uncorroborated a single word that Layton says.

[1416] See below, Note F.

[1417] Reg. Ralph of Shrewsbury (Som. Rec. Soc.), pp. 683-4; the charge is not given in full in this edition of the Register and must be eked out from the extract in Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 416 (note).

[1418] Reg. John of Drokensford, pp. 60, 126, 167, 287.

[1419] Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, pp. 17-19.

[1420] Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis, ed. Stubbs, Rolls Ser., I, pp. 135-6.

[1421] Dugdale, Mon. II, p. 334.

[1422] Cal. of Pap. Letters, III, p. 169. She was born 11 March 1278 and took the veil at the age of seven years. Some annalists put the date of her profession at 1285 and some at 1289; in any case the Warenne charge was not made until 1345. See above, p. , note 1.

[1423] Cal. of Papal Letters, V, p. 161.

[1424] Ib. VII, p. 373.

[1425] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, III, p. 851.

[1426] See Note G, p. , below.

[1427] In general an apostate may be said to mean a lover, but there must also have been cases of nuns apostatising out of general discontent with the convent or Prioress.

[1428] Two of these, St Mary de Pré (St Albans) and Sopwell ought not, however, to be counted, being entirely under the control of the Abbey of St Albans and exempt from episcopal visitation. It was concerning St Mary de Pré that Archbishop Morton made the charges against St Albans, rendered famous by Froude.

[1429] Above, p. .

[1430] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 101 (note), from Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton, f. 154.

[1431] V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 389.

[1432] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 126.

[1433] V.C.H. Oxon. II, p. 103.

[1434] V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 360.

[1435] V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 179.

[1436] V.C.H. Bucks. I, p. 383.

[1437] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 114.

[1438] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 101.

[1439] See A. H. Thompson, “Registers of John Gynewell, Bishop of Lincoln, for the Years 1347-1350.” Archaeol. Journ. 2nd ser., vol. XVIII, p. 331.

[1440] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 81-2.

[1441] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 82-6.

[1442] Ib. pp. 111-2. It should be noted that the word “incest” is used in its religious sense; it was properly used of intercourse between persons who were both under ecclesiastical vows and thus in the relation of spiritual father and daughter, or brother and sister, but it soon came to be used loosely to denote a breach of chastity in which one party was professed.

[1443] Lambeth, Reg. Courtenay, I, f. 336.

[1444] Linc. Visit. I, p. 50. Flemyng adds “or manifestly suspect.”

[1445] Ib. p. 54.

[1446] Ib. p. 65.

[1447] Ib. pp. 69-71.

[1448] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 6.

[1449] See above, p. .

[1450] See above, pp. 82-4, .

[1451] See above, pp. , , .

[1452] Linc. Visit. II, p. 3. The form of her admission is curious: “Fatetur totidem moniales recessisse, absque tamen sciencia sua.”

[1453] Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. Norwich (Camden Soc.) gives also Bishop Goldwell’s visitations some ten years before, which brought to light no cases of immorality among nuns.

[1454] Ib. p. 109.

[1455] See V.C.H. Hants. II, pp. 129-31 (Romsey, where the date is wrongly given as 1312 by a slip), 124, 135, 151. Unfortunately all but the Romsey visitation are given in the barest summary.

[1456] V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 130.

[1457] Above, pp. 453-4.

[1458] Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, pp. 25-6.

[1459] Linc. Visit. II, p. 48.

[1460] In Archbishop Walter Giffard’s York Register occurs the following entry of payments for Agatha: “Item A. Giffard xxs. Item Thomae de Habinton ad Expensas versus Elnestowe” (1271), Reg. W. Giffard (Surtees Soc.), p. 115. This seems sufficient reason for identifying the Elstow sister as Agatha, though the editor identifies her with Mabel “afterwards abbess of Shaftesbury,” ib. p. 164.

[1461] Reg. W. Giffard (Surtees Soc.) p. 164 and Hist. Letters and Papers from the Northern Regs. ed. J. Raine (Rolls Ser.), pp. 33-4.

[1462] V.C.H. Dorset, II, p. 78.

[1463] She was in trouble in 1287 for refusing to pay certain moneys left for an obit and had to be threatened with excommunication; see Worc. Reg. Godfrey Giffard, Introd. pp. cxxxvi-vii.

[1464] Worc. Reg. Godfrey Giffard, II, pp. 278-80. It is followed by a letter enjoining the Abbess and convent of Wilton to receive back the two nuns.

[1465] For another version of the penance see Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, III, pp. 916-7. This forbids him to enter any nunnery or speak with any nuns without special licence from their metropolitan.

[1466] V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 389.

[1467] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 39d. Compare the case of Thomas de Raynevill who in 1324 was ordered, as penance for seducing a nun of Hampole, to stand on a Sunday, while high mass was being celebrated, in the conventual church of Hampole, bareheaded, wearing only his tunic and holding a lighted taper of one pound weight of wax in his hand, which he was to offer, after the offertory had been said, to the celebrant, who was to explain to the congregation the cause of the oblation. Also on feast days he was to be beaten round the parish church of Campsall. But two years later the Archbishop was still repeating directions for the performance of the penance. V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 164.

[1468] From Nunkeeling to Yedingham (1444); from Arthington to Yedingham (1310); from St Clement’s, York, to Yedingham (1331); from Basedale to Sinningthwaite (1308); from Hampole to Swine (1313); four disobedient nuns of Keldholme to Handale, Swine, Nunappleton and Wallingwells respectively (1308); and two others to Esholt and Nunkeeling (1309); from Nunappleton to Basedale (1308); from Rosedale to Handale (1321); from Swine to Wykeham (1291); from Wykeham to Nunappleton (1444); from Arthington to Nunkeeling (1219). V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 121, 127, 130, 159, 163-4, 168, 171, 175, 180, 183, 189. Also from Kirklees to Hampole (1323) and from Basedale to Rosedale (1534). Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 362, 431-3.

[1469] V.C.H. Suffolk, II, p. 84.

[1470] See for instance the insistence on costs and charges in Archbishop Lee’s letter transferring Joan Fletcher, ex-Prioress of Basedale, from Rosedale where she was doing (or not doing) her penance, back to Basedale again. Loc. cit. pp. 431-3.

[1471] Joan Trimelet of Cannington was to be shut up for a year, fasting thrice a week on bread and water, suos calores macerans juveniles. Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 416. Margaret de Tang of Arthington was “if need be to be bound by the foot with a shackle, but without hurting her limbs or body.” V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 189. The runaway Agnes de Flixthorpe was similarly to be bound, see above, p. ; Anne Talke was imprisoned for a month. Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 244. Joan Hutton of Esholt, who had had a child (1535), for two years unless the Archbishop relaxed her penance. Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI. p. 453.

[1472] Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 456-7. The recorded penances given by Archbishop Melton are all very severe, though it must be admitted that the state of the nunneries in his diocese gave him cause for severity and that the penitents were all hardened sinners. Compare penances given by him in V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 175, 189. There is an extremely severe penance imposed by Archbishop Zouche on a nun who had several times run away from Thicket, ib. p. 124, and another by Archbishop Lee in 1535 cited in the last note.

[1473] Jessopp, Visit. in Dioc. Norwich, p. 110.

[1474] V.C.H. Suffolk, II, p. 84.

[1475] “Expresse inhibentes, ne infuturum aliqua monialis de crimine incontinencie conuicta vel publice diffamata, antequam de innocencia sic diffamate constiterit, ad aliquod officium domus predicte et precipue ad ostiorum custodiam admittatur.” Lambeth, Reg. Courtenay, I, f. 336. Injunction to Elstow in 1390 and repeated by Bishop Flemyng in 1421. See above, p. . Compare the charge against Margaret Fairfax, Prioress of Nunmonkton, in 1397: “Item, moniales quae lapsae fuerint in fornicatione faciliter restituit.” Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 194.

[1476] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 239.

[1477] Ib. p. 183.

[1478] Ib. p. 120. For those Yorkshire cases see below, Note G, passim.

[1479] Liveing, op. cit. pp. 213-6.

[1480] See below, Note F.

[1481] Cal. of Papal Letters, X, p. 471. The dispensation mentions that she “has secretly lost her virginity and has not yet been publicly defamed.”

[1482] Ib. V, p. 161 and VII, p. 373.

[1483] The Pope writes to Mitford, Bishop of Salisbury, desiring him to restore Alice Wilton, nun of Shaftesbury, to the position which she had forfeited by the sin of incontinence. The Bishop reinstates the nun and declares her eligible for all offices except that of Abbess. V.C.H. Dorset, II, p. 78, note 93.

[1484] See Chs. IX, X, above.

[1485] See below, p. .

[1486] Bede, Eccles. Hist. Book IV, ch. 25.

[1487] Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, ed. Stubbs (Rolls Series, 1867), I, pp. 135-6. Ralph Niger describes the transaction thus: “Juratus se tria monasteria constructurum, duos ordines transvertit, personas de loco ad locum transferens, meretrices alias aliis, cenomannicas Anglicis substituens.” Ib. II, p. XXX.

[1488] “Et quod indignum scribi, ad domos religiosarum veniens, fecit exprimi mammillas earundem, ut sic physice si esset inter eas corruptela experiretur” [1251]. Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora, ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls Series, 1880), V, p. 227. In 1248 he had deposed an abbess of Godstow, Flandrina de Bowes, and Adam Marsh writes to him: “Plurimum credo fore salutiferam visitationem quam in domo Godestowe fieri fecistis. Paternitatis vestrae sollicitudinem largitio divina remuneret.” Monumenta Franciscana, ed. J. S. Brewer (Rolls Series, 1858), p. 117. If Matthew Paris’ account of his procedure be true it would seem almost to rival the behaviour of Layton and Legh, however different the character and motive which inspired it.

[1489] The earliest list of comperta which we possess is the result of Archbishop Walter Giffard’s visitation of Swine in 1268. Though there is no charge of actual immorality the house was in a thoroughly unsatisfactory state. The Archbishop’s two sisters, the one Prioress of Elstow and the other Abbess of Shaftesbury, were both in serious trouble in 1270 and 1298 respectively, their nuns being also involved, and in 1296 there occurred the famous Giffard abduction from Wilton. Peckham’s injunctions to nunneries show widespread breach of enclosure and some suspicious conduct during the ’80s, a nun of Lymbrook is guilty with a monk of Leominster in 1282, and besides Matthew Paris’ account of Grosseteste’s proceedings in the diocese of Lincoln in 1251, we have notice of apostates there in 1295, 1296 and 1298 and in the York diocese in 1286, 1287, 1293 and 1299. See this chapter and notes, passim.

[1490] For the disappearance or suppression of eight small nunneries prior to 1535 see Note H below.

[1491] At Chicksand, for instance, Layton “fownde two of the nunnes not baron,” and at Harrold “one of them hade two faire chyldren, another one and no mo”; but is this so much worse than what Alnwick found at Catesby and St Michael’s, Stamford, in the same diocese a century before? Or take Layton’s description of the Prior of Maiden Bradley, quoted above; is it not much less serious than the description of Alexander Black of Selby in one of Archbishop Giffard’s visitation detecta in 1275? “Alexander Niger, monachus, tenet Cristinam Bouere et Agnetem filiam Stephani, de qua suscitavit prolem, et quamdam mulierem nomine Anekous, de qua suscitavit vivam prolem apud Crol, et aliam apud Sneyth quae vocatur Nalle, et alias infinitas apud Eboracum et Akastre et alibi, et quasi in qualibet villa unam; et fetidissimus est, et recte modo captus fuit cum quadam muliere in campis, sicut audivit.” Reg. Walter Giffard, p. 326. Or than what Alnwick discovered at the New Collegiate Church at Leicester in 1440? Layton’s general charges against the monks and nuns of Yorkshire are pure gossip or invention; but we should not have been deeply surprised to find them in a York archiepiscopal register of the early fourteenth century.

[1492] Of some of the Anglo-Saxon kings it was said, and said with horror, that they most willingly chose their mistresses from convents. See a letter from St Boniface to Ethelbald King of Mercia on this point, instancing the similar habits and evil fates of Ceolred of Mercia and Osred of Northumbria (Bon. Epis. XIX).

[1493] For these ladies, see references in p. , note 5, and below, p. , note 3.

[1494] Mémoires de J. Casanova de Seingalt (edition Garnier, 1910), tt. II, III, IV.

[1495] Dugdale, Mon. III, pp. 365-6. Compare a detectum at Crabhouse (1514): “Item, the younger nuns are disobedient and when the seniors charge them with their faults the prioress punishes alike the reformers and the sinners.” Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp, p. 109.

[1496] Linc. Visit. I, p. 50. Compare Reg. Walter Giffard, p. 249; Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp (“Item Dna. A. D. et Dna. G. S. ... revelant secreta religionis et correctionis factae in conventu”) Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, ff. 397, 397d (“Et quod nullum decetero capitulum in domo capitulari in presencia secularis seu extranee persone quoquomodo teneatur sub pena iniunccionis nostre infrascripta”).

[1497] V.C.H. Yorks. III, 120, 167-8.

[1498] See below, Note F.

[1499] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 164.

[1500] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 47, 120.

[1501] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 118.

