Chapter 8

Let me see, what am I to buy...? Three pound of sugar; five pound of currants; rice,—what will this sister of mine do with rice?... I must have saffron, to colour the warden pies; mace, dates,—none; that’s out of my note; nutmegs seven; a race or two of ginger,—but that I may beg;—four pound of prunes and as many of raisins of the sun[382].

Lent fare was naturally not very pleasant, for all the mitigations of almonds and figs. At other times of the year the convent ate on fish-days fresh fish, when they could get it, otherwise dried or salt fish, and on meat-days either beef or some form of pig’s flesh, eaten fresh as pork, cured and salted as bacon, or pickled assowce[383]. Mutton was also eaten, though much more seldom, for the sheep in the middle ages was valued for its wool, rather than for its meat, and was indeed a scraggy little animal, until the discovery of winter crops and the experiments of Bakewell revolutionised stock-breeding and the English food-supply in the eighteenth century. The nuns also had fowls on festive occasions, eggs, cheese and butter from the dairy andvegetables from the garden. The staple allowance of bread and beer made on the premises was always provided by the convent, even when the nuns had a money allowance to cater for themselves in other articles of food[384]. Some idea of the menu of an average house is given in the Syon rule:

For the sustres and brethren sche [the cellaress] shal euery day for the more parte ordeyne for two maner of potages, or els at leste for one gode and that is best of alle. If ther be two, that one be sewe [broth] of flesche and fische, after [according to what] the day is; and that other of wortes or herbes, or of any other thing that groweth in the yerthe, holsom to the body, as whete, ryse, otemele, peson and suche other. Also sche schal ordeyne for two sundry metes, of flesche and of fysche, one fresche, another powdred [salted], boyled, or rosted, or other wyse dyghte, after her discrecion, and after the day, tyme and nede requyreth, as the market and purse wylle stretche. And thys schal stonde for the prebende, which is a pounde of brede, welle weyed, with a potel of ale and a messe of mete.... On fysche dayes sche schal ordeyn for whyte metes, yf any may be hadde after the rewle, be syde fysche metes, as it is before seyd. Also, ones a wyke at the leste, sche schal ordeyn that the sustres and brethren be serued withe newe brede, namely on water dayes, but neuer withe newe ale, nor palled or ouer sowre, as moche as sche may. For supper sche schal ordeyn for some lytel sowpyng, and for fysche and whyte mete, or for any other thynge suffred by the rewle, lyghte of dygestyon equyualente, and as gode to the bodyly helthe.... On water dayes sche schal ordeyne for bonnes or newe brede, water grewel, albreys and for two maner of froytes at leste yf it may be, that is to say, apples, peres or nuttes, plummes, chiryes, benes, peson, or any suche other, and thys in competent mesure, rosten or sothen, or other wyse dyghte to the bodyly helthe, and sche must se that the water be sothen with browne brede in maner of a tysan, or withe barley brede, for coldenes and feblenes of nature, more thys dayes, than in dayes passed regnynge[385].

On certain special days the nuns received a pittance, or extra allowance of food, sometimes taking the shape of some special delicacy consecrated to the day. On Shrove Tuesday they often had the traditional pancakes, or fritters, calledcrispsat Barking[386]andflawnesat St Michael’s, Stamford[387]. Maundy Thursday, otherwise called Shere Thursday (the Thursday before Easter) was the great almsgiving day of the year. On this day the kings and queens of England, as well as the greatest dignitaries of the church and of the nobility, were accustomed to give gowns, food and money to the poor, who clustered round their gates in expectance of the event, and ceremonially to wash the feet of a certain number of poor men and women, to commemorate Christ’s washing of His disciples’ feet. Benefactors who left land to monastic houses for purposes of almsgiving often specified Maundy Thursday as the day on which the alms were to be distributed. It was customary also for monks and nuns to receive a pittance on this day; and welcome it must have been after the long Lenten fast. The nuns of Barking had baked eels, with rice and almonds and wine. The nuns of St Mary de Pré (St Albans) had “Maundy ale” and “Maundy money” given to them. The nuns of St Michael’s, Stamford, had beer and wafers and spices[388]. There was always a feast on Christmasday and on most of the great feasts of the church and the various feasts connected with the Virgin. There was a pittance on the dedication day of the convent and sometimes on other saints’ days. There were also pittances on the anniversaries of benefactors who had left money for this purpose to the convent, and sometimes also on profession-days, which were “the official birthdays of the nuns”[389]. In the monotonous round of convent life these little festivities formed a pleasant change and were looked forward to with ardour; in some of the larger houses a special obedientiary known as thePittancerhad charge over them.

