Chapter 11

que, come il les demaunde par son Brief devant Sire H. le Scrop et ses compaignons une enpensione pur un de ses clerks par reson de la novele Creacion la dite Abbesse et tiel enpensione unqs devant ces temps ne fust demaunde ne donee de la dite meson, fors tant soulement que la dereyn predecessere dona a la requeste nostre Seigneur le Roy a la Dameysele la Countesse de Hereford, un enpension de c s. Par qi eles prient que nostre Seigneur le Roy voet, si lui plest, comander de soursere de execucion faire de la dite demaunde, que la dite Abbay est foundee de Judit, jadis Countess de Huntingdon, et la dite enpension unques autrement done[623].

The reference to the Countess of Hereford’s “dameysele” shows that the pension was not invariably given to a clerk, and it appears that the King tried to substitute corrodies, pensions and reception as a nun for each other according to the exigencies of the moment. In 1318 he sent Simon de Tyrelton to the Abbess and Convent of Barking,

they being bound to grant a pension to one of the King’s clerks, by reason of the new creation of an abbess, and the King having requested them to grant in lieu of such pension the allowance of one of their nuns to Ellen, daughter of Alice de Leygrave, to be received by her for life, to which they replied that they could not do so, for certain reasons[624].

In 1313, in pursuance of his right to nominate a nun on the new creation of an abbess, he had sent Juliana de Leygrave “niece of the King’s foster-mother, who suckled him in his youth,” to St Mary’s, Winchester, in order that she might be given a nun’s corrody for life (the value of which was to be given her wherever she might be) and a suitable chamber within the nunnery for her residence, whenever she might wish to stay there[625].

The obligation to provide corrodies for royal nominees pressed more heavily than the duty of pensioning royal clerks. A corrody was originally a livery of food and drink given to monks and nuns, but the term was extended to denote a daily livery of food given to some person not of the community and frequently accompanied by suitable clothing and a room in which to live. Hence corrodians were often completely kept in board and lodging, having the right to everything that a nun of the house would have (a “nun’s corrody”) and sometimes allowed to keep a private servant, who had the right to the same provision as the regular domestics of the house (a “servant’s corrody”). The King, indeed, looked upon the monastic houses of his realm as a sort of vast Chelsea Hospital, in which his broken-down servants, yeomen and officials and men-at-arms, might end their days. Thus he obtained their grateful prayers without putting his hand into his purse. There must have been hundreds of such old pensioners scattered up and down the country, and judging from the number of cases in which one man is sent to receive the maintenance lately given to another, deceased, some houses had at least one of them permanently on the premises. Many a hoary veteran found his way into the quiet precincts of a nunnery:

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees;And, lovers’ sonnets turn’d to holy psalms,A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms.

In the intervals between feeding on prayers he must have been vastly disturbing and enthralling to the minds of round-eyed novices, with his tales of court and camp, of life in London town or long campaigns in France, or of how John Copeland had the King of Scots prisoner and what profit he got thereby.

In the last three months of 1316 Edward II sent seventeen old servants to various religious houses, and among them Henry de Oldyngton of the avenary was sent to Barking, to receive such maintenance as William de Chygwell, deceased, had in that house[626]. In 1328 Roger atte Bedde, the King’s yeoman, who served the King and his father, was sent to St Mary’s, Winchester,instead of James le Porter, deceased[627]; and in 1329 the Abbess and Convent of Shaftesbury were requested to admit to their house Richard Knight, spigurnel of the King’s chancery, who had long served the King and his father in that office, and to administer to him for his life such maintenance in all things as Robert le Poleter, deceased, had in their house[628]. The unlucky convent of Wilton apparently had to support two pensioners, for in 1328 Roger Liseway was sent there in place of Roger Danne and the next year John de Odiham, yeoman of the chamber of Queen Philippa, took the place of John de Asshe[629].

It was doubtless even more common for the widows of the King’s dependents to be sent to nunneries, and he must often have received such a petition as was addressed by Agnes de Vylers to Edward III:

A nostre Seigneur le Roi et a son Conseil, prie vostre poure veve Agneys, qi fut la femme Fraunceys de Vylers, jaditz Bachiler vostre piere, qe vous pleise de vostre grace avoir regard du graunt service qe le dit Fraunceys ad fait a vostre dit piere et ed vostre ayel, en la Terre Seinte, Gascoigne, Gales, Escoce, Flaundres et en Engleterre, et graunter au dit Agneys une garisoun en l’Abbeye de Berkyng, c’est assaver une mesoun & la droite de une Noneyme pour la sustinaunce de lui et de sa file a terme de lour vie, en allegaunce de l’alme vostre dit piere, qi promist al dit Fraunceys eide pour lui, sa femme et ses enfaunz.