[1502] For an account of the house, see V.C.H. Herts. IV, pp. 428-32. The regulations made by Abbot Richard de Wallingford (1328-36) are given in Gesta Abbat. II, pp. 213-4 and those by Abbot Michael or his successor Thomas de la Mare in Cott. MS. Nero D. i. ff. 173-4d; regulations by Thomas de la Mare (1349-96) occur in Gesta Abbat. II, p. 402. See also W. Page, “Hist. of the Monastery of St Mary de Pré” (St Albans and Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. (New Series) I).

[1503] For an account of the house, see V.C.H. Herts. IV, pp. 422-6.

[1504] The accounts of the warden of St Mary de Pré for 1341-57 are preserved in the Public Record Office (Mins. Accts., bundle 867, Nos. 21-6) and are described in V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 430 (notes). In the second half of the fifteenth century the accounts seem to have been kept by the Prioress; those for 1461-93 have survived. Ib. p. 431 (note).

[1505] See Gesta Abbat. II, p. 212.

[1506] Quoted from P.R.O. Early Chancery Proceedings, 181/4 in V.C.H. Herts. IV, pp. 424-5.

[1507] Wilkins, Concilia, III, p. 632.

[1508] V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 425.

[1509] Printed in Dugdale, Mon. III, pp. 365-6 and Gesta Abbat. ed. Riley, II, App. D. pp. 511-19.

[1510] Gesta Abbat. III, p. 519.

[1511] See V.C.H. Northants. II, pp. 98-101.

[1512] E.H.R. 1914, p. 38 (note 60).

[1513] The religious houses were also subject to metropolitan visitation by the Archbishop. Among important records of visitations of nunneries by the Archbishop of Canterbury or by his commissioners are Peckham’s visitations (Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, passim) in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, Courtenay’s visitations in the last quarter of the fourteenth century (see Lambeth, Reg. Courtenay, I, f. 335d, for his injunctions to Elstow in 1389, used by Flemyng as a model for his own injunctions in 1421-2, Linc. Visit. I, p. 48) and Archbishop Morton’s visitations in the last quarter of the fifteenth century (see Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, pp. 217-22 for the visitation of Romsey in 1492). The visitations of the Winchester diocese by Dr Hede, commissary of the Prior of Canterbury, during the vacancy of the sees of Canterbury and Winchester in 1501-2 were made in the same right (see V.C.H. Hants. II, pp. 124, 129, 135, 151).

[1514] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 176 (quoting Dugdale, Mon. V, pp. 464-5 and Reg. Giffard (Surtees Soc.), p. 295).

[1515] See Linc. Visit. II, passim, and also the Editor’s admirable introduction to Linc. Visit. I, pp. ix-xiii.

[1516] See above, p. .

[1517] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 119. 126-7.

[1518] Sometimes the bishop’s clerk summarises the information given as to the financial state of the house, which would seem to indicate that the prioress gave and the bishop accepted merely a verbal account. See Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 38. In Linc. Epis. Reg. Atwater, f. 42, is a brief account of a visitation of Ankerwyke in 1519, to which is added the status domus as submitted by the nuns, comprising an inventory.

[1519] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 49-50.

[1520] See e.g. the case of Denise Loweliche at Markyate in 1433, Linc. Visit. I, pp. 83-5.

[1521] Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, II, pp. 706-8 (injunctions), 708-9 (mandate to commissary). Compare the proceedings at Ankerwyke six months after Alnwick’s visitation. Linc. Visit. II, p. 7.

[1522] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 82-3.

[1523] G. G. Coulton in Eng. Hist. Review (1914), p. 37. “The locus classicus here is the Evesham Chronicle, in which one of the most admirable abbots of the thirteenth century tells us how solemnly he and his brethren had promised to conceal all their former abbot’s blackest crimes from the visiting bishop; and how they would never have complained even to the legate (whose jurisdiction they did recognize) if only the sinner had kept his pact with them in money matters.”

[1524] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 47, 48, 49, 52. At Heynings (where nothing seriously amiss transpired) one nun said that “the prioress reproaches her sisters, saying that if they say aught to the bishop, she will lay on them such penalties that they shall not easily bear them.” Ib. p. 133. The wicked Prioress of Littlemore was found in 1517 to have ordered her nuns on virtue of their obedience to reveal nothing to the commissioners and in 1518 it was stated that she had punished them for speaking the truth at the visitation. V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 75. At Flixton in 1514 it was said: “The sisters scarce dare to depose the truth on account of the fierceness of the prioress.” Visit. of the Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp (Camden Soc.), p. 143. For episcopal injunctions against revealing or quarrelling over detecta made at the visitation, see Linc. Visit. II, pp. 51, 124, etc., Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 442, Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, II, p. 661.

[1525] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 184-5.

[1526] Ib. p. 4.

[1527] Ib. pp. 120, 122, 123-4.

[1528] V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 76.

[1529] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 83, 39d, 96. Similarly at Ankerwyke, where there was great discord between Prioress and nuns, he prorogued his visitation for six months and then sent down commissioners to expound his injunctions, inquire how they were followed and deal with further grievances. Linc. Visit. II, pp. 6-8.

[1530] V.C.H. Lincs. II, pp. 76-7.

[1531] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 39d.

[1532] See above, pp. 388-9, .

[1533] See above, p. .

[1534] Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 220.

[1535] Linc. Visit. II, p. 5.

[1536] As full reports containing detecta or comperta are specially valuable, it may be useful to indicate those concerning nunneries, which have been published: (1) The earliest comperta extant are those of Archbishop Giffard’s visitation of Swine in Yorkshire in 1267-8; the individual detecta are absent, but there is a fine set of injunctions, issued two months later, the earliest English nunnery injunctions which we possess, Reg. Walter Giffard (Surtees Soc.), pp. 147-8, 248-9. (2) The comperta of Archbishop Wittlesey’s metropolitan visitation of St Radegund’s, Cambridge (including only interim injunctions) have been published in Gray, Priory of St Radegund, Cambridge, pp. 35-6. (3) The Sede Vacante visitation of Arden in 1396 includes detecta but no injunctions, Test. Ebor. I, pp. 283-5 (note) and that of Nunmonkton in the same year includes comperta and injunctions, Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 194; both of these are concerned almost entirely with charges against the respective prioresses. (4) The finest collection in existence is Alnwick’s book of Lincoln visitations, which is in the course of publication, Linc. Visit. II and III (in the press). (5) Records of visitations of Rusper and Easebourne from the Chichester registers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries contain detecta and some injunctions, Sussex Arch. Coll. V and IX, passim. (6) Records of the visitations of monastic houses in the diocese of Norwich by Bishops Goldwell (1492-3) and Nykke (1514-32) include detecta and injunctions (sometimes only interim), Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp, passim. (7) Dr Hede’s Sede Vacante visitations of the four houses in the diocese of Winchester in 1501-2, summarised in V.C.H. Hants. II, passim, include detecta, but not injunctions. (8) Archbishop Warham’s visitations of houses in the diocese of Canterbury (Holy Sepulchre, Canterbury, the hospital of St James, Canterbury, Sheppey and Davinton) in 1511 include detecta and sometimes injunctions, Eng. Hist. Review, VI. When more registers are published other detecta and comperta will doubtless appear; there are some valuable sets, still in manuscript in Linc. Epis. Reg. Visit. Atwater and ib. Reg. Visit. Longland.

[1537] Linc. Visit. II, p. xlviii; for an admirable and detailed discussion of the whole question, in the light of Alnwick’s records, Mr Hamilton Thompson’s introduction to this volume (especially pp. xliv-li) should be studied. See also the learned article by Mr Coulton on “The Interpretation of Visitation Documents,” E.H.R. 1914, pp. 16-40.

[1538] Liveing, op. cit., pp. 99, etc.

[1539] Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechthildianae, ed. Oudin (Paris, 1875). See also Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter (1874), I, pp. 70-132; Eckenstein, Woman under Mon. pp. 328-53; Taylor, The Medieval Mind, I, pp. 481-6; A. M. F. Robinson (Mme Darmesteter), The End of the Middle Ages (1889), pp. 45-72 (the Convent of Helfta); A. Kemp-Welch, Of Six Medieval Women (1913), pp. 57-82 (Mechthild of Magdeburg); G. Ledos, Ste Gertrude (Paris, 1901). The name of the Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn, who ruled the house during the greater part of the time that these three mystics lived there, deserves to be added to theirs. For her life see Revelationes, etc., I, pp. 497 ff.

[1540] See her life by Thomas of Chantimpré, Acta SS. Jun., t. III, pp. 234 ff. See also Taylor, op. cit. I, pp. 479-81.

[1541] See E. Gilliat Smith, St Clare of Assisi, her Life and Legislation (1914); Mrs Balfour, Life and Legend of the Lady St Clare, with introd. by Father Cuthbert (1910); Fr. Marianus Fiege, The Princess of Poverty (Evansville, Ind. 1900) which contains a translation of Thomas of Celano’s Life of St Clare (Acta SS. Aug. t. II, pp. 754-67), Paschal Robinson, Life of St Clare (1910), Locatelli, Ste Claire d’Assise (Rome, 1899-1900). Also La Vie et Légende de Madame Sainte Claire par Frère Françoys de Puis, 1563, ed. Arnauld Goffin (Paris, 1907).

[1542] Acta SS. Mar. t. I, pp. 501-31. See also Jentsch, Die Selige Agnes von Böhmen. She is always regarded as a saint but was never officially canonised.

[1543] Pirckheimer, B. Opera, ed. Goldast (1610). See also, T. Binder, Charitas Pirkheimer (1878), and Eckenstein, op. cit. pp. 458-76.

[1544] The Life of St Theresa of Jesus, written by Herself, tr. D. Lewis, ed. Zimmerman (1904). The Letters of St Theresa, tr. J. Dalton (1902). See also G. Cunningham Grahame, Santa Teresa, 2 vols. (1894).

[1545] See A. Gagnière, Les Confessions d’une Abbesse du xvie siècle (Paris, 1888), based on a manuscript at Ravenna (“Vita della Madre Donna Felice Rasponi, Badessa di S. Andrea, scritta da una Monaca”) which the author considers to be an autobiography. Some interesting details as to the scandalous condition of Italian convents at the end of the century are to be found in J. A. Symonds’ Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction, pt. I (1886), pp. 341-70, dealing with the careers of Virginia Maria de Leyva, in the convent of S. Margherita at Monza and Lucrezia Buonvisi (sister Umilia) in the convent of S. Chiara at Lucca.

[1546] La Vie de Ste. Douceline, fondatrice des béguines de Marseille, ed. J. H. Albanès (Marseille, 1879). See also A. Macdonell, Saint Douceline (1905).

[1547] Acta SS. Aprilis, t. II, pp. 266-365. See also Huysmans, Ste. Lydwine de Schiedam (3rd ed. Paris, 1901).

[1548] Acta SS. Jun. t. IV, pp. 270 ff. See also Th. Wollersheim, Das Leben der ekstatischen Jungfrau Christina von Stommeln (Cologne, 1859); and Renan, Nouvelles Études d’Histoire Religieuse (1884) (Une Idylle Monacale au xiiie siècle: Christine de Stommeln), pp. 353-96. Extracts from Christina’s correspondence and life by Peter of Sweden are translated in Coulton, Med. Garn. pp. 402-21.

[1549] On these saintly and learned women see Eckenstein, op. cit. cc. III and IV, and Montalembert, The Monks of the West (introd. Gasquet), vol. IV, Book XV. The great fourteenth century mystic Julian of Norwich (1343-c. 1413) was, it is true, connected with Carrow Priory, but she was an anchoress and never a nun there; see above, p. .

[1550] On these songs see A. Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France au moyen âge (2nd ed. 1904), pp. 189-92; and P. S. Allen in Modern Philology, V (1908), pp. 432-5. The songs themselves have to be collected from various sources; see below, Note I.

[1551] Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat. C text, Passus X, 72-5.

[1552] There was (as usual) however, more chance for a man than for a woman of villein status to enter a monastery and even to rise to the highest ecclesiastical dignities. A villein who could save enough to pay a fine to his lord might put his son to school and might buy that son’s enfranchisement, so that he would be eligible for a place in a monastery. And though it was forbidden by canon and by temporal law to ordain a serf, once ordained he was free. Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of Engl. Law (1911), I, p. 429; the lower ranks of the clergy probably contained many men of low or villein birth (see e.g. Chaucer’s Poor Parson, whose brother was a ploughman and the complaint in “Pierce the Plouman’s Crede” that beggars’ brats become bishops). Sometimes, though very rarely, a villein rose high, for once he was a churchman, it was la carrière ouverte aux talents: Bishop Grosseteste was of very humble, probably of servile, origin; and Sancho Panza’s motto will be remembered: “I am a man and I may be Pope.” For a woman, however, the Church offered no such chance of advancement through the religious orders; the nunneries were essentially upper and middle class institutions.

[1553] From a charming round, sung in Saintonge, Aunis and Bas-Poitou.

“Dans l’jardin de ma tante
Plantons le romarin!
Y’a-t-un oiseau qui chante,
Plantons le romarin,
Ma mie,
Au milieu du jardin, etc.”

Bujeaud, J., Chants et chansons populaires des provinces de l’ouest (1866), I, pp. 136-7.

[1554] M. Vattasso, Studi Medievali, I (1904), p. 124. A long poem of seven verses, much mutilated in parts.

