Chapter 2

This social amalgamation between the country gentry and the “new gentlemen,” who had made their money in trade, was naturally reflected in the nunneries. The wills of London burgesses, which were enrolled in the Court of Husting, show that the daughters of these well-to-do citizens were in the habit of taking the veil. There is even more than one trace of the aristocratic view of religion as the sole alternative to marriage. Langland, enumerating the good deeds which will win pardon forthe merchant, bids him “marie maydens or maken hem nonnes”[26]. At Ludlow the gild of Palmers provided that:

If any good girl of the gild of marriageable age, cannot have the means found by her father, either to go into a religious house or to marry, whichever she wishes to do, friendly and right help shall be given her out of our common chest, towards enabling her to do whichever of the two she wishes[27].

Similarly at Berwick-on-Tweed the gild “ordained by the pleasure of the burgesses” had a provision entitled, “Of the bringing up of daughters of the gild,” which ran: “If any brother die leaving a daughter true and worthy and of good repute, but undowered, the gild shall find her a dower, either on marriage or on going into a religious house”[28]. So also John Syward, “stockfisshmongere” of London, whose will was proved at the Court of Husting in 1349, left, “To Dionisia his daughter forty pounds for her advancement, so that she either marry therewith or become a religious at her election, within one year after his decease”[29]; and William Wyght, of the same trade, bequeathed “to each of his daughters Agnes, Margaret, Beatrix and Alice fifty pounds sterling for their marriage or for entering a religious house” (1393)[30]; while William Marowe in 1504 bequeathed to “Elizabeth and Katherine his daughters forty pounds each, to be paid at their marriage or profession”[31]. Sometimes, however, the sound burgess sense prevailed, as when Walter Constantyn endowed his wife with “the residue of his goods, so that she assist Amicia, his niece, ... towards her marriage or to some trade befitting her position”[32].

The mixture of classes must have been more frequent in convents which were situate in or near a large town, while the country gentry had those lying in rural districts more or lessto themselves. The nunnery of Carrow, for instance, was a favourite resort for girls of noble and of gentle birth, but it was also recruited from the daughters of prosperous Norwich citizens; among nuns with well-known county names there were also ladies such as Isabel Barbour, daughter of Thomas Welan, barber, and Joan his wife, Margery Folcard, daughter of John Folcard, alderman of Norwich, and Catherine Segryme, daughter of Ralph Segryme, another alderman; the latter attained the position of prioress at the end of the fifteenth century[33]. These citizens, wealthy and powerful men in days when Norwich was one of the most important towns in England, probably met on equal terms with the country gentlemen of Norfolk, and both sent their daughters with handsome dowries to Carrow. The nunneries of London and of the surrounding district contained a similar mixture of classes, ranging from some of the noblest ladies in the land to the daughters of city magnates, men enriched by honourable trade or by the less honourable capitalistic ventures of the king’s merchants. The famous house of Minoresses without Aldgate illustrates the situation very clearly. It was always a special favourite of royalty; and the storm bird, Isabella, mother of Edward III, is by some supposed to have died in the order. She was certainly its constant benefactress[34]as were Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester and his wife, whose daughter Isabel was placed in the nunnery while only a child and eventually became its abbess[35]. Katherine, widow of John de Ingham, and Eleanor Lady Scrope were other aristocratic women who took the veil at the Minories[36]. But this noble connection did not prevent the house from containing Alice, sister of Richard Hale, fishmonger[37], Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Padyngton, fishmonger[38], Marion, daughter of John Charteseye, baker[39], and Frideswida, daughter of John Reynewell, alderman of the City of London[40], girls drawn from theéliteof the burgess class. An investigation of the wills enrolled in the Court of Husting shows the relative popularityof different convents among the citizens of London. Between the years 1258 and the Dissolution, 52 wills contain references to one or more nuns related to the testators[41]. From these it appears that the most popular house was Clerkenwell in Middlesex, which is mentioned in nine wills[42]. Barking in Essex comes next with eight references[43], and St Helen’s Bishopsgate with seven[44]; the house of Minoresses without Aldgate is five times mentioned[45], Haliwell[46]in London and Stratford-atte-Bowe[47]outside, having five and four references respectively, Kilburn in Middlesex three[48], Sopwell in Hertfordshire two[49], Malling[50]and Sheppey[51]in Kent two each. Other convents are mentioned once only and in some cases a testator leaves legacies to nuns by name, without mentioning where they are professed. All these houses were in the diocese of London and either in or near the capital itself; they lay in the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Essex, Hertford and Bedford[52]. It was but rarely that city girls went as far afield as Denny in Cambridgeshire, where the famous fishmonger and mayor of London, John Philpott, had a daughter Thomasina.