Food is one of the housekeeper’s cares; servants are another; and between them they must have wrinkled many a cellaress’ brow, though the servant problem at least was a less complicated one in the middle ages than it is to-day. The persons to whom regular yearly wages were paid by a convent fall into four classes: (1) the chaplains, (2) the administrative officials, steward, rent-collectors, bailiff, (3) the household staff and (4) the hinds and farm-servants.

(1)The chaplains.The account rolls of a nunnery of average size usually contain payments to more than one priest. The nuns had to pay the stipend of their own chaplain or mass-priest, of any chaplains or vicars whom they were bound to provide for appropriated churches, and sometimes of a confessor. The number of chaplains naturally varied with the size of the house and with the number of appropriated churches. Great houses such as Barking, Shaftesbury and Wilton had a body of resident chaplains attached to the nunnery church and paid the stipends of priests ministering to appropriated parishes. Poor and small nunneries, such as Rusper, paid the fee of one resident chaplain. It is worthy of note that certain important and old established abbeys in Wessex had canons’ prebends attached to their churches. At each of the abbey churches of Shaftesbury, St Mary’s Winchester, Wherwell and Wilton there were four prebendary canons, at Romsey there were two (one of whom was known as sacrist). Moreover at Malling in Kent there were two secular prebends, known as the prebends ofmagna missa maioris altarisandalta missa. These prebends were doubtless originally intended for the maintenance of resident chaplains, but as early as the thirteenth century the prebends were almost invariably held by non-residents and pluralists as sinecures, the reason being, as Mr Hamilton Thompson points out, “the rise in value of individual endowments and the consequent readiness of the Crown, as patron of the monasteries, to discover in them sources of income for clerks in high office.” Thus these great abbeys also followed the usual custom of hiring chaplains to celebrate in their churches, though some of the wealthier prebends were taxed with stipendiary payments towards the cost of these[390].

PLATE III

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PAGE FROMLA SAINTE ABBAYE

(In the top left hand corner is a nun at confession; in the other corners are visions appearing to a nun at prayer.)

The chaplain of a house usually resided on the premises, sometimes receiving his board from the nuns; occasionally inventories mention his lodgings, which were outside the nuns’ cloister. Thus the Kilburn Dissolution inventory, after describing all the household offices, goes on to describe the three chambers for the chaplain and the hinds, the “confessor’s chamber” andthe church[391]. At Sheppey the chamber over the gatehouse was called “the confessor’s chamber” and was furnished forth with

a hangyng of rede clothe, a paynted square sparver of lynen, with iij corteyns of lynyn clothe, a good fetherbed, a good bolster, a pece of blanketts and a good counterpeynt of small verder, in the lowe bed a fetherbed, a bolster, a pece of blanketts olde, and an image coverled, a greate joynyd chayer of waynscot, an olde forme, and a cressar of iron for the chymneye[392].

The relations between the nuns and their priest were doubtless very friendly; he would be their guide, philosopher and friend, sometimes acting ascustosof their temporal affairs and always ready with advice.

Madame Eglentyne, it will be remembered, took three priests with her upon her eventful pilgrimage to Canterbury, and one was the never-to-be-forgotten Sir John, whom she mounted worse than his inimitable skill as araconteurdeserved:

Than spak our host, with rude speche and boldAnd seyde un-to the Nonnes Preest anon,“Com neer, thou preest, com hider thou sir John,Tel us swich thing as may our hertes glade,Be blythe, though thou ryde up-on a jade.What though thyn hors be bothe foule and lene,If he wol serve thee, rekke not a bene;Look that thyn herte be mery evermo.”“Yis, sir” quod he, “yis, host, so mote I go,But I be mery, y-wis I wol be blamed”:—And right anon his tale he hath attamed,And thus he seyde unto us everichon,This swete preest, this goodly man, sir John[393].

Certainly the convent never went to sleep in a sermon which had the tale of Chauntecleer and Pertelote for itsexemplum.