[1555] Uhland, Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder (1844-5), t. II, p. 854 (No. 328). A slightly modernised version. Also printed in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, ed. von Arnim and Brentano (Reclam ed.), p. 25, and in Deutsches Leben im Volkslied um 1530, ed. Liliencron (1884), p. 226. Translation by Bithell, The Minnesingers, I (1909), p. 200, except the last two lines, which are by Mr Coulton; there is another in Coulton, Med. Garn. p. 476.

[1556] Ferrari, Canzone per andare in maschera per carnesciale, pp. 31-2. Referred to in Jeanroy, op. cit. I have been unable to consult the book.

[1557] Bartsch, Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen (1870), pp. 28-9 (No. 33).

[1558] Bartsch, op. cit. pp. 29-30 (No. 34).

[1559] Oeuvres Complètes d’Eustache Deschamps (Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr.), IV, pp. 235-6. (Virelay, DCCLII, sur une novice d’Avernay.)

[1560] Bladé, J. F. Poésies populaires de la Gascogne (1882), III, pp. 372-4. Also in Lénac-Moncaut, Littérature populaire de la Gascogne (1868), pp. 291-2.

[1561] Damase Arbaud, Chants Populaires de la Provence (1862-4), II, pp. 118-22.

[1562] See below, p. .

[1563] The Court of Love in Chaucer’s Poetical Works, ed. R. Morris (1891), IV, pp. 38-40.

[1564] Lydgate’s Temple of Glas, ed. J. Schick (E.E.T.S. 1891), p. 8.

[1565] The Kingis Quair in Medieval Scottish Poetry, ed. G. Eyre-Todd (1892), p. 47.

[1566] Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, by Sir David Lyndesay, ed. Small, Hall and Murray (E.E.T.S., 2nd ed., 1883), p. 514.

“And seis thou now yone multitude, on rawe
Standing behynd yon trauerse of delyte?
Sum bene of thayme that haldin were full lawe
And take by frendis, nothing thay to wyte,
In youth from bye into the cloistre quite;
And for that cause are cummyn, recounsilit,
On thame to pleyne that so thame had begilit.”

[1567] An Alphabet of Tales, ed. M. M. Banks (E.E.T.S.). No. CCCCLXVIII, pp. 319-20. (In this and the following quotations from this work in this chapter I have modernised the spelling.) This version is translated from Caesarius of Heisterbach. Dial. Mirac., ed. Strange, II, pp. 42-3, which is the original version of all the widespread legends on this theme. From Caesarius it found its way into many other collections of miracles, in prose and in verse, in Latin, French, Spanish, German, Icelandic, Dutch and English. Perhaps the most beautiful is the Dutch poem (c. 1320) published by W. J. A. Jenckbloet, Beatriij (Amsterdam, 1846-59) and re-edited with a grammatical introduction and notes in English by A. J. Barnouw (Pub. of Philol. Soc. III, 1914). An edition with illustrations by Ch. Doudelet accompanied by a translation into French by H. de Marez was published in Antwerp (1901) and was also issued with an English translation by A. W. Sanders vaz Loo. The best English translations are those in prose by L. Simons and L. Housman in The Pageant, ed. C. H. Shannon and J. W. Gleeson White (1896) pp. 95-116 and in verse by H. de Wolf Fuller (Harvard Coop. Soc., Cambridge, U.S.A. 1910). Modern writers have retold the tale almost as often as their medieval forebears; see for example Maeterlinck’s play, Sœur Béatrice, John Davidson’s poem, The Ballad of a Nun, one of Villier de l’Isle-Adam’s Contes Cruels (Sœur Natalia), one of Charles Nodier’s Contes de la Veillée (La Légende de Sœur Béatrice), and one of Gottfried Keller’s Sieben Legenden (Die Jungfrau und die Nonne). For a study of the Beatrice story see Heinrich Watenphul, Die Geschichte der Marienlegende von Beatrix der Küsterin (Neuwied, 1904); also P. Toldo, Die Sakristanin (with bibliography by J. Bolte) in Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde (1905), J. van der Elst, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Legende van Beatrijs in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal- en Letterkunde, XXXII, pp. 51 ff., and Mussafia, Studien zu den Mittelalterlichen Marienlegenden (Vienna, 1887), I, p. 73. See also A. Cotarelo y Valledor, Una Cantiga celebre del Rey Sabio, fuentes y desarollo de la leyenda de sor Beatriz, principalmente en la literatura española (1914). For other variants of the Nonne Enlevée see below, Note J.

[1568] Chambers and Sidgwick, Early English Lyrics (1907), No. XC, p. 163. But perhaps the most beautiful of medieval English poems which moralise on this theme is the Luue Ron which Thomas of Hales wrote in the thirteenth century for a nun:

“Hwer is Paris and Heleyne
That weren so bryght and feyre on bleo?
Amadas, Tristram and Dideyne,
Yseude and alle theo,
Ector with his scharpe meyne,
And Cesar riche of worldes feo?
Heo beoth iglyden ut of the reyne,
So the scheft is of the cleo,”

—they have passed away as a shaft from the bowstring. It is as if they had never lived. All their heat is turned to cold. (An Old English Miscellany, ed. R. Morris (E.E.T.S. 1872), p. 95.) This catalogue of the lovely dead was a favourite device, immortalised later by “ung povre petit escollier, qui fust nommé Francoys Villon” (who certainly was not a moralist) in his Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis.

[1569] For an entertaining and stimulating account of the popular cult of the Virgin see Henry Adams, Mont St Michel and Chartres (1913), especially chs. VI and XIII.

[1570] Modern poets who have written upon the same theme have drawn this moral more overtly than the medieval authors. Maeterlinck’s Virgin in Sœur Béatrice sings:

Il n’est péché qui vive
Quand l’amour a prié;
Il n’est âme qui meure
Quand l’amour a pleuré....

Davidson’s sacristan (in A Ballad of a Nun) cries:

“I care not for my broken vow;
Though God should come in thunder soon,
I am sister to the mountains now
And sister to the sun and moon,”

and the Virgin, welcoming her back on her return, tells her:

“You are sister to the mountains now,
And sister to the day and night;
Sister to God.” And on her brow
She kissed her thrice, and left her sight.

[1571] “Cum in hyemis intemperie post cenam noctu familia divitis ad focum, ut potentibus moris est, recensendis antiquis gestis operam daret.” Gesta Romanorum, ed. Oesterley (1872), ch. CLV. Quoted in Jusserand, Lit. Hist. of the Eng. People, I, p. 182.

[1572] One particular kind of story, the fabliau (defined by Bédier as “un conte à rire en vers”) was brought to great perfection by French jongleurs. See Montaiglon and Raynaud, Recueil général et complet des Fabliaux (Paris, 1872-90), 6 vols.; and Bédier, Les Fabliaux (Paris, 1873).

[1573] See Dante, Paradiso, XXIX, 11, for a violent attack on the practice. Compare the decree of the Council of Paris in 1528: “Quodsi secus fecerint, aut si populum more scurrarum vilissimorum, dum ridiculas et aniles fabulas recitant, ad risus cachinnationesque excitaverint, ... nos volumus tales tam ineptos et perniciosos concionatores ab officio praedicationis suspendi,” etc., quoted in Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. T. F. Crane (1890), Introd. p. lxix. The great preacher Jacques de Vitry himself, while advocating the use of exempla, adds “infructuosas enim fabulas et curiosa poetarum carmina a sermonis nostris debemus relegare ... scurrilia tamen aut obscena verba vel turpis sermo ex ore predicatoris non procedant.” Ib. Introd., pp. xlii, xliii.

[1574] For instance exempla were much used by Jacques de Vitry (see op. cit.). Etienne de Bourbon (see Anecdotes Historiques, etc., d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Soc. de l’Hist. de France)), and John Herolt. On the whole subject of exempla see the Introduction to T. F. Crane’s edition of the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, and the references given there.

[1575] The most famous is the Gesta Romanorum. Gesta Romanorum, ed. Oesterley (Berlin, 1872); and see The Early English Version of the Gesta Romanorum, ed. S. J. H. Herrtage (E.E.T.S. 1879). The largest is the Summa Praedicantium of John Bromyard, a fourteenth century English Dominican. See also an interesting fifteenth century English translation of a similar collection, the Alphabetum Narrationum (which used to be attributed to Etienne de Besançon), An Alphabet of Tales, ed. M. M. Banks (E.E.T.S. 1904-5); many of the exempla in this come from Caesarius of Heisterbach. Specimens of exempla from these and other sources are collected in Wright’s Latin Stories (Percy Soc. 1842), and many tales from Caesarius of Heisterbach, Jacques de Vitry, Etienne de Bourbon, Thomas of Chantimpré, etc., are translated in Coulton, Med. Garn.

[1576] For instance Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. Strange (1851); Thomas of Chantimpré (Cantimpratanus), Bonum Universale de Apibus (Douay, 1597); and the knight of la Tour Landry, who wrote a book of deportment for his daughters, copiously illustrated with stories. The Book of the Knight of la Tour Landry, ed. T. Wright (E.E.T.S. revised ed. 1906). For some account of Caesarius of Heisterbach’s stories, other than those quoted in the text, see below Note K.

[1577] Collections of stories, such as those of the Decameron, the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, the Il Pecorone of Ser Giovanni, the Novelle of Bandello, the Heptameron of Margaret of Navarre, became very popular. But individual stories have also given plots to many great writers from the middle ages to the present day; it is only necessary to mention Chaucer, Shakespeare, Molière and La Fontaine, to illustrate the use which has been made of them.

[1578] For examples of medieval mission sermons, with their colloquialisms, interruptions from the audience and strings of stories, the reader cannot do better than turn to the sermons of Berthold of Regensburg (1220-72) and of St Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444). Specimens of these are translated in Coulton, Med. Garn. pp. 348-64, 604-19. See also for Berthold, Coulton, Medieval Studies, 1st series. No. II (“A Revivalist of Six Centuries Ago”) and for St Bernardino, Paul Thureau-Dangin, St Bernardine of Siena, trans. Baroness von Hügel (1906), and A. G. Ferrers Howell, St Bernardino of Siena (1913).

[1579] Chaucer, Cant. Tales, Wife of Bath’s Prol. ll. 556-8.

[1580] Translated from Jacques de Vitry (Exempla ..., ed. T. F. Crane, p. 22) in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 95 (No. CXXXVI). The story is a very old one, first found in the Vitae Patrum, X, cap. 60. It is sometimes attributed to St Bridget of Ireland, but Etienne de Bourbon, who repeats the story twice, tells it of Richard King of England and “a certain nun” (Anec. Hist., etc., d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, Nos. 248 and 500); and other medieval versions make the persecuting lover “a king of England.” (See T. F. Crane, op. cit. p. 158.)

[1581] Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, No. LVIII, pp. 22-3. For other versions of this story, see ib. p. 159.

[1582] Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange, I, p. 389. I have used the translation by Mr Coulton, Med. Garn. p. 124. The story is a variant of the theme of “the novice and the geese,” one of the most popular of medieval stories (see Coulton, ib. p. 426); for analogues, see A. C. Lee, The Decameron, its Sources and Analogues, pp. 110-16.

[1583] Robert of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall (Roxburghe Club, 1862), pp. 50-52. (This is an amplified translation of William of Wadington’s Le Manuel des Pechiez.) See also Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, No. CCLXXII, p. 113, which is translated in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 303.

[1584] Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, No. CXXX, p. 59. For other versions, see ib. p. 189. There is an English version in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 78 (No. CVIII).

[1585] Caesarius of Heisterbach, II. pp. 160-1. Compare the tale of Abbess Sophia whose small beer was miraculously turned into wine. Ib. p. 229.

[1586] Boccaccio, Decameron, 9th day, novel 2. But the story is older than Boccaccio, who constantly uses old tales. There is a French version by Jean de Condé: “Le Dit de la Nonnete” (Montaiglon et Raynaud, op. cit. t. VI, pp. 263-9). It was often afterwards copied in various forms in French, German and Italian jest- and story-books and there is an extremely gross dramatic version entitled “Farce Nouvelle a cinq personnages, c’est a sçavoir l’Abesse, sœur de Bon Cœur, seur Esplourée, seur Safrete et seur Fesne” in a collection of sixteenth century French farces (Rec. de farces, moralités et sermons joyeux, ed. Le Roux de Lincy et Francisque Michel, Paris, 1837, vol. II). It is also referred to in Albion’s England:

It was at midnight when a Nonne, in trauell of a childe,
Was checked of her fellow Nonnes, for being so defilde;
The Lady Prioresse heard a stirre, and starting out of bed,
Did taunt the Nouasse bitterly, who, lifting up her head,
Said “Madame, mend your hood” (for why, so hastely she rose,
That on her head, mistooke for hood, she donde a Channon’s hose).

For these and references to other analogues see A. C. Lee, The Decameron, its Sources and Analogues (1909), pp. 274-7. See also a curious folk-song version, below, p. . La Fontaine founded his fable of Le Psautier on Boccaccio’s version.

[1587] Boccaccio, Decameron (3rd day, novel 1). For analogues and imitations, see A. C. Lee, op. cit. pp. 59-62. The story is the source of La Fontaine’s Mazet de Lamporechio. For other ribald stories about nuns see Note J, below, p. .