“Il semble a conseil q’il est almoigne de lui mander ou aillours, s’il plest a Roi,” was the reply; so Agnes and her daughter might end their days in peace, and Barking be the poorer for their appetites[630]. At Barking the King had the right to claim a corrody at each new election of an abbess, as Agnes de Vylers doubtless knew; as early as 1253 its Abbess was exempted from being charged withconversiand others, because she had granted food and vesture for life to Philippa de Rading and her daughter[631]. Other nunneries in the royal patronage were under a similar obligation. In 1310 Juliana la Despenser was sent to Romsey, to be provided with fitting maintenance for herself and for her maid during her lifetime[632]and in 1319 Mary Ridel was sent toStainfield to be maintained for life[633]. There were the usual attempts to escape from a costly and burdensome obligation; Romsey seems to have been successful in repelling Juliana la Despenser, for in the following month the King sent her to Shaftesbury, requesting the nuns to “find her for life the necessities of life according to the requirements of her estate, for herself and for the damsel serving her, and to assign her a chamber to dwell in, making letters patent of the grant”[634]. Stainfield was less successful in the matter of Mary Ridel; the usual plea of poverty was considered insufficient and the convent was ordered to receive her, to supply her with food, clothing and other necessities and to make letters patent, specifying what was due to her[635].

Certain convents were in addition handicapped by the obligation to make certain grants or liveries, in kind or in money, to other monastic houses. The nunneries of St Clement’s, York, and Moxby seem to have involved themselves—as a condition, perhaps, of some past benefaction—in a curious obligation to the friars of their districts. At a visitation of the former house in 1317, Archbishop Melton found that the Friars Minor of York, every alternate week of the year, and the Friars Preachers of York in the same manner, had for a long time been receiving fourteen conventual loaves; the nuns were ordered to show the friars the Archbishop’s order and to cease from supplying the loaves as long as their own house was burdened with debt; and in no case was the grant to be made without special leave from the Archbishop[636]. The next year, on visiting Moxby, Melton was obliged to make an injunction as to the bread and ale called “levedemete,” which the Friars Minor were accustomed to receive from the house; if it were owed to them it was to be given as due, if not it was not to be given without the will of the head[637]. At Alnwick’s first visitation in 1440 the Prioress of St Michael’s, Stamford, declared that the house was burdened with the payment of an annual pension of 60s.to the monastery of St Mary’s, York, “and that for tithes not worth more than forty pence annually; also it is in arrears for twenty years andmore”[638]. The nuns also had to pay various small sums to Peterborough Abbey, by which they had been founded and to which they always remained subordinated[639].

The support of resident corrodians and the payment of pensions and liveries were, however, less onerous than the duty of providing hospitality for visitors, which the nunneries performed as one of their religious obligations.DateandDabiturdid not always accompany each other. The great folk who held the Pope’s indult to enter the houses of Minoresses were probably generous donors; but the unenclosed orders had to lodge and feed less wealthy guests and often enough they found the obligation a strain upon their finances. When the nuns of King’s Mead, Derby, in 1326, petitioned the King to take the house into his special protection, they explained that great numbers of people came there to be entertained, but that owing to the reduction in their revenue they were unable to exercise their wonted hospitality[640]; and the number of guests was mentioned by the nuns of Heynings in 1401 as one reason for their impoverishment[641]. At Nunappleton in 1315 the Archbishop of York had to forbid two sets of guests to be received at the same time, until the house should be relieved of debt; and at Moxby (which was also in debt) he ordained that relatives of the nuns were not to visit the house for a longer period than two days; Nunappleton was evidently a favourite resort, for in 1346 another archbishop speaks of guests flocking—hospites confluentes—to the priory and orders them to be admitted to a hostelry constructed for thepurpose. At Marrick in 1252 it was ordered that guests were not to stay for more than one night, because the means of the house barely sufficed for the maintenance of the nuns, sisters and brethren[642].