Yet the nuns were not always happy in their priests. There is the case (not, it must be admitted, without its humour) of Sir Henry, the chaplain of Gracedieu in 1440-41. Sir Henry was an uncouth fellow, it seems, who was more at home in thestable than at the altar. He went out haymaking alone with the cellaress, and in the evening brought her back behind him, riding on the same lean jade. Furthermore “Sir Henry the chaplain busies himself with unseemly tasks, cleansing the stables, and goes to the altar without washing, staining his vestments. He is without devotion and irreverent at the altar and is of ill reputation at Loughborough and elsewhere where he has dwelt.” Poor Sir Henry,—

See, whiche braunes hath this gentil Preest,So greet a nekke, and swich a large breest!He loketh as a sperhauk with his yën;Him nedeth nat his colour for to dyenWith brasil, ne with greyn of Portingale.

The bishop swore him to “behave himself devoutly and reverently henceforward at the altar in making his bow after and before his masses”[394].

(2)The administrative officials.These varied in number with the size of the house and the extent of its possessions. The chief administrative official was thesteward, who is not, however, found at all houses. Sometimes the office of steward was complimentary and the fee attached was nominal. TheValor Ecclesiasticusshows that great men did not disdain the post; Andrew Lord Windsor was steward of the Minoresses without Aldgate, of Burnham and of Ankerwyke[395]. Henry Lord Daubeney was steward of Shaftesbury[396], George Earl of Shrewsbury of Wilton[397], Henry Marquess of Dorset of Nuneaton[398], Sir Thomas Wyatt of Malling[399], Sir W. Percy of Hampole, Handale and Thicket[400], Lord Darcy of Swine[401], the Earl of Derby of St Mary’s Chester[402], and Mr Thomas Cromwell himself of Syon and Catesby[403]. Some houses, such as Wilton, had more than one steward, and Syon maintained stewards as well as bailiffs in most of the counties in which it had land. Some of these great men were obviously not working officials; but many of the houses maintained stewards at a good salary, who superintended their business affairs, kept the courts of their manors, and were sometimes lodgedon the premises[404]. The larger houses also paid one or more receivers and rent-collectors and sometimes an auditor, but in the average house the most important administrative official was the bailiff.

While large landowners kept bailiffs at each of the different manors which they held, most nunneries employed a single bailiff, an invaluable factotum who performed a great variety of business for them, besides collecting rents from their tenants and superintending the home farm. Thomas Key, the bailiff of St Radegund’s Cambridge, 1449-51, is an active person; he receives a stipend of 13s.4d.per annum and an occasional gift from the nuns; he rides about collecting their rents in Cambridgeshire; he accompanies them to Lynn on the annual journey to buy the winter stock of salt fish, or sometimes goes alone; he can turn his hand to mending rakes and ladders (for which he gets 8d.for four days’ work), or to making the barley mows at harvest time, taking 3d.a day for his pains; and indeed he is regularly hired to work during harvest, at a fee of 6s.8d.and two bushels of malt[405]. Often the bailiff’s wife was also employed by the nuns; the nuns of Sheppey paid their bailiff, his wife and his servant all substantial salaries[406]. Some nunneries had a lodging set apart for him in the convent buildings, outside the nuns’ cloister[407].

Evidence often crops up from a variety of sources concerning the relations between the nuns and this important official. That these might be very pleasant can well be imagined. Sometimes a bailiff of substance and standing will place his daughter in the nunnery which he serves[408]; sometimes when he dies he will remember it in his will[409]. But all bailiffs were not good and faithfulservants. Mr Hamilton Thompson considers that male stewards and bailiffs were often “responsible for the financial straits to which the nunneries of the fifteenth century were reduced, and ... certainly did much to waste the goods of the monasteries, generally in their own interests”[410]. Such a man was Chaucer’s Reeve, though he did not waste land, for the reason that one does not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs:

His lordes sheep, his neet, his dayerye,His swyn, his hors, his stoor and his pultrye,Was hoolly in this reves governing,And by his covenaunt yaf the rekening....His woning was ful fair upon an heeth,With grene treës shadwed was his place.He coude bettre than his lord purchace.Ful riche he was astored prively,His lord wel coude he plesen subtilly,To yeve and lene him of his owne good,And have a thank, and yet a cote and hood[411].