Thus the nobles, the gentry and the superior rank of burgess—the upper and the upper-middle classes—sent their daughters to nunneries. But nuns were drawn from no lower class; poor girls of the lowest rank—whether the daughters of artisans or of country labourers—seem never to have taken the veil. A certain degree of education was demanded in a nun before her admission and the poor man’s daughter would have neither the money, theopportunity, nor the leisure to acquire it. The manorial fine paid by a villein when he wished to put his son to school and make a religious of him, had no counterpart in the case of girls[53]; the taking of the veil by a villein’s daughter was apparently not contemplated. The chief barrier which shut out the poor from the nunneries was doubtless the dower which, in spite of the strict prohibition of the rule, was certainly required from a novice in almost every convent. The lay sisters of those nunneries which had lay sisters attached were probably drawn mainly from the lower class[54], but it must have been in the highest degree exceptional for a poor or low-born girl to become a nun.

Medieval wills (our most trusty source of information for thepersonnelof the nunneries) make it possible to gauge the extent to which the upper and middle classes used the nunneries as receptacles for superfluous daughters. In these wills, in which the medieval paterfamilias laboriously catalogues his offspring and divides his wealth between them, it is easy to guess at the embarrassments of a father too well-blessed with female progeny. What was poor Simon the Chamberlain of the diocese of Worcester to do, with six strapping girls upon his hands and sons Robert and Henry to provide for too? Fortunately he had a generous patron in Sir Nicholas de Mitton and it was perhaps Sir Nicholas who provided the dowers, when two of them were packed off to Nuneaton; let us hope that Christiana, Cecilia, Matilda and Joan married themselves out of the legacies which he left them in his will, when he died in 1290[55]. William de Percehay, lord of Ryton, who made his will in 1344, had to provide for five sons and one is therefore not surprised to find that two of his three daughters were nuns[56]. It is the same withthe rich citizens of London and elsewhere; Sir Richard de la Pole, of a great Hull merchant house (soon to be ennobled), mentions in his will two sons and two daughters, one of whom was a nun at Barking while the other received a legacy towards her marriage[57]; Hugh de Waltham, town clerk, mentions three daughters, one at St Helen’s[58]; John de Croydon, fishmonger, leaves bequests to one son and four daughters, one at Clerkenwell[59]; William de Chayham kept Lucy, Agnes and Johanna with him, but made Juliana a nun[60]. The will of Joan Lady Clinton illustrates the proportion in which a large family of girls might be divided between the convent and the world; in 1457 she left certain sums of money to Margaret, Isabel and Cecily Francyes, on condition that they should pay four pounds annually to their sisters Joan and Elizabeth, nuns[61]. It was not infrequent for several members of a family to enter the same convent, as the lists of inmates given in visitation records, or in the reports of Henry VIII’s commissioners, as well as the evidence of the wills, bear witness[62]. The case of Shouldham, already quoted, shows that different generations of a family might be represented at the same time in a convent[63], but it was perhaps not usual for so many sisters to become nuns as in the Fairfax family; in 1393 their brother’s will introduces us to Mary and Alice, nuns of Sempringham, and Margaret and Eleanor, respectively prioress and nun of Nunmonkton[64]. Margaret (of whom more anon) took convent life easily; it is to be feared that she had all too little vocation for it. Sometimes these family parties in a nunnery led to quarrels; the sisters foregathered in cliques, or else they continued in the cloister the domestic arguments of the hearth; there was an amusing case of the kind at Swine in 1268[65], and some years later (in 1318) an Archbishop of York had to forbidthe admission of more than two or three nuns of one family to Nunappleton, without special licence, for fear of discord[66].