Another charge which fell heavily upon the nunneries, sometimes not entirely by their own fault, was that of litigation. This was only an occasional expense, but when it occurred it was heavy, and a suit once begun might drag on for years. Moreover the incidental expenses in journeys and bribes, which all had to be paid out of the current income of a house already (perhaps) charged with the payment of tithes and taxes and badly in need of repair, were often almost as heavy as the costs of the litigation. For instance an account of Christian Bassett, Prioress of St Mary de Pré (near St Albans), contains the following list of expenses incurred by her in the prosecution of a law suit in 1487, during the rule of her predecessor Alice Wafer:

Item when I ryde to London for the suyt that was taken ayenst dame Alice Wafer in the commen place, for myself and my preest and a woman and ij men, their hyre and hors hyre and mete and drynke, in the terme of Ester ye secunde yere of the regne of kyng Henry the vijthxx. s. Item paid aboute the same suyt at Mydsomer tyme, for iiij men, a woman and iiij horses xvi s. Item paid for the costs of a man to London at Mighelmas terme to Master Lathell, to have knowledge whethir I shuld have nede to come to London or not xij d[643]. Item for the same suyt of Dame Alice Wafer for herself and a suster wt. her, ij men, ij horses, in costs at the same time xiiij s. Item for the same suyt when I cam from London to have councell of Master More and men of lawe for the same ple x s. Item whan I went to Master Fforster to the Welde to speke wt. him, to have councell for the wele of the place, for a kercher geven to hym, ij s. Item on other tyme for a couple of capons geven to Master Fforster ij s. Item for a man rydyng to London at Candilmas to speke wt. Master Lathell andMaster More and for iiij hennys geven to them and for the costs of the same man and his hors iij s. iiij d. Item whan I went to London to speke wt. Master Lathell for to renewe our charter of the place and other maters of our place xj s. Item in expenses made upon Master Ffortescue atte dyvers tymes, whan I wente to hym to have his councell for the same suyt in the common place xiij s. iiij d. Item paid to a man to ryde to Hertford to speke wt. Norys, that he shuld speke to Master Ffortescue for the same ple viij d. Item in costs for a man to go to Barkhamsted to Thomas Cace viij d. Item whan I went to Master Ffortescue to his place, for mens hire and hors hire for the same mater ij s. Item whan I went to London at an other tyme for the same plee, for iiij men and iiij hors hire xvj s.[644]

After this one does not wonder that in 1517 the convent of Goring pleaded that owing to lawsuits it was too poor to repair its buildings[645].

The account rolls of the Priory of St Michael’s, Stamford, are full of references to expenses incurred in legal business. On one occasion the nuns bought a “bill” in the Marshalsea “to have a day of accord” and the roll for 1375-6 contains items such as,

Paid for a purse to the wife of the Seneschal of the Marshalsea xx d. Paid for beer bought for the Marshalsea by the Prioress ij s. ij d. Paid for capons and chickens for the seneschal of the Marshalsea xxiij d. ob.[646]

Poor Dames Margaret Redynges and Joan Ffychmere “del office del tresorie,” ending the year £16. 8s.8½d.in debt, must often have sighed with Langland

Lawe is so lordeliche. and loth to make ende,Withoute presentz or pens. she pleseth wel fewe.

Nor was it only the expenses of great lawsuits which bore heavily upon the nunneries; a great deal of lesser legal business had to be transacted from year to year. The treasuresses’ accounts of St Michael’s, Stamford, contain many notices of such business; the expenses of Raulyn at the sessions, expenses of the clerks at the Bishop’s court or at the last session at Stamford, a suitagainst a neighbouring parson over tithes, four shillings to Henry Oundyl for suing out writs; and innumerable entries concerning the inevitable “presentz or pens,” a douceur to the Bishop’s clerk, a courtesy to the king’s escheator, a present to the clerks at the sessions, a gift “to divers men of law for their help on divers occasions.” All nunneries had constantly to meet such petty expenses as these; and if we add an occasional suit on a larger scale the total amount of money devoured by the Law is considerable.

