[1317]V.C.H. Yorks.III, p. 173.
[1318]See examples above, p.410.
[1319]SeeCh.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’sAbridgment 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 seeCal. 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.Iis 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 theTaxatio 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. Seeib.p. 121, n. 12, andV.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, stanzasLXIII-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.29. 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.502.
[1374]See above, pp.422ff.
[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 writDe apostata capiendowould 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, seeCal. 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. Compareib.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 xviesiècle(Paris, 1888), pp. 128 ff. (Felice Rasponi); G. Marcotti,Donne e Monache(Firenze, 1884); but ecclesiastics were found among thesemonachini. In France the same pursuit became fashionable under the League. For a later date theMemoirsof 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.545.
[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 theRepressor 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.386-9,401.
[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.310.
[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 theLiber Poenitentialisof 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.668. One of Caesarius of Heisterbach’sexemplahangs 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.381, note 1.
[1423]Cal. of Papal Letters,V, p. 161.
[1424]Ib.VII, p. 373.
[1425]Reg. Epis. J. Peckham,III, p. 851.
[1426]SeeNote G, p.597, 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.440.
[1430]V.C.H. Northants.II, p. 101 (note), fromLinc. 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.449.
[1450]See above, pp.82-4,388.
[1451]See above, pp.80,310,449.
[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]SeeV.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 andHist. 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; seeWorc. 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 seeReg. 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.444; 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 inV.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.396. 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 andVII, 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.491.
[1486]Bede,Eccles. Hist.BookIV, 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 ofcompertawhich 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 seeNote Hbelow.
[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 visitationdetectain 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.451, note 5, and below, p.501, note 3.
[1494]Mémoires de J. Casanova de Seingalt(edition Garnier, 1910), tt.II,III,IV.
[1495]Dugdale,Mon.III, pp. 365-6. Compare adetectumat 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. CompareReg. 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, seeV.C.H. Herts.IV, pp. 428-32. The regulations made by Abbot Richard de Wallingford (1328-36) are given inGesta 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 inGesta 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, seeV.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 inV.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]SeeGesta Abbat.II, p. 212.
[1506]Quoted fromP.R.O. Early Chancery Proceedings, 181/4 inV.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 andGesta Abbat.ed. Riley,II, App. D. pp. 511-19.
[1510]Gesta Abbat.III, p. 519.
[1511]SeeV.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 (seeV.C.H. Hants.II, pp. 124, 129, 135, 151).