Several records of law-suits are extant, in which prioresses are obliged to sue their bailiffs in the court of King’s Bench for an account of their periods of service[412], and visitation documents sometimes give a sorry picture of the convent bailiff. The bailiff of Godstow (1432) went about saying that there was no good woman in the nunnery[413]; the bailiff of Legbourne (1440) persuaded the prioress to sell him a corrody in the house and yet he “is not reckoned profitable to the house in that office, for several of his kinsfolk are serving folk in the house, who look out forthemselves more than for the house”[414]; the bailiff of Redlingfield (1427) was the prioress’s lover[415].

Romsey Abbey seems at various times to have been peculiarly unfortunate in its administrative officials. In 1284 Archbishop Peckham had to write to the abbess Agnes Walerand and bid her remove two stewards, whom she had appointed in defiance of the wishes of the convent and who were to give an account of their offices to his official[416]. At the close of the fifteenth century, when the abbey was in a very disorderly state under Elizabeth Broke, there was serious trouble again. In 1492 this Abbess was found to have fallen under the influence of one Terbock, whom she had made steward. She herself confessed that she owed him the huge sum of 80l.and the nuns declared that in part payment of it she had persuaded them to make over to him for three years a manor valued at 40l.and had given him a cross and many other things. His friends haunted her house, especially one John Write, who begged money from her for Terbock. The nuns suspected him of dishonesty, asked that the rolls of account for the years of his stewardship might be seen and declared that the house was brought to ill-fame by him[417]. In 1501 Elizabeth Broke had fallen under the influence of another man, this time a priest called Master Bryce, but she died the next year. Her successor Joyce Rowse was equally unsatisfactory and equally unable to control her servants. Bishop Foxe’s vicar-general in 1507 enjoined that a nun should be sought out and corrected for having frequent access, suspiciously and beyond the proper time, to the house of the bailiff of the monastery, and others who went with her were to be warned and corrected too; moreover he summoned before him Thomas Langton, Christopher George and Thomas Leycrofte, bailiffs, and Nicholas Newman,villicum agricultorem,and admonished them to behave better in their offices on pain of removal[418].

(3) Thehousehold staffnaturally varied in size with the size of the nunnery. The Rule of St Benedict contemplated the performance of a great deal if not all of the necessary domestic and agricultural work of a community by the monks themselves. But this tradition had been largely discarded by the thirteenth century, and if the nuns of a small convent are found doing their own cooking and housework, it is by reason of their poverty and they not infrequently complain at the necessity. They were of gentle birth and ill accustomed to menial tasks. The weekly service in the kitchen would seem to have disappeared completely. The larger houses employed a male cook, sometimes assisted by a page, or by his wife, and supervised by the cellaress, or by the kitcheness, where this obedientiary was appointed. There were also a maltster, to make malt, and a brewer and baker, to prepare the weekly ration of bread and ale; sometimes these offices were performed by men, sometimes by women. There was adeyeor dairy-woman, who milked the cows, looked after the poultry, and made the cheeses. There was sometimes alavenderor laundress, and there were one or more women servants, to help with the housework and the brewing. The gate was kept by a male porter; and there was sometimes also a gardener. In large houses there would be more than one servant for each of these offices; in small houses the few servants were men or maids of all work and extra assistance was hired when necessary for making malt or washing clothes. In large houses it was not uncommon for each of the chief obedientiaries to have her own servant attached to herchecker(office) and household, who prepared the meals for her mistress and for those nuns who formed herfamiliaand messed with her. The head of the house nearly always had her private servant when its resources permitted her to do so, and sometimes when they did not.

(4)The farm labourers.Finally every house which had attached to it a home farm had to pay a staff of farm labourers. These hinds, whose work was superintended by the bailiff and cellaress, always included one or two ploughmen, a cowherd and oxherd, a shepherd, probably a carter or two and some generallabourers. Again the number varied very considerably according to the size of the house and was commonly augmented by hiring extra labour at busy seasons. The farm was cultivated partly by the work of these hired servants, partly by the services owed by the villeins.