So far mention has been made only of such reasons for their poverty as cannot be considered the fault of the nuns. The inclemency of nature, the rapacity of lay and ecclesiastical authorities and the law’s delays could not be escaped, however wisely a Prioress husbanded her resources. Nevertheless it cannot be doubted that the nuns themselves, by bad management, contributed largely to their own misfortunes. Bad administration, sometimes wilful, but far more often due to sheer incompetence, was constantly given as a reason for undue poverty. It was “negligence and bad administration” which nearly caused the dispersion of the nuns of Wintney during the famine year of 1316[647]; and those of Hampole in 1353[648]. At Davington in 1511 one of the nuns deposed that “the rents and revenues of the house decrease owing to the guilt of the officers”[649]. The fault was often with the head of the house, who loved to keep in her own hands the disposal of the convent’s income, omitted to consult the chapter in her negotiations, retained the common seal and did not render accounts. An illustration of the straits to which a house might be reduced by the bad management of its superior is provided by the history of Malling Abbey in the early part of the fourteenth century, as told by William de Dene in hisHistoria Roffensis. In 1321 an abbess had been deposed, ostensibly on the complaint of her nuns and because the place had been ruined by her; but too much importance must not be assigned to the charge, for she was a sister of Bartholomew de Badlesmere, at that time a leader of the baronial party againstEdward II, and it was by the King’s command that Hamo of Hythe, Bishop of Rochester, visited Malling and deprived her[650]; her deposition was probably a political move. The same cannot however be said of Lora de Retlyng, who became abbess in 1324.

“The Bishop,” says William de Dene, “although unwilling, knowing her to be insufficient and ignorant, set Lora de Retlyng in command as abbess, a woman who lacked all the capacity and wisdom of a leader and ruler, the nuns enthusiastically applauding; and the next day he blessed her, which benediction was rather a malediction for the convent. Then the Bishop forbade the Abbess to give a corrody to her maid-servant, as it had been the ill custom to do, and he sequestrated the common seal, forbidding it to be used, save when his licence had been asked and obtained”[651].

Twenty-five years passed and in 1349 the chronicler writes:

The Bishop of Rochester visited the abbeys of Lesnes and Malling, and he found them so ruined by longstanding mismanagement, that it is thought they never can recover so long as this world lasts, even to the day of judgment[652].

Malling had suffered severely from the Black Death in the previous year, but our knowledge of the character of Lora de Retlyng and the plain statement of William de Dene (“destructa per malam diutinam custodiam”), make it clear that bad management and not the pestilence was to blame for its poverty[653].

Financial mismanagement was, indeed, the most frequent of all charges brought against superiors at the episcopal visitations. When Alnwick visited his diocese of Lincoln several cases of such incompetence came to light. At St Michael’s, Stamford (1440), it was found that the Prioress had never rendered an account during the whole of her term of office, and one of the nuns declared that she did not rule and supervise temporal affairs to the benefit of the house; two years later the Bishop visited the convent again and the Prioress herself pleaded bodily weakness, adding

that since she was impotent to rule the temporalities, nor had they any industrious man to supervise these and to raise and receive the produce of the house, and since the rents of the house remained unpaid in the hands of the tenants, she begged that two nuns might be deputed to rule the temporalities, and to be responsible for receipts and payments.

In 1445, however, one of the appointed treasuresses, Alice de Wyteryng, admitted that she neither wrote down nor accounted for anything concerning her administration, and another nun complained that, if Wyteryng were to die, it would be impossible for any of them to say in what state their finances stood[654]. At the poor and heavily indebted house of Legbourne (1440) the Prioress, unknown to the Bishop, but with the consent of the Convent, had sold a corrody to the bailiff of the house, Robert Warde, who was nevertheless not considered useful to the house in this post; the tenements and leasehold houses belonging to the house were ruinous and like to fall through the carelessness of the Prioress and bailiff, and one aggrieved nun stated that “the prioress is not circumspect in ruling the temporalities and cares not whether they prosper, but applies all the common goods of the house to her own uses, as though they were her own[655].” At Godstow also it was complained that the steward had an annual fee of ten marks from the house and was useless[656]. At Heynings (1440) the Prioress was charged with never rendering accounts and with cutting down timber unnecessarily, but she denied the last charge and said she had done so only for necessary reasons and with the express consent of the convent[657]. At Nuncoton corrodies had been sold and bondmen alienated without the knowledge of the nuns[658]. At Harrold it was found that no accounts were rendered, that a corrody had been sold for twenty marks, and that when the Prioress bought anything for the convent, no tallies or indentures were made between the contracting parties, so that after a time the sellers came and demanded double the price agreed upon; one nun also asked that the Bishop should prevent the selling or alienation of woods[659]. At Langley (which was miserably poor) there was a similar complaint of the sale of timber[660]. These are the less serious cases of financial mismanagement; the cases of Gracedieu, Ankerwyke and Catesby have already been considered. Sometimes the extravagance or incompetence of a Prioress became so notorious as to necessitate her suspension or removal; as at Basedale in 1307[661], Rosedale in 1310[662], Hampole in 1353[663], Easebourne in1441[664]and St Mary de Pré at the end of the fifteenth century[665]. But more frequently the bishops endeavoured to hem in expenditure by elaborate safeguards, which will be described below.