Probably the real factor in determining the social class from which the convents were recruited, was not one of rank, but one of money. The practice of demanding dowries from those who wished to become nuns was strictly forbidden by the monastic rule and by canon law[67]. To spiritual minds any taint of commerce was repugnant; Christ asked no dowry with his bride. The didactic and mystical writers of the period often draw a contrast between the earthly and the heavenly groom in this matter. The author ofHali Meidenhadin the thirteenth century, urging the convent life upon his spiritual daughter, sets against his picture of Christ’s virgin-brides that of the well-born girl, married with disparagement through lack of dower:

What thinkest thou of the poor, that are indifferently dowered and ill-provided for, as almost all gentlewomen now are in the world, that have not wherewith to buy themselves a bridegroom of their own rank and give themselves into servitude to a man of low esteem, with all that they have? Wellaway! Jesu! what unworthy chaffer[68].

Thomas of Hales’ mystical poemA Luue Ron, in the same century, also lays stress upon this point, half in ecstatic praise of the celibate ideal, half as a material inducement[69], and the same idea is repeated at the end of the next century inClene Maydenhod:

He asketh with the nouther lond ne leode,Gold ne selver ne precious stone.To such thinges hath he no neode,Al that is good is with hym one,Gif thou with him thi lyf wolt ledeAnd graunte to ben his owne lemman[70].

In ecclesiastical language the same sentiment is expressed by the injunction of Archbishop Greenfield of York, who forbade the nuns of Arden to receive any one as a nun by compact, since that involved guilt of simony, but only to receive her “from promptings of love”[71].

This sentiment was, however, set aside in practice from early times; and a glance at any conventual register, such as the famous Register of Godstow Abbey, shows something like a regular system of dowries, dating certainly from the twelfth century. The Godstow Register contains 19 deeds, ranging between 1139 and 1278, by which grants are made to the nunnery on the entrance of a relative of the grantor, the usual phrase being that such and such a man gave such and such rent-charges, pasture-rights, lands or messuages, “with” his mother or sister or daughter “to be a nun”[72]. One very curious deed dated 1259, shows that the reception of a girl at Godstow was definitely a pecuniary matter. Ralph and Agnes Chondut sold to the nunnery a piece of land called Anfric,

for thys quite claime and reles, the seyd abbas and holy mynchons of Godstowe gafe to the seyde raph and Agnes hys wyfe liiiº marke, and made Katherine the sustur of the seyd Agnes (wyfe of the seyd raph) Mynchon in the monasteri of Godstowe, with the costys of the hows, ... and the seyd holy mynchons of Godstowe shold pay to the seyd raph and Agnes hys wyfe xxv marke of the forseyd liii marke in that day in whyche the foreseyd Katerine should be delyuerd to hem to be norysshed and to be mad mynchon in the same place and in the whyche the seyd penyes shold be payd,

and a second instalment at a place to be agreed upon when confirmation of the grant is obtained[73]. That is to say the price of the land was £35. 6s.8d.together with the cost of receivingKatherine, which was equivalent to a further sum of money, unfortunately not specified.

Any collection of wills provides ample evidence of this dowry system. Not only do they frequently contain legacies for the support of some particular nun during the term of her life, but bequests also occur for the specific purpose of paying for the admission of a girl to a nunnery, in exactly the same way as other girls are provided with dowries for their marriage. The Countess of Warwick, in 1439, left a will directing “that Iane Newmarch have cc mark in gold, And I to bere all Costes as for her bryngynge yn-to seynt Katrens, or where-ever she woll be elles”[74]. Even the clergy, who should have been the last to recognise a system so flagrantly contrary to canon law, followed the general custom; William Peke, rector of Scrivelsby, left one Isabella ten marks to make her a nun in the Gilbertine house of Catley[75]and Robert de Playce, rector of the church of Brompton, made the following bequest:

Item I bequeath to the daughter of John de Playce my brother 100s.in silver, for an aid towards making her a nun in one of the houses of Wickham, Yedingham or Muncton, if her friends are willing to give her sufficient aid to accomplish this, but if, through lack of assistance from friends, she be not made a nun,

she was to have none of this bequest (1345)[76]. Sometimes, as has already been noted, the money is left alternatively to marry the girl or to make her a nun, which brings out very clearly the dower-like nature of such bequests[77]. The accounts of great folkoften tell the same tale. When Elizabeth Chaucy—probably a relative of the poet Chaucer—became a nun at Barking Abbey in 1381, John of Gaunt paid £51. 8s.2d.in expenses and gifts on the occasion of her admission[78], and the privy purse expenses of Elizabeth of York contain the item, “Delivered to thabbesse of Elnestowe by thands of John Duffyn for the costes and charges of litle Anne Loveday at the making of her nonne there £6. 13s.4d.”[79].

It is possible to determine the exact nature of these costs and charges from an account of the expenses of the executors of Elizabeth Sewardby, who died in 1468. This lady, the widow of William Sewardby of Sewardby, had left a legacy of £6. 13s.4d.to her namesake, little Elizabeth Sewardby, to be given her if she should become a nun. The executors record certain payments made to the Prioress of Nunmonkton during the period when Elizabeth was a boarder there, before taking the vows, and then follows a list of “expenses made for and concerning Elizabeth Sewardby when she was made a nun at Monkton”:

They say that they paid and gave to the Prioress and Convent of Monkton, for a certain fee which the said Prioress and Conventclaim by custom to have and are wont to have from each nun at her entrance£3. And in money paid for the habit of the said Elizabeth Sewardby and for other attire of her body and for a fitting bed, £3. 13s.6½d.And in expenditure made in connection with the aforesaid Prioress and Convent and with the friends of the aforesaid Elizabeth coming together on the Sunday next after the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin MaryA.D.1460, £3. 11s.4d.In a gratuity given to brother John Hamilton, preaching a sermon at the aforesaid Monkton on the aforesaid Sunday, 2s.And in a certain remuneration given to Thomas Clerk of York for his wise counsel concerning the recovery of the debts due to the said dame Elizabeth Sewardby, deceased, 12d.Total £10. 7s.10½d.[80]

It will be noticed that Elizabeth took with her not only a lump sum of money, but also clothes and a bed, the cost of which more than doubled the dowry. Canon law specifically allowed the provision of a habit by friends, when the poverty of a house rendered this necessary; and it is clear from other sources that it was not unusual for a novice to be provided also with furniture. The inventory of the goods belonging to the priory of Minster in Sheppey, at the Dissolution, contains, under the heading of “the greate Chamber in the Dorter,” a note of

stuff in the same chamber belonging to Dame Agnes Davye,which she browghte with her; a square sparver of payntyd clothe and iiij peces hangyng of the same, iij payre of shets, a cownterpoynt of corse verder and i square cofer of ashe, a cabord of waynscott carved, ij awndyrons, a payre of tonges and a fyer panne.

And under “Dame Agnes Browne’s Chamber” is the entry:

Stuff given her by her frends:—A fetherbed, a bolster, ij pyllowys, a payre of blankatts, ij corse coverleds, iiij pare of shets good and badde, an olde tester and selar of paynted clothes and ij peces of hangyng to the same; a square cofer carvyd, with ij bad clothes upon the cofer, and in the wyndow a lytill cobard of waynscott carvyd and ij lytill chestes; a small goblet with a cover of sylver parcel gylt, a lytill maser with a bryme of sylver and gylt, a lytyll pece of sylver and a spone of sylver, ij lytyll latyn candellstyks, a fire panne and a pare of tonges, ij small aundyrons, iiij pewter dysshes, a porrenger, a pewter bason, ij skyllots, a lytill brasse pot, a cawdyron and a drynkyng pot of pewter.

She had apparently been sent into the house with a complete equipment in furniture and implements[81].