The nuns, with their domestic and farm servants, were the centre of a busy and sometimes large community, and a very good idea of their social function as employers may be gained from the lists of wage-earning servants to be found in account rolls or in Dissolution inventories. We may take in illustration the large and famous abbey of St Mary’s, Winchester, and the little house of St Radegund’s, Cambridge. St Mary’s, Winchester, had let out the whole of its demesne in 1537, and the inventory drawn up by Henry VIII’s commissioners therefore contains no list of farm labourers. The household consisted of the Abbess and twenty-six nuns, thirteen “poor sisters,” twenty-six “chyldren of lordys knyghttes and gentylmen browght vp yn the sayd monastery,” three corrodians and five chaplains, one of whom was confessor to the house, and twenty-nine officers and servants. The Abbess had her own household, consisting of a gentlewoman, a woman servant and a laundress, and the prioress, subprioress, sacrist and another of the senior nuns each had her private woman servant “yn her howse.” There were also two laundresses for the convent. The male officers and servants were Thomas Legh,generall Receyver(who also held a corrody and had two little relatives at school in the convent), Thomas Tycheborneclerke(who likewise had two little girl relatives at school and a boy who will be mentioned), Lawrens Bakon,Curtyar(officer in charge of the secular buildings of the nunnery), George Sponder,Cater(caterer or manciple, who purchased the victuals for the community), William Lime,Botyler, Rychard Bulbery,Coke, John Clarke,Vndercoke, Richard Gefferey,Baker, May Wednall,convent Coke, John Wener,vndercovent Coke, John Hatmaker,Bruer, Wylliam Harrys,Myller, Wylliam Selwod,porter, Robert Clerke,vnderporter, William Plattyng,porter of Estgate, John Corte and Hery Beale,Churchemen, Peter Tycheborne,Chyld of the hygh aulter, Rychard Harrold,seruaunt to the receyverand John Serle,seruaunt to the Clerke[419].

St Radegund’s, Cambridge, in 1450 was a much smaller community, numbering about a dozen nuns. In the treasurers’ accounts the wage-earning household is given as follows, together with the annual wages paid by the nuns. The confessor of the house came from outside and was a certain friar named Robert Palmer, who received 6s.8d.a year for his pains; they also paid a salary of 5l.a year to their mass-priest, John Herryson, 2s.4d.to John Peresson, the chaplain celebrating (but onlyper vices, from time to time) at the appropriated church of St Andrew’s, and 13s.4d.to the “clerk” of that church, a permanent official. Thomas Key, the invaluable bailiff and rent-collector mentioned above, got the rather small salary of 13s.4d., but added to it by exactly half as much again during harvest. Richard Wester, baker and brewer to the house, received 26s.8d., John Cokke, maltster (and probably also cook, as his name suggests) received 13s.4d.The women servants included one of those domestic treasures, who effectively run the happy household which possesses them, or which they possess: her name was Joan Grangyer and she is described as dairy-woman and purveyor or housekeeper to the Prioress; the nuns paid her 20s.in all, including 6s.8d.for her livery and 2s.4d.as a special fee for catering for the Prioress. Then there was Elianore Richemond, who seems to have been an assistant dairy-maid, for in the following year the nuns had replaced her by another woman, hired “for all manner of work in milking cows, making cheese and butter,” etc.; her wages were 8s.4d., including a “reward” or gift of 20d.The other women servants were Elizabeth Charterys, who received 3s.1d.for her linen and woollen clothes and her shoes, but no further wages, and Dionisiayerdwomman, who received 9s.and doubtless did the rough work. This completed the domestic household of the nuns. Their hinds included three ploughmen, John Everesdon (26s.8d.), Robert Page (16s.) and John Slibre (13s.4d.and 2s.6d.for livery); the shepherd, John Wyllyamesson, who received 22s.8d.and 8d.for a pair of hose; the oxherd Robert Pykkell, who took 6s.8d.; and Richard Porter, husbandman, who was hired to work from Trinity Sunday to Michaelmas for 13s.4d.[420]

It will thus be seen that the size of a convent household might vary considerably. The twenty-six nuns of St Mary’sWinchester had gathered round themselves a large household of nine women servants, five male chaplains and twenty male officers and servants; but they boarded and educated twenty-six children, gave three corrodies and supported thirteen poor sisters (who may however have done some of the work of the house). The twelve nuns of St Radegund’s lived more economically, with three male and four female servants and six hinds, besides the chaplains; but even their household seems a sufficiently large one. The ten nuns of Whitney Priory employed two priests, a waiting maid for the prioress, nine other women servants and thirteen hinds[421]. It is notable that the maintenance of a larger household than the revenues of the house could support is not infrequently censured in injunctions as responsible for its financial straits. At Nuncoton in 1440 the Prioress said that the house employed more women servants than was necessary[422]and a century later Bishop Longland spoke very sternly against the same fault:

that ye streight upon sight herof dymynishe the nombre of your seruants, as well men as women, which excessyve nombre that ye kepe of them bothe is oon of the grette causes of your miserable pouertye and that ye are nott hable to mayntene your houshold nouther reparacons of the same, by reason whereof all falleth to ruyne and extreme decaye. And therefore to kepe noo moo thenne shalbe urged necessarye for your said house[423].