[1588] I have made no attempt to describe the many treatises in praise of virginity composed by the fathers of the church. These include works by Evagrius Ponticus, St Athanasius, Sulpicius Severus, St Jerome, St Augustine, St Caesarius of Arles and others. Among the most interesting is one of English origin, the De Laudibus Virginitatis of Aldhelm († 709). For short analyses of these works, see A. A. Hentsch, De la Littérature Didactique du Moyen Age, s’adressant spécialement aux Femmes (Cahors, 1903), passim. From the eleventh century onwards several imitations of these treatises occur. A few of the more interesting will be noted later.

[1589] Uhland, Alte hoch und niederdeutsche Volkslieder (1845), II, pp. 857-62 (No. 331). The first verse may be quoted to give the style:

Es war ein jungfrau edel
Si war gar wol getan,
in ainen schonen paungarten
wolt si spacieren gan,
in ainen schonen paungarten
durnach stuont ir gedank,
nach pluomen mangerlaie,
nach vogelein suessem gesank.

[1590] Uhland, op. cit. II, p. 852 (No. 326). See also Nos. 332 and 334.

[1591] An Old English Miscellany, ed. R. Morris [E.E.T.S. 1872], pp. 93-99.

[1592] Printed in The Stacions of Rome, etc., ed. F. J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. 1867), and again in Minor Poems of the Vernon MS., Part II, ed. F. J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. 1901), No. XLII, pp. 464-8.

[1593] Hali Meidenhad, ed. O. Cockayne (E.E.T.S. 1866).

[1594] See on this point Taylor, The Medieval Mind (2nd ed. 1914), I, pp. 475 ff.

[1595] Hali Meidenhad, ed. O. Cockayne (E.E.T.S. 1866), p. 20.

[1596] Hali Meidenhad, ed. O. Cockayne (E.E.T.S. 1866), p. 22.

[1597] Ib. pp. 8, 30.

[1598] Ib. p. 36.

[1599] See e.g. p. 28. “Under a man’s protection thou shalt be sore vexed for his and the world’s love, which are both deceptive and must lie awake in many a care not only for thyself as God’s spouse must, but for many others and often as well for the detested as the dear; and be more worried than any drudge in the house, or any hired hind and take thine own share often with misery and bitterly purchase it. Little do blessed spouses of God know of thee here, that in so sweet ease without such trouble in spiritual grace and in rest of heart love the true love and in his only service lead their life.”

[1600] The Ancren Riwle was translated and edited by J. Morton for the Camden Soc. (1853). I quote from the cheap and convenient reprint of the translation, with introduction by Gasquet, in The King’s Classics, 1907. For the most recent research as to the different versions, authorship, etc., see article by G. C. Macaulay, “The Ancren Riwle” in Modern Language Review, IX (1914), pp. 63-78, 145-60, 324-31, 464-74, Father MacNabb’s article ib. XI (1916), and Miss Hope Emily Allen’s thesis, The Origin of the Ancren Riwle (Publications of the Mod. Lang. Assoc. of Amer. XXXIII, 3, Sept. 1918); see also her note in Mod. Lang. Review (April 1919), XIV, pp. 209-10, and Mr Coulton’s review of her thesis, ib. (Jan. 1920), XV, p. 99; also Father MacNabb’s attack on her theory, ib. (Oct. 1920) XV and her reply, ib. Research is gradually pushing the date of the first English translation (if indeed it be not after all the original) further and further back.

[1601] Ancren Riwle (King’s Classics), p. 12.

[1602] Ancren Riwle, p. 259.

[1603] Pp. 164-5.

[1604] Pp. 294-6.

[1605] Pp. 313-4.

[1606] Pp. 317-8.

[1607] P. 68.

[1608] Pp. 319-20.

[1609] Pp. 316-19, passim.

[1610] P. 325-6.

[1611] The Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. J. H. Blunt (E.E.T.S. 1873, 1898).

[1612] Op. cit. pp. 65-9, passim.

[1613] As for instance the various other books written or translated for the nuns of Syon (on which see Eckenstein, op. cit. pp. 394-5) and the mystical treatise “Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat,” which was written by Richard Rolle of Hampole for a nun of Yedingham. Rolle was kindly cherished by the nuns of Hampole, where he settled; they often sought his advice during his lifetime and after his death they tried to obtain his canonisation; an office for his festival was composed and a collection of his miracles made. (See Cambridge Hist. of Engl. Lit. II, pp. 45, 48.) For similar treatises of foreign origin, see the Opusculum of Hermann der Lahme (1013-54), Francesco da Barbarino’s Del Reggimento e Costumi di Donne (which contains a section dealing with nuns), (c. 1307-15), Francisco Ximenes’ Libre de les dones († 1409) and John Gerson’s († 1429) letter to his sister. See Hentsch, op. cit. pp. 39, 114, 151, 152.

[1614] Printed from the Thornton MS. in Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse, ed. G. G. Perry (E.E.T.S. 1867, 1914), No. III, pp. 51-62. Compare Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 39843 (La Sainte Abbaye), some pictures from which are reproduced in this book.

[1615] Mechthild von Magdeburg, Offenbarungen, oder Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit, ed. Gall Morel (1869), pp. 249 ff.; see Eckenstein, op. cit. p. 339. The same idea is found in a little German Volkslied:

Wir wellen uns pawen ein heuselein
Und unser sel ain klosterlein,
Jesus Crist sol der maister sein,
Maria jungfraw die schaffnerein.
Götliche Forcht die pfortnerein,
Götliche Lieb die kelnerein,
Diemuetikait wont wol do pei
Weisheit besleust daz laid all ein.

—Uhland, Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder, II, pp. 864-5.

[1616] English text in Furnivall, Early English Poems (Berlin, 1862), printed in Trans. of Philological Soc. 1858, pt. II, pp. 156-61; and in Goldbeck and Mätzner, Altenglische Sprachproben (Berlin, 1867). pt. I, p. 147; W. Heuser, Die Kildare-Gedichte (Bonn, 1904), p. 145; and in a slightly modernised form in Ellis, Specimens of Early English Poets, 1801, I, pp. 83 ff., who took it from Hickes’ Thesaurus, pt. I, p. 231. I have here used the modernised version for the sake of convenience. An attempt has been made to identify the religious houses mentioned in the poem with real monasteries in Kildare; the poem is certainly of Anglo-Irish origin and occurs in the famous “Kildare Manuscript” (MS. Harl. 913). See W. Heuser, op. cit. pp. 141-5. There is a French version in Barbazon et Méon, Fabliaux III, p. 175.

[1617] “It is not until French wit flashes across English seriousness that we travel to the Land of Cokaygne,” G. Hadow, Chaucer and His Times, p. 35. Stories of a food country are, however, common in medieval literature, being sometimes legends of a vanished golden age, as in the Irish “Vision of MacConglinne” (late twelfth century), and sometimes ideal pictures of a life of lazy luxury, as in the French and English Lands of Cokaygne and the German Schlaraffenland. On the whole subject, see Fr. Joh. Poeschel, Das Märchen von Schlaraffenland (Halle, 1878), and the introduction by W. Wollner to The Vision of MacConglinne, ed. Kuno Meyer (1892).

[1618] Polit. Songs of England, ed. T. Wright (Camden Soc. 1839), pp. 137-48.

[1619] The idea of the Ordre de Bel-Eyse is probably taken from the twelfth century Anglo-Latin poem by Nigel Wireker entitled Speculum Stultorum, which tells the story of the ass Burnellus, who goes out into the world to seek his fortune. At one point Burnellus decides to retire to a convent and passes the different orders under review, to see which will suit him. This gives the author an opportunity for some pointed satire, including a reference to nuns; “they never quarrel save for due cause, in due place, nor do they come to blows save for grave reasons”; their morals are very questionable, “Harum sunt quaedam steriles et quaedam parturientes, virgineoque tamen nomine cuncta tegunt. Quae pastoralis baculi dotatur honore, illa quidem melius fertiliusque parit. Vix etiam quaevis sterilis reperitur in illis, donec eis aetas talia posse negat.” Finally Burnellus decides to found a new order; from the Templars he will borrow their smoothly pacing horses, from the Cluniacs and the black Canons their custom of eating meat, from the order of Grandmont their gossip, from the Carthusians the habit of saying mass only once a month, from the Premonstratensians their warm and comfortable clothes, from the nuns their custom of going ungirdled; and in this order every brother shall have a female companion, as in the first order which was instituted in Paradise. Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, ed. T. Wright (Rolls Series, 1872), I, pp. 94-6.

[1620] With these two highly successful jeux d’esprit at the expense of monastic luxury may be compared a passage in the curious thirteenth century poem entitled “A Disputison bytwene a cristene mon and a Jew,” in which an incidental shaft is perhaps aimed at nunneries, which affected the habits of Cokaygne and Fair Ease. The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS., pt. II, ed. F. J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. 1901), No. XLVI, p. 490.

[1621] See e.g. Rabelais, Gargantua, cap. LII (Comment Gargantua fit bastir pour le moine l’abbaye de Theleme).

[1622] Text in Dits et Contes de Badouin de Condé et de son fils Jean de Condé, pub. par Aug. Scheler, Ac. Roy. de Belgique, Brussels, 1866-7, III, No. XXXVII, pp. 1-48. The portion of the poem containing the lawsuit is translated in part into modern French by Le Grand d’Aussy, in Fabliaux et Contes, ed. Le Grand d’Aussy et Renouard, 1829, I, pp. 326-36.

[1623] A convenient collection of these is summarised in an excellent little book by Ch.-V. Langlois, entitled La Vie en France au Moyen Age d’après quelques Moralistes du Temps (2me éd. 1911).

[1624] The text of both La Bible Guiot and La Bible au Seigneur de Berzé is printed in Fabliaux et Contes, ed. Barbazon-Méon, t. II (Paris, 1808), and both are fully analysed, with extracts in Langlois, op. cit. pp. 30-88. The text of La Bible Guiot is also printed in San Marte, Parcival Studien (Halle, 1861), with a translation into German verse.

[1625] Les Lamentations de Matheolus, pub. A. G. Van Hamel (Bib. de l’Ecole des Chartes, 1892, t. I, pp. 89-90). See also the analysis in Langlois, op. cit. pp. 223-75, especially p. 248.

[1626] Langlois, op. cit. pp. 248-9, Note 2.

[1627] Poésies de Gilles li Muisis, pub. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Louvain, 1882), t. I, pp. 209-36. The whole register is analysed in Langlois, op. cit. pp. 305-53.

[1628] See above, p. .

[1629] See Vox Clamantis, Lib. IV, ll. 578-676 in The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay, Latin Works (1902), pp. 181-5. The same subject is treated more shortly by Gower in his Mirour de l’Omne, ll. 9157-68. (Ib. French Works, p. 106.)

[1630] Compare the priestly logic of Alvar Pelayo who enumerates the abuse of the confessional among the habitual sins of women! De Planctu Ecclesiae, Lib. II, Art. 45, n. 84. (See Lea, Hist. of Sacerdotal Celibacy, I, 435-6 for this and other medieval complaints of the corruption of nuns by their confessors.)

[1631] Text in Furnivall, Early Engl. Poems (Berlin, 1862), printed in Trans. of Philological Soc. 1858, pt. II, pp. 138-48 (from Cotton MS. Vesp. D. IX, f. 179).

[1632] All the Familiar Colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, trans. N. Bailey (2nd ed. 1733), pp. 147-55.

[1633] “Nec omnes virgines sunt, mihi crede, quae velum habent.... Nisi fortasse elogium, quod nos hactenus judicavimus esse Virgini matri proprium, ad plures transiit, ut dicantur et a partu virgines ... quin insuper, nec alioqui inter illas virgines sunt omnia virginea ... quia plures inveniuntur, quae mores aemulentur Sapphus, quam quae referant ingenium.” Erasmus, Colloquia, accur. Corn. Schrevelio (Amsterdam, 1693), p. 196.

[1634] Op. cit. pp. 155-7.

[1635] This account of Katherine’s experiences, whether they were due (as the translator suggests) to “the crafty tricks of the monks, who terrify and frighten unexperienced minds into their cloysters by feigned apparitions and visions,” or (as was more probably Erasmus’ meaning) to the mere power of suggestion upon a hysterical girl, should be compared with the numerous accounts of such apparitions seen by novices or intending novices, which are to be found in lives of saints and in edifying exempla. See the examples quoted from Caesarius of Heisterbach, below, pp. sqq.

[1636] For the expenses incidental to taking the veil, see above, pp. 19-20.

[1637] Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, in Sir David Lyndesay’s Poems, ed. Small, Hall and Murray (E.E.T.S. 2nd ed., 1883), pp. 421-3.

[1638] Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, in Sir David Lyndesay’s Poems, ed. Small, Hall and Murray (E.E.T.S. 2nd ed., 1883), p. 506.

[1639] Ib. p. 514.

[1640] Ib. p. 521.

[1641] Quoted from the ballad by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (“The Murder of Caerlaverock”) in McDowall, W., Chronicles of Lincluden, p. 28.

[1642] Constans, Chrestomathie de l’Ancien Français (1890), pp. 178-9.

[1643] Malory, Morte Darthur, ed. Strachey (Globe ed., 1893), pp. 481-5.

[1644] See above, p. .