Besides cases of incompetence and cases of misappropriation of revenues by an unscrupulous prioress, the mismanagement of the nuns may usually be traced to a desperate desire to obtain ready money. One means by which they sought to augment their income was by the sale of corrodies in return for a lump sum[666]. A man (or woman) would pay down a certain sum of money, and in return the convent would engage to keep him in board and lodging for the rest of his natural life; at Arden for instance, in 1524, Alice widow of William Berre paid twelvepounds and was granted “mett and drynke as their convent hath” at their common table, or when sick in her own room, and “on honest chamber with sufficient fyer att all tyme, with sufficient apperell as shalbe nedful”[667]. Obviously, however, such an arrangement could only be profitable to the nuns, if the grantee died before the original sum had been expended in boarding her. The convent, in fact, acted as a kind of insurance agency and the whole arrangement was simply a gamble in the life of the corrodian. The temptation to extricate themselves from present difficulties by means of such gambles, was one which the nuns could never resist. They would lightly make their grant of board and lodging for life and take the badly needed money; but it would be swallowed up only too soon by their creditors and often vanish like fairy gold in a year. Not so the corrodian. Long-lived as Methusaleh and lusty of appetite, she appeared year after year at their common table, year after year consumed their food, wore their apparel, warmed herself with their firewood. Alice Berre was still hale and hearty after twelve years, when the commissioners came to Arden and would doubtless have lasted for several more to come, if his Majesty’s quarrel with Rome had not swept her and her harassed hostesses alike out of their ancient home; but she must long before have eaten through her original twelve pounds[668]. There is an amusing complaint in the Register of Crabhouse; early in the fourteenth century Aleyn Brid and his wife persuaded the nuns to buy their lands for a sum down and a corrody for their joint and separate lands. But the lands turned out barren and the corrodians went on living and doubtless chuckling over their bargain, and “si cher terre de cy petit value unkes ne fut achate,” wrote the exasperated chronicler of the house[669]. Bishop Alnwick found two striking instances of a bad gamble during his visitations in 1440-1; at Langley the late Prioress had sold a corrody to a certain John Fraunceys and his wife for the paltry sum of twenty marks, and they had already held it for six years[670]; worse still, at Nuncoton there were two corrodians, each of whom had originally paidtwenty marks, and they had been there for twelve and for twenty years respectively[671].

In the face of cases like these it is difficult not to suspect that unscrupulous persons took advantage of the temporary difficulties of the nuns and of their lack of business acumen. There is comedy, though not for the unhappy Convent, in the history of a corrody which, in 1526, was said to have been granted by Thetford to “a certain Foster.” Six years later there was a great to-do at the visitation. The nuns declared that John Bixley of Thetford, “bocher,” had sold his corrody in the house to Thomas Foster, gentleman, who was nourishing a large household on that pretext, to wit six persons, himself, his wife, three children and a maid; but Bixley said that he had never sold his corrody and there in public displayed his indenture. What happened we do not know; Thomas Foster, gentleman, must be the same man who had a corrody in 1526, and how John Bixley came into it is not clear. It looks as though the Convent (which was so poor that the Bishop had dissolved his visitation there some years previously) was trying by fair means or foul to get rid of Thomas Foster and his family; doubtless they had not bargained for a wife, three children and a maid when they rashly granted him one poor corrody[672]. It is easy to understand why medieval bishops, at nearly every visitation, forbade the granting of fees, corrodies or pensions for life or without episcopal consent; “forasmoche as the graunting of corrodyes and lyveryes hath bene chargious, bardynouse and greuouse unto your monastery” wrote Longland to Studley in 1531:

As itt apperithe by the graunte made to Agnes Mosse, Janet bynbrok, Elizabeth todde and other whiche has right soore hyndrede your place, In consideracon therof I charge you lady priores upon payne of contempte and of the lawe, that ye give noo moo like graunts, and that ye joutt away Elizabeth Todde her seruant ... and thatElizabeth Todde haue noo kowe going nor other bestes within eny of your grounds[673];

and Dean Kentwood, visiting St Helen’s Bishopsgate in 1432 found that “diverce fees perpetuelle, corrodies and lyuers have been grauntyd befor this tyme to diverce officers of your house and other persones, which have hurt the house and be cause of delapidacyone of the godys of youre seyde house”[674]. Even the nuns themselves sometimes realised that the sale of corrodies had brought them no good; they often complained at visitations that the Prioress had made such grants without consulting them; and the convent of Heynings gave “the multiplication of divers men who have acquired corrodies in their house,” as one reason for their extreme poverty, when they petitioned for the appropriation of the church of Womersley[675].