Throughout the middle ages a struggle went on between the Church, which forbade the exaction of dowries, and the convents which persisted in demanding them, sometimes in so flagrant a manner as to incur the charge of simony. The earliest prohibition of dowries in English canon law occurred at the Council of Westminster in 1175[82]and was repeated at the Council of London in 1200[83]and at the Council of Oxford in 1222[84]; this last had been anticipated by a decree of the fourth Lateran Council. The history of the struggle to apply it is to be gathered from visitational records. Archbishop Walter Giffard, visiting Swine in 1268, finds that Alicia Brun and Alicia de Adeburn were simoniacally veiled[85]; Bishop Norbury has to rebuke the Prioress of Chester for the simoniacal receipt of bribes to admit nuns[86]; Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury has heard that the Prioress of Cannington received four women as sisters of that house for £20 each, falling into the pravity of simony[87]; William of Wykeham writes to the nuns of Romsey in 1387 that

in our said visitations it was discovered and declared that, on account of the reception of certain persons as nuns of your said monastery, several sums of money were received by the Abbess and Convent by way of covenant, reward and compact, not without stain of the pravity of simony and, if it were so, to the peril of your souls,

and he proceeds to forbid the exaction of a dowry “on pretext of any custom (consuetudinis) whatsoever, which is rather to be esteemed a corruption (corruptela),” a significant phrase, which shows that the practice was well established[88]. Bishop Buckinghamof Lincoln warns the nuns of Heynings against “the reception or extortion of money or of anything else by compact for the reception of anyone into religion” (1392)[89]; and Bishop Flemyng enjoins at Elstow in 1422

that hereafter fit persons be received as nuns; for whose reception or entrance let no money or aught else be demanded; but without any simoniacal bargain and covenant of any sum of money or other thing whatsoever, which were accustomed to be made by the crime of simony, let them henceforth be admitted to your religion purely, simply and for nothing[90].

But the most detailed information as to the prevalence of the dowry-system is contained in the records of Bishop Alnwick’s visitations of religious houses in the diocese of Lincoln in 1440[91]. When the Bishop came to Heynings (which had already been in trouble under Bokyngham) one of the nuns, Dame Agnes Sutton, gave evidence to the effect that

her friends came to the Prioress and covenanted that she should be received as a nun for twelve marks and the said money was paid down before she was admitted, and she says that no one is admitted before the sum agreed upon for her reception is paid.

She added that nothing was exacted save what was a free offering, but from her previous words it is obvious that no nuns were received at Heynings without a dowry. Similarly at Langley Dame Cecily Folgeham said that her friends gave ten marks to the house “when she was tonsured, but not by covenant.” The most interesting case of all was that of Nuncoton. The Subprioress, Dame Ellen Frost, said “that it was the custom in time past to take twenty pounds or less for the admission of nuns, otherwise they would not be received.” The Bishop proceeded to examine other members of the house; Dame Maud Saltmershe confirmed what the Subprioress had said about the price for the reception of nuns; two other ladies, who had been in religion for fifteen and eight years respectively, deposed to having paid twenty pounds on their entrance and Dame Alice Skotte said that she did not know how much she had paid, but that she thought it was twenty pounds. Clearly there was a fixed entrance fee to this nunnery and it was impossible to becomea nun without it; all pretence of free-will offerings had been dropped. When it is considered that this entrance fee was twenty pounds (i.e. about £200 of modern money) it is easy to see why poor girls belonging to the lower orders never found their way into convents; such a luxury was far beyond their means.

In each of these cases and at two other houses (St Michael’s Stamford, and Legbourne) Alnwick entered a stern prohibition, on pain of excommunication, against the reception of anything except free gifts from the friends of a novice. His injunction to Heynings may be quoted as typical of those made by medieval bishops on such occasions:

For as mykelle as we founde that many has been receyvede here afore into nunne and sustre in your sayde pryory by covenaunt and paccyons made be fore thair receyvyng of certeyn moneys to be payed to the howse, the whiche is dampnede by alle lawe, we charge yowe under the payn of the sentence of cursyng obove wrytene that fro hense forthe ye receyve none persons in to nunne ne sustre in your sayde pryore by no suche couenant, ne pactes or bargaines made before. Whan thai are receyvede and professede, if thaire frendes of thaire almesse wylle any gyfe to the place, we suffre wele, commende and conferme hit to be receyvede[92].