[1645] See Le Livre du Dit de Poissy, ll. 220-698, passim, in Oeuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan, ed. Maurice Roy (Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr. 1891), t. II, pp. 160-80. With this may be compared another, but much slighter “courtly” description of a nunnery, contained in the roman d’aventure, L’Escoufle, written at the close of the twelfth century. At the beginning of the poem the author describes the service of the mass in the Abbey of Montivilliers (see below, p. ), on the occasion of the departure of the Count of Montivilliers on a crusade; the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Lisieux took part in the service and a large concourse of lords and ladies was present. The author describes the singing of the service,

Li couvens avoit ja la messe
Commencie et l’abbesse
Commanda a ij damoiseles
Des mix cantans et des plus beles
Les cuer a tenir, por mix plaire
Et por la feste grignor faire.

He describes the rich offerings made at the altar by the Count and the rest of the congregation; and the stately visit of farewell paid by them afterwards to the nuns in the chapter house, when the Count asked for their prayers and in return gave them an annual rent of 20 or 30 silver marks. L’Escoufle, ed. H. Michelant and P. Meyer (Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr. 1894), pp. 7-9, passim. The other notable twelfth century description of a nunnery (in Raoul de Cambrai) is very different. See above. pp. 433-5.

[1646] Chaucer, Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, ed. Skeat. ll. 118-64.

[1647] See Dugdale, Mon. I, pp. 442-5.

[1648] ‘Pudding’ was a sausage.

[1649] Tyre was a favourite sweet wine in the middle ages; “if not of Syrian growth [it] was probably a Calabrian or Sicilian wine, manufactured from the species of grape called tirio.” Early Eng. Meals and Manners, ed. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. 1868), p. 90.

[1650] Sowce (Lat. salsagium, verjuice) was a sort of pickle for hog’s flesh. Promptorium Parvulorum, ed. A. L. Mayhew (E.E.T.S. 1908), notes, p. 701. See the rather ominous verse in Tusser:

Thy measeled bacon, hog, sow, or thy bore,
Shut up for to heale, for infecting thy store:
Or kill it for bacon, or sowce it to sell,
For Flemming, that loues it so deintily well.

Tusser, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (Eng. Dialect Soc. 1878), p. 52. The word is still in use in the north of England for a concoction of mincemeat, vegetables, cloves and vinegar and in ‘soused herrings’ i.e. herrings cooked in vinegar.

[1651] I.e. St Ethelburga, for whom the Abbey was founded by her brother Erconwald, Bishop of London, in 666.

[1652] Probably gris, i.e. a little pig. Compare Piers Plowman, Prol. l. 226:

Cokes and here knaues crieden, ‘hote pies, hote!
Gode gris and gees gowe dyne, gowe!’

[1653] “White worts,” was a kind of potage (“potage is not so moche used in all Chrystendome as it is used in Englande. Potage is made of the licour in the whiche flesshe is sod in, with puttynge to, chopped herbes and Otmell and salte,” Early Eng. Meals and Manners, p. 97). This is a recipe for White Worts, written down, c. 1420: “Take of the erbys as thou dede for jouutes and sethe hem in water tyl they ben neyshe; thanne take hem up, an bryse hem fayre on a potte an ley hem with flowre of Rys; take mylke of almaundys and cast therto and hony, nowt to moche, that it be nowt to swete, an safron and salt; an serve it forth ynne, rygth for a good potage.” The herbs used for jouutes are “borage, violet, mallows, parsley, young worts, beet, avens, buglos and orach”; and it is recommended to use two or three marrow bones in making the broth. Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, ed. T. Austen (E.E.T.S. 1888), pp. 5, 6.

[1654] Frumenty or Furmety (Lat. frumentum, wheat) is wheat husked and boiled soft in water, then boiled in milk, sweetened and spiced. Here is a recipe for it from the same book as that for white worts: “Take whete and pyke it clene and do it in a morter, an caste a lytel water theron; an stampe with a pestel tyl it hole [hull, lose husks]; than fan owt the holys [hulls, husks], an put it in a potte, an let sethe tyl it breke; than set yt douun, an sone after set it ouer the fyre an stere it wyl; an whan thow hast sothyn it wyl, put therinne swete mylke, an sethe it yfere, an stere it wyl; and whan it is ynow, coloure it wyth safron, an salt it euene, and dresse it forth.” Op. cit. pp. 6-7. See the rhymed recipe in the Liber cure cocorum (c. 1460), ed. Morris (Phil. Soc. 1862), p. 7.

[1655] Crisps (Mod. Fr. crêpe) were fritters. Here is a recipe for them in a cookery book written c. 1450: “Take white of eyren [eggs], Milke, and fyne flowre, and bete hit togidre and drawe hit thorgh a streynour, so that hit be rennyng, and noght to stiff; and caste thereto sugar and salt. And then take a chaffur ful of fressh grece boyling; and then put thi honde in the batur and lete the bater ren thorgh thi fingers into the chaffur; And whan it is ren togidre in the chaffre, and is ynowe, take a skymour and take hit oute of the chaffur, and putte oute al the grece, And lete ren; and putte hit in a faire dissh and cast sugur thereon ynow and serue it forth.” Op. cit. p. 93.

[1656] Buns. Compare the instructions to the cellaress of Syon: “On water days [i.e. days when the sisters drank water instead of beer] sche schal ordeyne for bonnes or newe brede.” Aungier, Hist. and Antiq. of Syon Mon. p. 393.

[1657] Here is a recipe: “Risshewes. Take figges and grinde hem all rawe in a morter and cast a litull fraied oyle there-to; and then take hem vppe yn a versell, and caste thereto pynes, reysyns of corance, myced dates, sugur, Saffron, pouder ginger, and salt: And then make Cakes of floure, Sugur, salt and rolle the stuff in thi honde and couche it in the cakes, and folde hem togidur as risshewes, and fry hem in oyle, and serue hem forth.” Op. cit. p. 93. There are other recipes, ib. pp. 43, 45, 97. The word survives in rissole.

[1658] Reg. Epis. Peckham, II, p. 706.

[1659] Worc. Sede Vac. Reg. p. 276.

[1660] Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 366.

[1661] Linc. MS. Reg. Bokyngham Mem. f. 397d.

[1662] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 120-1.

[1663] Ib. I, p. 51.

[1664] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 101.

[1665] See above, p. .

[1666] Linc. Visit. II, p. 115.

[1667] Ib. p. 115.

[1668] Sussex Arch. Soc. Coll. IX, pp. 25-7.

[1669] Sussex Arch. Soc. Coll. V, p. 257.

[1670] Reg. J. de Pontissara, I, p. 125.

[1671] Linc. Visit. II, p. 51.

[1672] Linc. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 343. Compare Buckingham’s similar injunction to Heynings, ib. f. 397, Gynewell’s injunction to Elstow in 1359, ib. Reg. Gynewell, ff. 139d-140, Pontoise’s injunction to Wherwell in 1302, Reg. J. de Pontissara, I, p. 125, and Peckham’s injunction to the Holy Sepulchre, Canterbury, in 1284, Reg. Ep. Peckham. II, p. 706.

[1673] Liveing, op. cit. p. 104.

[1674] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 174.

[1675] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 99.

[1676] Liveing, op. cit. p. 168.

[1677] V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 434.

[1678] Translated from his Bonum Universale de Apibus, Lib. II, c. 30, written about 1260, in Coulton, Med. Garn. pp. 372-3.

[1679] Aungier, Hist. and Antiq. of Syon Mon. pp. 256, 257, 259, 261-2. For further instances of quarrels in the province of Rouen, see below, pp. 664-6.

[1680] Wilkins, Conc. I, p. 508.

[1681] Ib. pp. 590-1. Compare a decree of the contemporary Council of Trier (1227) for German nuns, Harzheim, Conc. Germ. III, p. 534.

[1682]

And, whan he rood, men might his brydel here
Ginglen in a whistling wind as clere,
And eke as loude as dooth the chapel-belle
Ther as this lord was keper of the celle.

[1683] Wilkins, Conc. I, p. 660.

[1684] New Coll. MS. f. 86.

[1685] Aungier, op. cit. p. 392.

[1686] Reg. Ep. Peckham, III, p. 849.

[1687] Ful semely hir wimpel pinched was!

[1688] Gresset, Vert Vert, ll. 142-6. See below, p. .

[1689]

I seigh his sleves purfiled at the hond
With grys, and that the fyneste of a lond.
Chaucer, Prologue, ll. 193-4.

[1690] Linc. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 343d.

[1691] Hereford Reg. Spofford, I, f. 77d.

[1692] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 181.

[1693] Ib. p. 126.

[1694] Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 194.

[1695] V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 119, 120, 127, 164, 168, 174-5, 181, 183, 240.

[1696] Linc. Visit. II, p. 176; Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 26d, 38.

[1697] V.C.H. Essex, II, 124.

[1698] Norwich Visit. p. 274.

[1699] V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 130, where the date is wrongly given as 1512.

[1700] See below, p. .

[1701] Prologue, ll. 146-9. Chaucer was certainly a dog-lover: a passage in the Book of the Duchess (ll. 387 ff.) puts it beyond doubt:

I was go walked fro my tree,
And as I wente ther cam by me
A whelp, that fauned me as I stood
That hadde y-folowed, and coude no good.
Hit com and creep to me as lowe,
Right as hit badde me y-knowe,
Hild doun his heed and joyned his eres,
And leyde al smothe doun his heres.
I wolde han caught hit, and anoon
Hit fledde, and was fro me goon.

[1702] The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, ed. T. Wright (E.E.T.S. revised ed. 1906), pp. 28-9.

[1703] Printed in The Cambridge Songs, ed. Karl Breul (1915), No. 29, p. 62; and in Denkmäler, ed. Müllenhoff und Scherer, Deutscher Poesie und Prosa aus dem VIII-XII Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1892), I, pp. 51-3 (No. XXIV). I have ventured to attempt a translation.

[1704] Skelton, Selected Poems, ed. W. H. Williams (1902). pp. 57 ff.

[1705] Translation by Robin Flower in The Poem Book of the Gael, ed. Eleanor Hull (1913), p. 132. The poem has also been translated by Kuno Meyer and by Alfred Perceval Graves.

[1706] Quoted in Fosbroke, Brit. Monachism, II, p. 34.

[1707] Oeuvres Choisies de Gresset (Coll. Bibliothèque Nationale), pp. 3 ff. There is an eighteenth century English translation (1759) by J. G. Cooper in Chalmers, English Poets, XV, pp. 528-36.

[1708] Summarised in V.C.H. Oxon. II, pp. 76-7.

[1709] When the nuns exhorted her to abstain from his company, she replied “quod ipsum amavit et amare volet.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Visit. Atwater, f. 87.

[1710] See above, p. .

[1711] So also was Nunkeeling, where there was a particularly violent election struggle, but no mention of immorality.

[1712] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 159.

[1713] Ib. pp. 167-9.

[1714] Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 456-7.

[1715] V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 187-9. A Prioress was deposed here for incontinence in 1494.

[1716] V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 239-40.

[1717] Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 457-8. Queen Isabella, wife of Edward II, is referred to.

[1718] See above, p. .

[1719] Cal. of Papal Letters, III, p. 1345.

[1720] Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 355, 358-62. Another nun apostatised and lived a dissolute life for some time in the world, returning in 1337. Ib. p. 363.

[1721] V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 179-81. The house was in an unsatisfactory condition as early as 1268. Reg. Walter Giffard, pp. 147-8.

[1722] V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 129-30.

[1723] Ib. III, p. 113. The house seems to have been in much the same condition later. A nun had run away in 1372 and the misdeeds of the bad prioress Eleanor came to light in 1396. Ib. 114-5.

[1724] Ib. p. 124.

[1725] Ib. p. 126.

[1726] Ib. p. 161. In 1535 Archbishop Lee found that a nun here, Joan Hutton, “hath lyved incontinentlie and unchast and hath broght forth a child of her bodie begotten.” Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 453.

[1727] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 164.

[1728] Ib. p. 164.

[1729] Ib. p. 116 and Yorks. Arch. Journ. IX, p. 334.

[1730] Ib. pp. 176-7.

[1731] Ib. p. 175.

[1732] Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 194; see also Cal. of Pap. Letters, X, p. 471.

[1733] Ib. p. 183.

[1734] It may be noted that five nunneries had already disappeared between 1300 and 1500, viz. Waterbeach (transferred to Denny, 1348), Wothorpe (annexed to St Michael’s, Stamford, 1354) and St Stephen’s, Foukeholme, all of which owed their end to the Black Death; Lyminster (dissolved as an alien priory, 1414); and Rowney (suppressed on account of poverty, 1459).

[1735] Gray, Priory of St Radegund, pp. 44-5. For evidence of the decay of the nunnery during the last half of the fifteenth century, see ib. pp. 39-44.

[1736] Eckenstein, Woman under Mon. p. 436.

[1737] Dugdale, Mon. IV. p. 378.

[1738] Selected Poems of John Skelton, ed. W. H. Williams (1902), p. 113. There is an interesting compertum at Dr Rayne’s visitation of Studley in 1530 to the effect that “the woods of the priory had been much diminished by the late prioress and also by Thomas Cardinal of York for the construction of his College in the University of Oxford.” V.C.H. Oxon. II, p. 78.

[1739] See above, Note F.

[1740] See above, p. .

[1741] Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 288.

[1742] Uhland, Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder (1844-5), II, p. 854 (No. 329); also in R. v. Liliencron, Deutsches Leben im Volkslied um 1530 (1884), p. 226, and (in a slightly different and modernised version) in L. A. v. Arnim and Clemens Brentano, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Reclam edit.), p. 24.