The nuns were wont to have recourse to other equally improvident expedients for obtaining money without regard to future embarrassment. They farmed their churches and alienated their lands and granges or let them out on long leases. These practices were constantly forbidden in episcopal injunctions[676]; at the visitation of Easebourne in 1524 the Prioress, Dame Margaret Sackfelde, being questioned as to what grants they had made under their convent seal, said that they had made four, to wit, one to William Salter to farm the rectory there, another of the proceeds of the chapel of Farnhurst, another of the proceeds of the chapel of Midhurst and another to William Toty for his corrody; this was corroborated by the subprioress, who also mentioned a grant of the proceeds of the church of Easebourne to a rather disreputable person called Ralph Pratt; and this is only a typical case[677]. The nunnery of Wix was reduced to such penury in 1283 on account of various alienations that Pope Martin IV granted the nuns a bull declaring all such grants void:

It has come to our ears that our beloved daughters in Christ, the Prioress and convent of the monastery of Wix (who are under therule of a prioress), of the order of St Benedict, in the diocese of London, as well as their predecessors, have conceded tithes, rents, lands, houses, vineyards, meadows, pastures, woods, mills, rights, jurisdictions and certain other goods belonging to the said monastery to several clerks and laymen, to some of them for life, to some for no short time, to others in perpetuity at farm or under an annual payment, and have to this effect given letters, taken oaths, made renunciations, and drawn up public instruments, to the grave harm of the said monastery; and some of the grantees are said to have sought confirmatory letters in common form, concerning these grants, from the apostolic see[678].

This comprehensive catalogue gives some indication of the losses which a house would suffer from reckless grants. The sale of timber and the alienation or pawning of plate were other expedients to which the nuns constantly resorted and which were as constantly prohibited by the bishops[679]. The Prioress of Nunmonkton in 1397, “alienated timber in large quantities to the value of a hundred marks”[680]; the cutting down of woods was charged against the Prioresses of Heynings, Harrold, Langley, Gracedieu, Catesby and Ankerwyke at Alnwick’s visitations; at Langley it was moreover found that the woods were not properly fenced in after the trees were felled and so the tree-stumps were damaged[681]; the necessity for raising the money was sometimes specifically pleaded, as at Markyate, where a small wood had been sold “to satisfy the creditors of the house”[682]. These sales of timber were a favourite means of obtaining ready money; but too often the loss to the house by the destruction of its woods far outweighed the temporary gain and the Abbeys of St Mary’s Winchester and Romsey made special mention of this cause of impoverishment in the middle of the fourteenth century[683]. The alienation or pawning of plate andjocaliawas often resorted to in an extremity. At Gracedieu in 1441 the jewels of the house had been pawned without the knowledge of the convent, so that the nuns (as one of them complained) had not one bowl from which to drink[684]; the next year it was asserted thatthe Prioress of Catesby “pawned the jewels of the house for ten years, to wit one cup for the sacrament, which still remained in pawn, and also other pieces of silver”[685]. When Bishop Longland visited Nuncoton in 1531 he found that the Prioress had in times past sold various goods belonging to her house, “viz. a bolle ungilte playn with a couer, oon nutt gilte with a couer, ij bolles white without couers, oon Agnus of gold, oon bocle of gold, oon chalice, oon maser and many other things”[686]; and in 1436 it was ordered that the chalices, jewels and ornaments of St Mary’s Neasham, which were then in the hands of sundry creditors, were to be redeemed[687]. In the case of Sinningthwaite in 1534 the convent was in such a reduced state that Archbishop Lee was actually obliged to give the nuns licence to pledge jewels to the value of £15[688]. The charge of pawning or selling jewels for their own purposes was often made against prioresses whose conduct in other ways was bad; for instance against Eleanor of Arden in 1396[689], Juliana of Bromhale in 1404[690], Agnes Tawke of Easebourne in 1478[691]and Katherine Wells of Littlemore in 1517[692].