But the efforts at reform made by Alnwick and other visitors were never very successful; Nuncoton evidently continued to demand its entrance fee, for in 1531 the practice was once more forbidden by Bishop Longland[93]. Moreover it is easy to see that the distinction between the reception of what was willingly offered by friends (which was specifically permitted by the rule of St Benedict and by synods and visitors throughout the middle ages), and what was given by agreement as payment for the entry of a novice (which was always forbidden) might become a distinction without a difference, as it clearly was in the case of Heynings quoted above. The Prioress of Gokewell, who declared to Alnwick that “they take nothing for the admission of nuns, save that which the friends of her who is to be created offer of their free-will and not by agreement”[94], may have acted in reality not very differently from her erring sisters of Heynings, Nuncoton and Langley. The temptation was in fact too great.The clause of the Oxford decree, which permitted poor houses if necessary to receive a sum sufficient for the vesture of a new member and no more, broadened the way already opened by the permission of free-will offerings. The concluding words of Bishop Flemyng’s prohibition of dowries at Elstow in 1422 show that this permission had been abused; “if they must be clothed at their own or their friends’ expense, let nothing at all be in any sort exacted or required, beyond their garments or the just price of their garments”[95]. Throughout the later middle ages an increase in the cost of living went side by side with a decrease in the monastic ideal of poverty, showing itself on the one hand in the constant breach of the rule against private property, on the other in the exaction of money with novices, until the dowry system (although never during the middle ages recognised by law) became in practice a matter of course.

Lest it should seem that everyone who had enough money could become a nun, it must, however, be added that the bishops took some pains that the persons who were received as novices should be suitable and pleasing to their sisters. They seldom exercised their right of nomination without some assurance that their nominee was of honest life and station, “Mulierem honestam, ut credimus”[96], “bonae indolis, ut credimus, juvenculam”[97], “jeovene damoisele et de bone condicion, come nous sumez enformez”[98], “competeter ad hujusmodi officii debitum litterate”[99]. They were always ready to hear complaints if unsuitable persons had been admitted by the prioress; and they sometimes made special injunctions upon the matter. Bokyngham at Heynings in 1392 ordered “that they receive no one to the habit, nor even to profession, unless she be first found by diligent inquisition and approbation to be useful, teachable, capable, of legitimate age, discreet and honest”[100]. At Elstow Bishop Gray made a very comprehensive injunction:

Furthermore we enjoin and charge you the Abbess ... that henceforward you admit no one to be a nun of the said monastery, unlesswith the express consent of the greater and sounder part of the same convent; and no one in that case, unless she be taught in song and reading and the other things requisite herein, or probably may be easily instructed within short time, and be such that she shall be able to bear the burdens of the quire (with) the rest that pertain to religion[101].

Nevertheless, for all their precautions, some strange inmates found their way into the medieval nunneries.

The novice who entered a nunnery, to live there as a nun for the rest of her natural life, might do so for very various reasons. For those who entered young and of their own will, religion was either a profession or a vocation. They might take the veil because it offered an honourable career for superfluous girls, who were unwilling or unable to marry; or they might take it in a real spirit of devotion, with a real call to the religious life. For other girls the nunnery might be a prison, into which they were thrust, unwilling but often afraid to resist, by elders who wished to be rid of them; and many nunneries contained also another class of inmates, older women, often widows, who had retired thither to end their days in peace. A career, a vocation, a prison, a refuge; to its different inmates the medieval nunnery was all these things.