[1743] Translated in Bithell, The Minnesingers (Halle, 1909), I, p. 200. I have been unable to trace the original. I have slightly altered the wording of the translation.

[1744] Karl Bartsch, Deutsche Liederdichter des zwölften bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (4th ed. Berlin, 1901), p. 379 (No. XCVIII, ll. 581-616). Slightly modernised version in Uhland, op. cit. II, p. 853 (No. 327).

[1745] Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, V (1881), p. 545 (No. 28). A slightly different version in Moriz Haupt, Französische Volkslieder (Leipzig, 1877), p. 152.

[1746] In a round the last two lines of each verse are repeated as the first two lines of the following verse, and the refrain is repeated at the end of each verse. The songs lose much of their charm by being quoted in compressed form, for the cumulative effect of the repetition is exceedingly graceful and spirited.

[1747] Haupt, op. cit. p. 40.

[1748] Weckerlin, L’Ancienne Chanson Populaire en France (1887), p. 354.

[1749] Ib. p. 319.

[1750] Bujeaud, J., Chants et Chansons populaires des Provinces de l’ouest (1866), I, p. 137.

[1751] Ib. I, p. 132.

[1752] Romania, X, p. 391.

[1753] Ib. X, p. 395 (No. XLVIII).

[1754] Ib. VII, p. 72 (No. XX). Another version in De Puymaigre, Chants Populaires recueillis dans le Pays Messin (1865), p. 39 (No. X).

[1755] Ib. VII, p. 73 (No. XXI). Other versions in Jean Fleury, Littérature Orale de la Basse-Normandie (Paris, 1883), p. 311, and De Puymaigre, op. cit. p. 35 (No. IX), and note on p. 37. Compare Schiller’s ballad Der Ritter von Toggenburg.

[1756] Fleury, op. cit. p. 313.

[1757] Nigra, Canti Popolari del Piemonte (1888), No. 80, pp. 409-14.

[1758] T. Casini, Studi di Poesia antica (1913). There is a very racy French song called Le Comte Orry which deserves notice here: see H. C. Delloye, Chants et Chansons Populaires de la France (1re série), 1843.

[1759] Hagen, Carmina Medii Aevi (Berne, 1877), pp. 206-7. There is an exceedingly long and tedious sixteenth century French version, evidently founded on the Latin poem, in Montaiglon, Rec. de Poésies Françoises des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, t. VIII, pp. 170-5.

[1760] The Cambridge Songs, ed. Karl Breul (1915), No. 35, p. 16. See also Koegel, Geschichte der Deutschen Litteratur (1867), I, pp. 136-9.

[1761] Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, V (1881), p. 544, No. 27. Also in Weckerlin, op. cit. p. 405 (under date 1614).

[1762] Rolland, Rec. de Chansons Populaires, II, p. 81.

[1763] Ib. I, pp. 226-7.

[1764] Weckerlin, op. cit. p. 355.

[1765] Haupt, Französische Volkslieder (1877), p. 84. A slightly different version in Weckerlin, op. cit. p. 297.

[1766] Haupt, op. cit. p. 63.

[1767] Weckerlin, op. cit. p. 262; also in E. Rolland, Rec. de Chansons Populaires (1883-90), t. II, p. 36.

[1768] “A gentle gallant went hunting in the wood and there he met a nun. She was so lovely, so fresh and so fair. Said the gentle gallant to her: ‘Come, sit with me in the shade and never more shalt thou be a little nun.’ ‘Gentle gallant, wait here for me; I will go and put off my habit and then I will come back to you in the shade.’ He waited for her three days and three nights and never came the fair one. The gentle gallant goes to the monastery and knocks at the great door; out comes the mother abbess: ‘What are you looking for, gentle gallant?’ ‘I am looking for a little nun, who promised to come into the shade.’ ‘You once had the quail at your feet and you let it fly away. Even so has flown the pretty nun.’” Nigra, Canti Populari del Piemonte (1888), No. 72, p. 381. With these two songs should be compared the English poem in Percy’s Reliques, called The Baffled Knight or Lady’s Policy, and the Somerset folksong, Blow away the morning dew, with its dénouement:

But when they came to her father’s gate
So nimble she popped in,
And said “There is a fool without
And here’s the maid within.

We have a flower in our garden
We call it marygold—
And if you will not when you may
You shall not when you wolde.”

Folk Songs from Somerset (1st Series, 1910), ed. Cecil Sharp and Charles Marson, No. VIII, pp. 16-17.

[1769] Fleury, op. cit. p. 308. Other versions in De Puymaigre, op. cit. pp. 145-8 (Nos. XLV-XLVI).

[1770] Rolland, op. cit. IV, p. 31. Cf. versions on pp. 30, 32, 33. The theme recalls a pretty poem by Leigh Hunt:

If you become a nun, dear,
A friar I will be;
In any cell you run, dear,
Pray look behind for me.
The roses all turn pale, too;
The doves all take the veil, too;
The blind will see the show.
What! you become a nun, my dear?
I’ll not believe it, no!

If you become a nun, dear,
The bishop Love will be;
The Cupids every one, dear,
Will chant “We trust in thee.”
The incense will go sighing,
The candles fall a-dying,
The water turn to wine;
What! you go take the vows, my dear?
You may—but they’ll be mine!

[1771] Rolland, op. cit. I, p. 253, cf. pp. 249-54.

[1772] Chants de Carnaval Florentins (Canti Carnascialeschi) de l’époque de Laurent le Magnifique. Pub. par P. M. Masson (Paris, 1913). For a copy of the song and for the suggestion that it refers to English nuns I am indebted to Mr E. J. Dent of King’s College, Cambridge. But the mention of Low Germany sounds more like German nuns.

[1773] Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, Essays in the Study of Folksongs (Everyman’s Lib. Ed.), pp. 191-2.

[1774] L. A. v. Arnim and Clemens Brentano, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Reclam ed.), p. 50.

[1775] The Oxford Book of Ballads, ed. Quiller-Couch (1910), p. 635 (No. 125). In the long collection of ballads narrating Robin Hood’s career known as A Little Geste of Robin Hood and his Meiny (which was in print early in the sixteenth century) the Prioress is said to have conspired with her lover, one Sir Roger of Doncaster, to slay Robin. Ib. p. 574. In the version in Bishop Percy’s famous folio MS. “Red Roger” is described as stabbing the weakened outlaw, but losing his own life in the act. Bishop Percy’s Folio MS. ed. Hales and Furnivall (1867), I, pp. 50-58. “In ‘Le Morte de Robin Hode,’ a quite modern piece printed in Hone’s Every-day Book from an old collection of MS. songs in the Editor’s possession, the prioress is represented as the outlaw’s sister and as poisoning him.” Ib. p. 53.

[1776] Miracles de Nostre Dame par Personnages, pub. G. Paris and U. Robert (Soc. des Anc. Textes Français, 1876), t. I, pp. 311-51.

[1777] Translated in Evelyn Underhill, The Miracles of Our Lady Saint Mary (1905), pp. 195-200.

[1778] Caesarius of Heisterbach, II, pp. 41-2. “Although the buffet was hard,” says Caesarius, conscious perhaps that the Virgin had acted with less than her wonted gentleness, “she was utterly delivered from temptation by it. A grievous ill requires a grievous remedy.”

[1779] Gautier de Coincy, Miracles de N.D., ed. Poquet, p. 474.

[1780] Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Crane, p. 24. See variant in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 321.

[1781] Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange, I, pp. 222-3.

[1782] Wright, Latin Stories, p. 96.

[1783] Etienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes Historiques, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, p. 83 (translated in Taylor, The Medieval Mind, I, pp. 508-9).

[1784] I have used the version in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), pp. 11-12. For other versions, see Miracles de Nostre Dame (Soc. des Anc. Textes) I, pp. 59-100. For other versions, see Etienne de Bourbon, op. cit. p. 114, Wright, op. cit., p. 114, Barbazon et Méon, Nouveau Recueil de Fabliaux, II, p. 314, Dodici conti morali d’anonimo Senese: Teste inedite de sec. XIII (Bologna, 1862), No. 8; Small, Eng. Metrical Homilies, p. 164. There is a very interesting Ethiopian version (told of Sophia the abbess of Mount Carmel) in Miracles of the B.V.M. (Lady Meux MSS.), ed. E. A. Wallis Budge (1900), pp. 68-71. Most versions preserve the interesting detail that the nuns dislike their abbess and are anxious to betray her on account of her strictness and particularly because she will not give them easy licence to see their friends. In the French dramatic version Sister Isabel stays away from a sermon and gives as her excuse that a cousin came to see her, with some cloth to make a veil and a “surplis,” whereupon she is scolded and then pardoned by the Abbess.

[1785] Le Cento Novelle Antiche, ed. Gualteruzzi (Milan, 1825), No. 62. I quote the translation by A. C. Lee, The Decameron, its Sources and Analogues, p. 60.

[1786] Francesco da Barberino, Del Reggimento e Costumi di Donne, ed. Carlo Baudi di Vesme (Bologna, 1875), p. 273. See A. C. Lee, loc. cit.

[1787] A. C. Lee, op. cit. p. 125. The story is of Eastern origin and for its many analogues see ib. pp. 123-35.

[1788] Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, ed. Th. Wright (Bib. Elzévirienne, 1858), t. I, pp. 81-4, 114-20, 283-7.

[1789] Montaiglon et Raynaud, Rec. Gén. des Fabliaux, III, pp. 137-44.

[1790] Ib. IV, pp. 128-32.

[1791] Barbazon et Méon, Nouv. Rec. de Fabliaux, IV, p. 250.

[1792] Erzählungen und Schwänke, hrsg. von Hans Lambel (Leipzig, 1888), No. VIII, pp. 309-22.

[1793] Koeppel, Studien zur Geschichte der italienischen Novelle in der englischen Litteratur des XVI Jahrhunderts (1892), p. 183.

[1794] King John by William Shakespeare together with the Troublesome Reign of King John, ed. F. G. Fleay, (1878), pp. 158-62.

[1795] Printed in A Selection from the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, ed. J. O. Halliwell (Percy Soc. 1840), pp. 107-17. Professor MacCracken denies the authorship to Lydgate, see The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. H. N. MacCracken (E.E.T.S. 1911), I, p. xlii (note).

[1796] The edition used is that of Joseph Strange in two volumes (Cologne, Bonn and Brussels, 1851). For a study of the life and times of Caesarius, see A. Kaufmann, Caesarius von Heisterbach, Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des zwölften und dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 1850). For anecdotes from this source already quoted in the text, see pp. 27-9, 296-7, 511, 520 ff., etc.

[1797] Op. cit. I, pp. 1-2.

[1798] I.e. “Ave Maria, gratia plena.” The Virgin Mary was always the most potent help against the devil, as may be seen from any collection of her miracles (e.g. that made by Gautier de Coincy in French verse in the thirteenth century and edited by the Abbé Poquet).

[1799] Ib. I, pp. 125-7. For an abbreviated version of this story, taken from Caesarius, see An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), pp. 178-9 (No. CCLV).

[1800] Used in the common medieval sense of entering a religious order.

[1801] Ib. I, pp. 328-30. At the end of this story the novice asks: “Why is it that the good Lord allows maidens so tender and so pure to be thus cruelly tormented by rough and foul spirits?” And the monk replies: “Thou hast experienced how if a bitter drink be first swallowed a sweet one tastes the sweeter, and how if black be placed beneath it, white is all the more dazzling. Read the Visions of Witinus, Godescalcus and others, to whom it was permitted to see the pains of the damned and the glory of the elect, and almost always it was the vision of punishment which came first. The Lord, wishing to show his bride his secret joys, permitteth well that she should first be tempted by some dreadful visions, that afterwards she may the better deserve to be made glad, and may know the distance between sweet and bitter, light and darkness.”

[1802] Ib. I, pp. 330-31.

[1803] Ib. II, pp. 68-9. “As I infer from this vision,” says the Novice, “an indiscreet fervour in prayers is not pleasing to the blessed Virgin, neither an undisciplined movement in genuflections.” On the other hand she did not like her devotees to hurry over their prayers, for Gautier de Coincy has a tale of a nun, Eulalie, who was accustomed to say at each office of the Virgin the full rosary of a hundred and fifty Aves; but she had much work to do and often hurried over her prayers, till one night she saw a vision of the mother of God, who promised her salvation and told her that the Ave Maria was a prayer which gave herself much joy; therefore she bade Eulalie not to hurry over it, but of her bounty permitted her to say a chaplet of fifty Aves, instead of the long rosary. See Gautier de Coincy, Les Miracles de la Sainte Vierge, ed. Poquet (Paris, 1857).

[1804] Ib. II, p. 100.

[1805] Ib. II, pp. 121-2.

[1806] Ib. II, pp. 122-3. For a variant in which the place of the two nuns is taken by two doctors of divinity, see An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), pp. 274-5.