To financial incompetence and to the employment of improvident methods of raising money, the nuns occasionally added extravagance. The bishops forbade them to wear gay clothes for reasons unconnected with finance; nevertheless their silks and furs must have cost money which could ill be spared, and it is amusing to notice that even at Studley, Rothwell and Langley, which were among the smallest and poorest houses in the diocese of Lincoln and in debt, the nuns had to confess to silken veils. The maintenance of a greater number of servants than the revenues of the house could support was another not uncommon form of extravagance[693]. Instances of luxurious living on the part of the heads of various houses have been given elsewhere[694]; it need only be remarked that a self-indulgent prioress might cripple the resources of a house for many years to come, whether by spending its revenues too lavishly, or by raising money by the alienation of its goods.

One other cause of the poverty of nunneries must be noticed, before turning to the attempts of bishops and other visitors to find a remedy. Overcrowding was, throughout the earlier period under consideration, a common cause of financial distress; and the admission of a greater number of nuns than the revenues of the convent were able to support was constantly forbidden in episcopal injunctions. Certainly this was not invariably the fault of the nuns. They suffered (as we have seen) from the formal right of bishop or of patron to place a nun in their house on special occasions, and they suffered still more from the constant pressure to which they were subjected by private persons, anxious to obtain comfortable provision for daughters and nieces. It was sometimes impossible and always difficult to resist the importunity of influential gentlemen in the neighbourhood, whose ill-will might be a serious thing, whether it showed itself in open violence or in closed purses. The authorities of the church had sometimes to step in and rescue houses which had thus been persuaded to burden themselves beyond their means. In 1273 Gregory X issued a bull to the Priory of Carrow, with the intention of putting a stop to the practice.

Your petition having been expounded to us, containing a complaint that you have, at the instant requests of certain lords of England, whom you are unable to resist on account of their power, received so many nuns already into your monastery, that you may scarce be fitly sustained by its rents, we therefore, by the authority of these present letters, forbid you henceforth to receive any nun or sister to the burden of your house[695].

Some nine years later Archbishop Wickwane wrote in the same strain to the nuns of Nunkeeling and Wilberfoss:

Because we have learned from public rumour that your monastery is sometimes burdened by the reception of nuns and by the visits of secular women and girls, at the instance of great persons, to whom you foolishly and unlawfully grant easy permission, we order you ... henceforward, to receive no one as nun or sister of your house, or to lodge for a time in your monastery, without our special licence[696].

Bishop Stratford, in his visitation of Romsey in 1311, forbade additions to the nuns, the proper number having been exceeded, and again in 1327 he wrote:

It is notorious that your house is burdened with ladies beyond the established number which used to be kept; and I have heard that you are being pressed to receive more young ladies (damoyseles) as nuns, wherefore I order you strictly that no young lady received by you be veiled, nor any other received, until the Bishop’s visitation, or until they have special orders from him[697].

The situation at the great Abbey of Shaftesbury was the same. As early as 1218 the Pope had forbidden the community to admit nuns beyond the number of a hundred because they were unable to support more or to give alms to the poor; in 1322 Bishop Mortival wrote remonstrating with them for their neglect of the Pope’s order and repeating the prohibition to admit more nuns until the state of the Abbey was relieved, on the ground that the inmates of the house were far too many for its goods to support; and in 1326 (in response to a petition from the Abbess asking him to fix the statutory number) the Bishop issued an order stating that the house was capable of maintaining a hundred and twenty nuns and no more and that no novices were to be received until the community was reduced to that number[698].

Episcopal prohibitions to receive new inmates without special licence were very common, especially in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Bishops realised that overcrowding only increased the growing poverty of the nunneries. In the poor diocese of York, between 1250 and 1320, the nuns were over and over again forbidden to receive nuns, lay sisters or lay brothers without the licence of the Archbishop. Injunctions to this effect were issued to Marrick (1252), Swine (1268), Wilberfoss (1282), Nunappleton (1282, 1290, 1346), Hampole (1267, 1308, 1312), Arden (1306), Thicket (1309, 1314), Nunkeeling (1282, 1314), Nunburnholme (1318), Esholt (1318), Arthington(1318) and Sinningthwaite (1319)[699]. At Swine, after the visitation by Archbishop Walter Giffard in 1267-8, it was noted among thecomperta

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