The nunnery as a career and as a vocation does not need separate treatment. It has already been shown that in large families it was a very usual custom to make one or more of the daughters nuns. Indeed the youth of many of the girls who took the veil is in itself proof that anything like a vocation, or even a free choice, was seldom possible and was hardly anticipated, even in theory. The age of profession was sixteen, but much younger children were received as novices and prepared for the veil; they could withdraw if they found the life distasteful, but as a rule, being brought up from early childhood for this career, they entered upon it as a matter of course; moreover the Church was rather apt to regard the withdrawal of novices as apostasy. Sir Guy de Beauchamp in his will (dated 1359) describes his daughter Katherine as a nun of Shouldham and Dugdale notes that Katherine, aged seven years, and Elizabeth, aged about one year, were found to be daughters and heirs of the said Guy, whodied in the following year[102]. It might be supposed that this child of seven was being brought up as a lay boarder in the convent, but legacies left to Katherine “a nun at Shouldham” by her grandfather and by her uncle, in 1369 and in 1400 respectively, show that she had been thus vowed in infancy to a religious life[103]. One of the daughters of Thomas of Woodstock Duke of Gloucester, was “in infancy placed in the monastery (of the Minoresses without Aldgate) and clad in the monastic habit” and in 1401 the Pope gave her permission to leave it if she wished, but she remained and became its abbess[104]. Bishops’ registers constantly give evidence of the presence of mere children in nunneries. When Alnwick visited Ankerwyke in 1441, three of the younger nuns complained that they lacked a teacher (informatrix) to teach them “reading, song, or religious observance”; and at the end of the visitation the Bishop noted that he had examined all the nuns save three, whom he had omitted “on account of the heedlessness of their age and the simplicity of their discretion, since the eldest of them is not older than thirteen years”[105]. At Studley in 1445 he found a girl who had been in religion for two years and was then thirteen; she complained that one of the maid-servants had slapped a fellow nun (doubtless also a child) in church![106]At Littlemore there was a certain Agnes Marcham, who had entered at the age of thirteen, and had remained there unprofessed for thirteen years; she now refused to take the full vows[107]. Some of the nuns at Romsey in 1534 were very young, two being fourteen and one fifteen[108]. Indeed the reception of girls at a tender age was rather encouraged than otherwise by the Church. Archbishop Greenfield gave a licence to the Prioress of Hampole to receive Elena, daughter of the late Reyner Sperri, citizen of York, who was eight years old, and (he added solemnly) “of good conversation and life”[109], and Archbishop John le Romeyn described Margaret de la Batayle, whom he sent to Sinningthwaite, as “juvencula”[110]. The greatPeckham went out of his way to make a specific defence of the practice in 1282, when the Prioress and Convent of Stratford sought to excuse themselves from veiling a little girl called Isabel Bret, by reason of her youth, “since on account of this minority she is the more able and capable to learn and receive those things which concern the discipline of your order”[111].

It is impossible to make the generalisation that even children professed at such an early age could have had no consciousness of a vocation for the religious life; the history of some of the women saints of the middle ages would be enough to disprove this[112]. The German monk Caesarius of Heisterbach, who is to be equalled as a gossip only by the less pious Salimbene, has some delightful stories of youthful enthusiasts in theDialogus Miraculorum, which he wrote between 1220 and 1235 for the instruction of the novices in his own Cistercian house. One child, destined for a worldly match, protests daily that she will wed Christ only; and, when forced to wear rich garments, asserts “even if you turn me to gold you cannot make me change my mind,” until her parents, worn out by her prayers, allow her to enter a nunnery where, although very young, she is soon made governess of the novices. Her sister, given to an earthly husband while yet a child, is widowed and, “ipsa adhuc adolescentula” enters the same house. Another girl, fired by their example, escapes to a nunnery in man’s clothes; her sister, trying to follow, is caught by her parents and married, “but I hope,” says theappreciative Caesarius, “that God may not leave unrewarded so fervent a desire to enter religion”[113]. But the most charming tale of all is that of the conversion of Helswindis, Abbess of Burtscheid[114].

She, although the daughter of a powerful and wealthy man ... burned so from her earliest childhood with zeal to be converted (i.e. to become a nun), that she used often to say to her mother: “Mother, make me a nun.” Now she was accustomed with her mother to ascend Mount St. Saviour, whereon stood at that time the convent of the sisters of Burtscheid. One day she climbed secretly in through the kitchen window, went up to the dorter and putting on the habit of one of the maidens, entered the choir with the others. When the Abbess told this to her mother, who wanted to go, she, thinking that it was a joke, replied “Call the child; we must go.” Then the child came from within to the window, saying: “I am a nun; I will not go with thee.” But the mother, fearing her husband, replied: “Only come with me now, and I will beg thy father to make thee a nun.” And so she went forth. It happened that the mother (who had held her peace) once more went up the mountain, leaving her daughter asleep. And when the latter rose and sought her mother in vain in the church, she suspected her to be at the convent, followed her alone, and, getting in by the same window, once more put on the habit. When her mother besought her to come away she replied: “Thou shalt not deceive me again,” repeating the promise that had been made to her. Then indeed her mother went home in great fear, and her father came up full of rage, together with her brothers, broke open the doors and carried off his screaming daughter, whom he committed to the care of relatives, that they might dissuade her. But she, being (as I believe) not yet nine years of age, answered them so wisely that they marvelled. What more? The Bishop of Liège having excommunicated her father and those by whom she had been taken away, she was restored to the place and after a few years was elected Abbess there[115].