[1807] Ib. II, pp. 343-4. With these holy rivalries should be compared Caesarius’ tales of the drawing of apostles by lot. “It is a very common custom among the matrons of our province to choose an Apostle for their very own by the following lottery: the names of the twelve Apostles are written each on twelve tapers, which are blessed by the priest and laid on the altar at the same moment. Then the woman comes and draws a taper and whatsoever name that taper shall chance to bear, to that Apostle she renders special honour and service. A certain matron, having thus drawn St Andrew, and being displeased to have drawn him, laid the taper back on the altar and would have drawn another; but the same came to her hand again. Why should I make a long story? At length she drew one that pleased her, to whom she paid faithful devotion all the days of her life; nevertheless when she came to her last end and was at the point of death, she saw not him but the Blessed Andrew standing at her bedside. ‘Lo,’ he said, ‘I am that despised Andrew!’ from which we can gather that sometimes saints thrust themselves even of their own accord into men’s devotions.” Another matron was so much annoyed at drawing St Jude the Obscure instead of a more famous Apostle that she threw him behind the altar chest; whereupon the outraged Apostle visited her in a dream and not only rated her soundly but afflicted her with a palsy. See ib. II, pp. 129, 133, translated in Coulton, A Medieval Garner, pp. 259-60.

[1808] Several of the stories have, however, been translated by Mr Coulton, op. cit. Nos. 102-32.

[1809] Translated in Coulton, From St Francis to Dante (1907), p. 290; see ib. pp. 289-91, for a short account of Eudes Rigaud, also references on p. 395 (n. 17).

[1810] Regestrum Visitationum Archiepiscopi Rothamagensis, ed. Bonnin (1852). See analysis by L. Delisle in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 1846.

[1811] There is however a copy of the Bishop’s letter of injunctions, sent on later, appended to his report of the state of Villarceaux in 1249 (Reg. pp. 44-5).

[1812] Walcott, M. E. C., English Minsters, II (The English Student’s Monasticon), pp. 210 and V.C.H. Dorset, II, p. 48.

[1813] V.C.H. Sussex, II, p. 121 and Dugdale, Mon. VI, pp. 1032-3. The later history of this cell can be traced from occasional references. It was a very small house and contained only a prioress and two nuns in 1380. Dugdale says that after the French wars Richard Earl of Arundel treated with the Abbess of Almenèches for the purchase of some lands belonging to Lyminster and in 1404 a papal brief enumerated the possessions of Almenèches in England and elsewhere, with a threat of penalties against all who should disturb them. Dugdale, Mon. VI, pp. 1032-3. Five years later a memorandum in the Register of Bishop Rede of Chichester notes the admission of a new Prioress, Nichola de Hereez, on the presentation of the Abbess and Convent of Almenèches, in place of Georgete la Cloutiere, deceased. Reg. Robert Rede (Sussex Rec. Soc. 1908), pp. 38-9. Clearly French women were ruling over the house, though the nuns may possibly have been English. Shortly afterwards Henry V finally dissolved the alien priories in England and the lands belonging to Lyminster were settled by Henry VI upon Eton College.

[1814] Reg. p. 236.

[1815] Walcott, op. cit. p. 141 and V.C.H. Norfolk, II, p. 463, and Dugdale, op. cit. p. 1057.

[1816] Walcott, op. cit. p. 173.

[1817] Reg. p. 94.

[1818] Ib. p. 261. In 1314-5 the Abbess of the Holy Trinity petitioned the King of England, complaining that she had been distrained in aid of the marriage of his eldest daughter, whereas she held all her lands in frank almoin. Rot. Parl. I, p. 331.

[1819] Irrespective of double houses such as the Magdalen of Rouen.

[1820] Reg. p. 202.

[1821] p. 73.

[1822] p. 471.

[1823] E.g. pp. 43, 207, 323, 361.

[1824] pp. 235, 374.

[1825] pp. 451, 490.

[1826] p. 194.

[1827] p. 299.

[1828] p. 194.

[1829] pp. 636-7.

[1830] p. 298.

[1831] p. 572.

[1832] p. 419.

[1833] p. 298.

[1834] p. 298.

[1835] p. 268.

[1836] pp. 456, 486, 512.

[1837] pp. 419, 451, 491, 598, 634.

[1838] p. 94.

[1839] p. 323.

[1840] p. 338.

[1841] p. 456.

[1842] pp. 16, 121, 201, 326, 512, 588.

[1843] pp. 166, 194.

[1844] E.g. at St Désir de Lisieux (1249), at Bondeville (1259), and at St Saëns (1262). At Bival (1257 and 1259) such a roll was kept. See pp. 62, 299, 339, 348, 451.

[1845] pp. 16, 60, 62, 73, 121, 197, 199, 201, 220, 266, 339, 348, 431, 512.

[1846] pp. 43, 44, 220, 305, 326.

[1847] pp. 43, 44, 326, 431, 588, 602.

[1848] p. 348.

[1849] p. 410.

[1850] See e.g. pp. 100, 274, 299, 339, 361, 402, 407, 410, 451, 468, 471, 523, 602, 619.

[1851] p. 468.

[1852] p. 100.

[1853] p. 361.

[1854] pp. 487, 598, 615.

[1855] pp. 100, 572, 592.

[1856] The exact definition of these measures is a thorny subject, but probably the modius was roughly a quarter and the mina a little more.

[1857] The list of rents in kind is an interesting illustration of the monastic economy; such rents were probably retained, where estates belonged to large communities, for some time after they were commuted for money on secular lands.

[1858] The same which they sold in 1261.

[1859] pp. 273-4. Compare the inventory of Bondeville, ib. p. 299.

[1860] p. 299.

[1861] p. 457.

[1862] p. 384.

[1863] p. 316.

[1864] p. 16.

[1865] pp. 401, 456, 471, 512.

[1866] pp. 187, 273, 310, 338.

[1867] p. 380.

[1868] p. 419.

[1869] p. 491.

[1870] p. 522.

[1871] p. 522: he probably means vicar.

[1872] p. 111.

[1873] p. 217.

[1874] pp. 610, 636.

[1875] pp. 197, 295.

[1876] p. 166.

[1877] p. 285.

[1878] For other references to the fondness of nuns for ginger see the Life of Christina von Stommeln: “Item per annum cum dimidio non comedit aliud quam gingiber” (Acta SS. t. IV, p. 454 A). Also the Ancren Riwle, p. 316: “Of a man whom ye distrust receive ye neither less nor more—not so much as a race of ginger.” Cf. ib. p. 279.

[1879] pp. 384, 431, 472, 517, 564.

[1880] See pp. 793-4 for the inquisition. The name of the house is not given and the editor places the list in the appendix, but the date is 1257 and from internal evidence it is quite clear that it refers to the resignation of Marie, prioress of Bondeville.

[1881] p. 793.

[1882] pp. 111, 133, 217, 298, 410.

[1883] p. 6.

[1884] p. 610.

[1885] pp. 44, 115, 166, 255, 273, 338, 419, 451, 457, 491, 500, 522, 550.

[1886] p. 522, compare p. 550.

[1887] pp. 166, 194.

[1888] p. 500.

[1889] p. 273.

[1890] p. 457.

[1891] p. 115.

[1892] p. 15.

[1893] pp. 384, 431, 472.

[1894] p. 44.

[1895] p. 575.

[1896] p. 486.

[1897] p. 487.

[1898] pp. 283, 319, 361.

[1899] p. 457.

[1900] p. 305.

[1901] pp. 281, 402.

[1902] pp. 384, 431, 817.

[1903] pp. 268, 299, 339. On one occasion the number is given as 12. p. 207.

[1904] pp. 43, 534. However in 1268 Rigaud noted that they ought to do so monthly. p. 602.

[1905] p. 412.

[1906] p. 62, but in 1267 Rigaud noted that they were obliged to do so seven times a year. p. 600.

[1907] pp. 293, 517, 564.

[1908] pp. 298, 487. In 1255 he noted that they did so seven times a year and ordered fortnightly confessions and communions instead (p. 217), but from the later visitations it appears that the seven times rule referred only to lay brothers and sisters.

[1909] p. 410.

[1910] (St Amand), pp. 121, 202, 326, 456; (St Désir de Lisieux), p. 199; (St Sauveur d’Evreux), pp. 220, 305.

[1911] p. 82.

[1912] p. 374.

[1913] p. 419.

[1914] p. 522.

[1915] p. 245.

[1916] p. 517 (Montivilliers).

[1917] pp. 43, 44 (Villarceaux); 117, 146 (Bival); 170, 310 (St Saëns); 261 (Caen); 285, 486 (St Amand); 305 (St Sauveur); 348 (Bondeville).

[1918] pp. 15 (St Amand); 60 (St Léger de Préaux).

[1919] p. 43.

[1920] pp. 15, 121 (St Amand); 207 (St Aubin).

[1921] p. 207 (Bival).

[1922] p. 207 (St Aubin).

[1923] pp. 197, 295, 591 (St Léger-de-Préaux); 201 (St Amand); 261 (Caen).

[1924] p. 170 (St Saëns).

[1925] pp. 16 (St Amand): 62, 199 (St Désir de Lisieux); 60 (St Léger de Préaux); 170, 187 (St Saëns).

[1926] pp. 62 (St Désir de Lisieux); 884 (Montivilliers).

[1927] p. 16.

[1928] p. 121.

[1929] p. 512.

[1930] p. 338.

[1931] p. 384.

[1932] pp. 44, 468.

[1933] pp. 431, 451, 472, 517, 564, 600, 624. Cf. also p. , below.

[1934] pp. 384, 431, 472, 517, 600. Cf. St Saëns, p. 451.

[1935] p. 638.

[1936] p. 431.

[1937] pp. 111, 285, 486, 625.

[1938] pp. 111, 166, 170, 194.

[1939] p. 94. Cf. p. 261: “Una non clamat aliam” (1256).

[1940] p. 201.

[1941] p. 293.

[1942] Ancren Riwle, tr. Gasquet, pp. 151, 192.

[1943] p. 518. An amusing example of convent amenities on these occasions and particularly of the way in which the younger nuns seized a chance of “getting even” with their elders is to be found in Johann Busch’s account of his visitation of Dorstadt (in the Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum described below, App. III). At this house it was the custom for the chapter disciplines to be administered to the whole convent by two of the youngest nuns, who then received discipline themselves. “And,” says Busch, “they had somewhat large rods and beat each other somewhat severely, because the younger nuns were ordained to give disciplines for this reason, that they were stronger than the others. I asked one of them after confession whether she ever gave one more or sharper blows than another. She answered, ‘Truly I do. I hit more sharply and as much as I can her who in my judgment deserves more.’ This girl was about eight or ten years old. I asked one elderly sister, who was prioress in another monastery of her order, but because she was unwilling to reform was expelled from it, whether she received severe disciplines from them. She replied, ‘I have counted ten or eight strokes, which she has often given me as hard as she could, within the space in which “Misereatur tui” is read.’ Then I said to her, ‘You ought to make her a sign, that she may understand that you have had enough.’ She answered, ‘When I do that, she hits me all the more. And I dare not say anything to her on account of the prioress’s presence, but I think to myself: I must bear these on account of my sins, because the prioress and all the seniors receive from them as much as they like to give, without contradiction.’ And she added, ‘before her profession I used to teach her and often beat her with a rod: now she pays me back as she likes.’” Busch, Chron. Wind. et Liber de Ref. Mon., ed. Grube, pp. 644-5.

[1944] p. 235.

[1945] p. 591.

[1946] pp. 624-5.

[1947] pp. 512, 588.

[1948] p. 550.

[1949] p. 348. Perhaps one of these is referred to in 1251 when Rigaud noted “Ibi est quedam filia cuiusdam burgensis de Vallibus que stulta est” (p. 111). It may however refer to a boarder.

[1950] p. 111.

[1951] pp 348, 615.

[1952] p. 187.

[1953] p. 268.

[1954] p. 412.

[1955] p. 293.

[1956] p. 431.

[1957] pp. 472, 517, 564.

[1958] pp. 170, 187, 522 (St Saëns); 201, 326, 401, 512 (St Amand); 298, 348, 455 (Bondeville); 73, 220, 305 (St Sauveur); 117, 146 (Bival); 199, 296 (St Désir de Lisieux); 295-6, 592 (St Léger de Préaux); 402 (Villarceaux); 412 (St Aubin).

[1959] See Rule of St Benedict, tr. Gasquet, pp. 95-6: “When receiving new clothes the monks shall always give back the old ones at the same time, to be put away in the clothes room for the poor. For it is sufficient that a monk have two cowls, as well for night wear as for the convenience of washing. Anything else is superfluous and must be cut off.”

[1960] pp. 384, 517, 564 (Montivilliers); 295 (St Léger de Préaux); 62 (St Désir de Lisieux); 220, 305 (St Sauveur).

[1961] p. 512.

[1962] p. 305.

[1963] pp. 44-5.

[1964] “Abbatissa dat cuilibet moniali per annum xii solidos pro vestibus tantummodo, et singule earum provident sibi de residuo.” p. 339; cf. p. 299. Cf. also Almenèches in 1250, p. 82.

[1965] p. 384.

[1966] p. 207.

[1967] p. 82.

[1968] p. 550.

[1969] p. 587.

[1970] p. 615.

[1971] pp. 62, 199, 296.

[1972] p. 100.

[1973] pp. 115, 273, 285. Cf. injunctions to Villarceaux in 1249, quoted above.

[1974] p. 82.

[1975] Cf. the case of Johanna Martel at St Saëns, p, 338, quoted below, p. .

[1976] p. 235

[1977] p. 374.

[1978] pp. 384, 431, 472, 517, 564. In 1260 the injunction was: “Item quod omnes sane insimul comederent; item inhibuimus ne in refectorio per conventicula et colligationes comederent sed sederent in mensis indifferenter et escis communibus vescerentur” (p. 384).

[1979] pp. 170, 380, 522.

[1980] pp. 60, 197, 295.

[1981] p. 146.

[1982] p. 572.

[1983] p. 220.

[1984] pp. 111, 217, 571. The oven room of St Amand was looked after by a lay brother, p. 588.

[1985] p. 73.

[1986] p. 82.

[1987] p. 111. “Quod moniales non vendant nec distrahant filum et lor fusees.”

[1988] pp. 202, 283, 326, 401, 456, 486, 512, 588 (St Amand); 73, 624 (St Sauveur); 518 (Montivilliers); 451 (St Saëns); 534 (Villarceaux).

[1989] Ancren Riwle, tr. Gasquet, p. 318.

[1990] The custom of depositing valuables in a monastery for safety was very general. Caesarius of Heisterbach has an entertaining anecdote on the point: “A certain usurer committed a large sum of his money to a certain cellarer of our order to be kept for him. The monk sealed it up and put it in a safe place together with the money belonging to the monastery. Afterwards the usurer came to ask for his deposit, but when the cellarer opened the chest, he found neither that nor his own money. And when he beheld that the locks of the chest were intact and the seals of the bags unbroken and that there was no suspicion of theft, he understood that the money of the usurer had eaten up the money of the monastery.” Caes. of Heist., Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange (1851), I, p. 108. For another example of goods being deposited for safety in a nunnery see V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 431 (note 40). A certain Joan Sturmyn entrusted goods to the value of £50 to the keeping of Alice Wafer, Prioress of St Mary de Pré (near St Albans), which afterwards gave rise to a case in chancery, 1480-5.

[1991] Coulton, Monastic Schools in the Middle Ages (Medieval Studies, No. 10) quoting from Martène, Thesaurus, IV, col. 175, § IV.

[1992] See references to convent schools by Gerson and by Erasmus quoted in Coulton, op. cit. pp. 22-3, note 17.

[1993] Or grandnieces (nepotulas).

[1994] p. 217.

[1995] p. 298.

[1996] p. 410.

[1997] p. 571.

[1998] p. 615.

[1999] Coulton, op. cit. p. 5.

[2000] p. 282.

[2001] p. 324.

[2002] p. 572.

[2003] p. 602.

[2004] p. 380.

[2005] p. 419.

[2006] p. 412: “Item ne pueros admitterent ad nutriendum.”

[2007] p. 146.

[2008] p. 486.

[2009] p. 60.

[2010] p. 220.

[2011] p. 305.

[2012] pp. 610, 636.

[2013] pp. 43, 44.

[2014] pp. 115, 207, 255, 283, 319.

[2015] p. 361.

[2016] pp. 412, 471, 550, 587.

[2017] p. 310.

[2018] p. 338.

[2019] p. 380.

[2020] p. 419.

[2021] pp. 451, 491.

[2022] pp. 201, 285.

[2023] p. 486.

[2024] p. 512.

[2025] p. 588.

[2026] p. 281.

[2027] p. 323.

[2028] p. 571.

[2029] pp. 44, 572.

[2030] p. 207.

[2031] p. 564.

[2032] pp. 43, 82, 146, 348.

[2033] pp. 348, 410.

[2034] p. 117.

[2035] p. 146.

[2036] pp. 146, 207, 220, 235, 255, 283, 305, 319, 348, 419, 624, 636.

[2037] pp. 43, 207, 255, 283, 305.

[2038] pp. 43, 326.

[2039] p. 117.

[2040] p. 348.

[2041] p. 220.

[2042] pp. 43, 117, 220, 235, 268, 486, 491, 534, 550.

[2043] p. 587.

[2044] p. 44.

[2045] p. 285.

[2046] pp. 43, 197, 296, 338, 348, 374, 380, 419, 451, 455, 486, 491, 534, 591, 624.

[2047] p. 187 (1254); in 1259 it is again complained that the nuns stay for a long time when they have licence to go outside and on three other occasions it is noted that the nuns go out alone; in 1262 a penance was enjoined on the Prioress for allowing one nun to do so. See pp. 338, 380, 419, 451, 491.

[2048] p. 197.

[2049] p. 295.

[2050] p. 591.

[2051] p. 298; cf. p. 455.

[2052] p. 281; cf. pp. 146, 486, 588.

[2053] pp. 293, 517.

[2054] p. 587.

[2055] p. 412.

[2056] p. 471.

[2057] See above, pp. ff.

[2058] p. 44.

[2059] p. 166.

[2060] p. 197.

[2061] p. 261.

[2062] p. 384.

[2063] pp. 431, 517.

[2064] p. 486.

[2065] See above p. and E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, I, ch. XV, passim.

[2066] p. 73.

[2067] pp. 305, 624.

[2068] p. 295.

[2069] p. 95.

[2070] p. 201.

[2071] p. 602; compare a similar case at Legbourne, above, p. .

[2072] p. 43.

[2073] pp. 518, 564.

[2074] p. 16.

[2075] pp. 73, 207, 220, 305, 624.

[2076] Montaiglon, Recueil de Poésies Françoises des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, t. VIII, pp. 171, 173.

[2077] pp. 43-4.

[2078] But a better example of his wit is shown in his repartee to another’s pun, quoted in Coulton, A Medieval Garner, p. 289. “A clerical buffoon once ventured to ask him across the table, ‘What is the difference, my lord, betwixt Rigaud and Ribaud [rascal]?’ ‘Only this board’s breadth,’ replied the Archbishop.” The jest is however widespread, mutatis mutandis, in the east as well as in the west. It is told of one John Scot, ‘What difference is there between sot and scot?’ ‘Just the breadth of the table.’ Calendar of Jests, Epigrams, Epitaphs etc. (Edinburgh 1753); it also occurs in Gladwin’s Persian Moonshee and in several Indian collections of facetiae. W. A. Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions (1887) I, p. 51.

[2079] p. 207.

[2080] p. 146.

[2081] p. 207.

[2082] p. 338.

[2083] p. 522.

[2084] p. 82.

[2085] p. 326.

[2086] p. 456.

[2087] p. 638.

[2088] See pp. 645-6, above.

[2089] Reg. p. 348.

[2090] p. 199.

[2091] p. 575. Cf. the case of the Priory of Couz, when it was visited in 1283 by Simon of Beaulieu, Archbishop of Bourges. Baluze, Miscellanea, I, 281.

[2092] pp. 43-4. Notice the disjointed character of the report and the repetition of charges, e.g. against Johanna of Alto Villari (who is probably the same as Johanna of Aululari) the cellaress and the Prioress. This probably indicates that it is a verbatim report of evidence taken down from the lips of the nuns, as they came before the Archbishop.

[2093] pp. 44-5.

[2094] p. 117.

[2095] p. 82.

[2096] p. 6.

[2097] p. 207.

[2098] p. 268.

[2099] p. 207.

[2100] A similar charge was made at the convent of St Saëns in 1264 where scandal imputed to Nicholaa, a notoriously immoral nun, “quod ipsa nondum erat mensis elapsus fecerat abortivum”; but the Archbishop apparently disbelieved the charge. p. 491. See p. , below.

[2101] p. 255.

[2102] p. 283.

[2103] p. 412.

[2104] p. 471.

[2105] p. 500.

[2106] It is noticeable how often in these visitations the nuns are reported to have been led astray by priests; but when one considers the character borne by many of the parochial and other clergy of the diocese, as it is recorded in the Register, this is hardly surprising.

[2107] pp. 550, 587.

[2108] p. 587.

[2109] p. 619.

[2110] p. 187.

[2111] p. 338.

[2112] See above, p. , note 6.

[2113] p. 491.

[2114] p. 522.

[2115] p. 566.

[2116] p. 598.

[2117] Or rather on loose sheets, which were not intended for official preservation and have survived only by accident.

[2118] I.e. abbot. These German Augustinians never used the term abbas, but used praepositus instead.

[2119] Des Augustinerpropstes Iohannes Busch Chronicon Windeshemense und Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum ... bearbeitet v. Dr Karl Grube (Hist. Com. der Provinz. Sachsen. Halle, 1886).

[2120] The nunneries dealt with by Busch are the following (A. = Austin, B. = Benedictine, C. = Cistercian, M.M. = penitentiary order of St Mary Magdalen, following the Cistercian rule): (1) Wennigsen (S. of Hanover, dioc. Minden, A.); (2) Mariensee (N. of Hanover, dioc. Minden, C.); (3) Barsinghausen (S. of Hanover, dioc. Minden, A.); (4) Marienwerder (N. of Hanover, dioc. Minden, A.); (5) St George, or Marienkammer (in Glaucha, a suburb of Halle, dioc. Magdeburg, C.); (6) Magdalenenkloster, Hildesheim (dioc. Hildesheim, M.M.); (7) Derneburg (W. of Hildesheim, dioc. Hildesheim, A.); (8) Escherde (S.W. of Hildesheim, B.); (9) Heiningen (in Hanover, between Wolfenbüttel and Goslar, dioc. Hildesheim, A.); (10) Stederburg (near Brunswick, dioc. Hildesheim, A.); (11) Frankenburg (in Goslar, dioc. Hildesheim, M.M.); (12) Kloster zum hl. Kreuze (Holy Cross) or Neuwerk, Erfurt (dioc. Mainz, A.); (13) St Cyriac’s in Erfurt (dioc. Mainz, B.); (14) Weissfrauenkloster (White Ladies) in Erfurt (dioc. Mainz, M.M.); (15) St Martin’s in Erfurt (dioc. Mainz, C.); (16) Marienberg (near Helmstedt, dioc. Halberstadt, A.); (17) Marienborn (near Helmstedt, dioc. Halberstadt, A.); (18) Weinhausen (near Lüneburg, dioc. Hildesheim, C.); (19) Weissfrauenkloster (White Ladies) in Magdeburg (dioc. Magdeburg, M.M.); (20) Wülfinghausen (near Wittenberg, dioc. Hildesheim, A.); (21) Fischbeck (near Rinteln on the Weser, in Hessen-Nassau, dioc. Minden, A.); (22) Dorstadt (near Wolfenbüttel, dioc. Hildesheim, A.); (23) Stendal (in the mark of Brandenburg, A.). Also (24) Bewerwijk in N. Holland (Franciscan tertiaries), and (25) Segeberchhus in Lübeck, both houses of lay sisters.

[2121] But see Liber, pp. 600, 637, 640.

[2122] Liber, p. 580.

[2123] Liber, p. 591.

[2124] Ib. p. 610. For interesting lists of money and goods put into common stock by Busch see also pp. 614, 616, 617, 633.

[2125] Ib. pp. 633-4.

[2126] Ib. p. 633.

[2127] Ib. pp. 571-2.

[2128] See ib. pp. 572, 591.

[2129] Liber, pp. 573-4. Compare the exertions of Berthold, Prior of Sülte, to provide the poor nuns of Heiningen with sufficient stores of food and to pay off their debts, ib. pp. 601-2; see also, p. 599.

[2130] Ib. p. 614.

[2131] Ib. p. 582.

[2132] Ib. p. 643.

[2133] Ib. p. 614.

[2134] Ib. p. 567.

[2135] Liber, pp. 582-3; compare pp. 603, 638.

[2136] Ib. p. 639.

[2137] Ib. p. 633.

[2138] Liber, p. 587.

[2139] Ib. p. 599.

[2140] Ib. p. 617. Compare Marienwerder, ib. pp. 567-8.

[2141] Ib. pp. 630-2.

[2142] Ib. p. 642.

[2143] Liber, p. 581.

[2144] Ib. pp. 615, 652-3. But the praepositus of Erfurt, when he saw the result of the reforms, was delighted and thanked Busch.

[2145] Liber, pp. 555-62.

[2146] Liber, pp. 562-5.

[2147] See ib. pp. 591-7.

[2148] Liber, pp. 575-6.

[2149] Ib. p. 589.

[2150] Liber, pp. 597-8.

[2151] Ib. pp. 580, 607, 612, 619, 628, 631, 635, 642, 649, 651.

[2152] Ib. pp. 618-22.

[2153] Liber, pp. 622-7.

[2154] Liber, pp. 624-5.

[2155] Ib. p. 625. For the learning of reformed nuns, see pp. 576, 607, 642.

[2156] See e.g. ib. pp. 585-6, 636, 640.

[2157] Ib. p. 596.

[2158] In course of publication, edited by Mr A. Hamilton Thompson. The printed portion is cited in the text as Linc. Visit. II, and the unprinted portion as Alnwick’s Visit. MS.

[2159] Bishop Lowth says: “This MS. belonged to Wykeham himself, for the injunctions are the original drafts corrected. It came afterwards into the hands of Robert Shirborn, Master of St Cross Hospital, afterwards Bishop of Chichester.” It contains a long series of documents relating to a controversy between the Bishop and the masters of St Cross Hospital and injunctions sent to the Cathedral Church of Winchester, the monasteries of Hyde, Merton, Romsey and Wherwell, and the Hospital of St Thomas the Martyr, Southwark, covering the years 1386 and 1387. It is of the highest interest and should certainly be published. My thanks are due to Dr Moyle, Bursar of New College, for permission to transcribe the injunctions sent to the two nunneries.

[2160] Foreign books mentioned only in ch. XIII are not included here.