After these examples of infant zeal it is impossible to assert that even the extreme youth of many novices made a real vocation for religious life impossible. But there is no doubt that such a vocation was less probable, than in cases when a girl of more mature years entered a convent. And it is also certain that the tendency to regard monasticism as the natural career for superfluous girls and as the natural alternative to marriage, was capable of grave abuse. When medieval convents are compared unfavourably with those of the present day, and when the increasing laxity with which the rule was kept in the later middle ages is condemned, it has always to be remembered that the majority of girls in those days (unlike those of today) entered the nunneries as a career, without any particular spiritual qualification, because there was nothing else for them to do. Even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries monasticism produced saintly women and great mystics (especially in Germany); but it is remarkable that in England, although there must have been many good abbesses like Euphemia of Wherwell, there are no outstanding names. Monasticism was pre-eminently a respectable career.

It has been said that this tendency to regard monasticism as a career was capable of abuse; and there were not wanting men to abuse it and to use the nunnery as a “dumping ground” for unwanted and often unwilling girls, whom it was desirable to put out of the world, by a means as sure as death itself and without the risk attaching to murder. Kings themselves were wont thus to immure the wives and daughters of defeated rebels.Wencilian (Gwenllian) daughter of Llewelyn was sent to Sempringham as a child, after her father’s death in 1283, and died a nun there in 1337, and the two daughters of Hugh Despenser the elder were forced to take the veil at the same convent after their father’s fall[116]. The nunnery must often have served the purpose of lesser men, desirous of shaking off an encumbrance. The guilty wife of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, unhappily married for eight years and ruined by an intrigue with her father’s servant, was sent to Crabhouse, where she lived for some forty years; and none thought kindly of her save—strangely enough—her husband’s sister[117]. Sir Peter de Montfort, dying in 1367, left ten shillings to the lady Lora Astley, a nun at Pinley, called by Dugdale “his old concubine”[118]. Illegitimate children too were sometimes sent to convents. One remembers Langland’s nunnery, where

Dame Iohanne was a bastard,And dame Clarice a kniȝtes douȝter · ac a kokewolde was hire syre.

Nor were the clergy loath to embrace this opportunity of removing the fruit of a lapse from grace. Hugh de Tunstede, rector of Catton, left ten shillings and a bed to his daughter Joan, a nun of Wilberfoss[119], and at the time of the Dissolution there was a child of Wolsey himself at Shaftesbury[120]. It issignificant that it was sometimes necessary to procure the papal dispensation of an abbess- or prioress-elect for illegitimacy, before she could hold office. The dispensation in 1472 of Joan Ward, a nun of Esholt, who afterwards became prioress, is interesting, for the Wards were patrons of the house and her presence illustrates one of the uses to which such patronage could be put[121]. The diocese of York affords other instances (they were common enough in the case of priests) of dispensation “super defectu natalium”; in 1474 one was granted to Cecily Conyers, a nun at Ellerton, “born of a married man and a single woman”[122]and in 1432 Alice Etton received one four days before her confirmation as Prioress of Sinningthwaite[123]. At St Mary’s Neasham in 1437, the Bishop of Durham appointed Agnes Tudowe prioress and issued a mandate for her dispensation for illegitimacy and her installation on the same day[124].

Less defensible from the point of view of the house was the practice, which certainly existed, of placing in nunneries girls in some way deformed, or suffering from an incurable defect.

Now earth to earth in convent walls,To earth in churchyard sod.I was not good enough for man,And so am given to God.

It will be remembered that the practice roused the disapprobation of Gargantua, whose abbey of Thélème contained only beautiful and amiable persons.

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