On the other hand many nunneries could by no means be charged with keeping up an excessive household. Rusper, which had leased all its demesnes, had only two women servants in its employ at the Dissolution[424], and nuns sometimes complained to their visitors that they were too poor to keep servants and had to do the work of the house themselves, to the detriment of their religious duties in the choir. At Ankerwyke one of the nuns deposed that

they had not serving folk in the brewhouse, bakehouse or kitchen from the last festival of the Nativity of St John the Baptist last year to the Michaelmas next following, in so much that this deponent, with the aid of other her sisters, prepared the beer and victuals and served the nuns with them in her own person.

At Gracedieu there was no servant for the infirmary and the subcellaress had to sleep there and look after the sick, so that she could not come to matins. At Markyate and Harrold the nuns had no washerwoman; at the former house it was said “that the nuns have no woman to wash their clothes and to prepare their food, wherefore they are either obliged to be absent from divine service or else to think the whole time about getting these things ready”; at the latter a nun said “that they have no common washerwoman to wash the clothes of the nuns, save four times a year, and at other times the nuns are obliged to go to the bank of the public stream to wash their clothes”[425]. It was probably on account of the poverty of Sinningthwaite that Archbishop Lee ordered “the susters and the nonys there [that] they kepe no seculer women to serve them or doe any busynes for them, but yf sekenes or oder necessitie doe require”[426].

As to the relations between the servants and their mistresses both visitation reports and account rolls sometimes give meagre scraps of information, which only whet the appetite for more. The payment of the servants was partly in money, partly in board or in allowances of food, partly in livery; stock-inventories constantly make mention of allowances of wheat, peas, oats or oatmeal and maslin (a mixture of wheat and rye) paid to this or that servant, and account rolls as constantly mention a livery, a pair of hose, a pair of shoes, or the money equivalent of these things, as forming part of the wage. The more important agricultural servants had also sometimes the right to graze acow, or a certain number of sheep on the convent’s pastures. Some servants, however, received wages without board, others wages without livery. Account rolls seem to bear witness to pleasant relations; there is constant mention of small tips or presents to the servants and of dinners made to them on great occasions. This was Merry England, when the ploughman’s feasts enlivened his hard work and comfortless existence; he must have his Shrovetide pancakes, his sheep-shearing feast, his “sickle goose” or harvest-home, and his Christmas dinner; and the household servants must as often as may be have a share in the convent pittance. The very general custom of allowing the female servants to sleep in the dorter (against which bishops were continually having to make injunctions) must have made for free and easy and close relations between the nuns and the secular women who served them; and sometimes one of these would save up and buy herself a corrody in the house to end her days[427]. Occasionally these close relations led to difficulties; a trusted maid would gain undue influence over the prioress and the nuns would be jealous of her. Thus at Heynings in 1440 it was complained that the prioress “encourages her secular serving women, whom she believes more than her sisters in their words, to scold the same her sisters”[428]. Sometimes also a servant would act as a go-between between the nuns and the outside world, smuggling in and out tokens and messages and sundrybillets doux[429].

On the other hand there were sometimes difficulties of a different nature. The servants got out of hand; they brought discredit on the nuns by the indiscretions of their lives; they gossiped about their mistresses in the neighbourhood, or were quarrelsome and pert to their faces. At Gracedieu in 1440-41 a nun complained “that a Frenchwoman of very unseemly conversation is their maltstress, also that the secular serving folk hold the nuns in despite; she prays that they may be restrained; and chiefly are they rebellious in their words againstthe kitchener”[430]; evidently the author of theAncren Riwlespake not utterly from his imagination when he bade his ladies “be glad in your heart if ye suffer insolence from Slurry, the cook’s boy, who washeth dishes in the kitchen”[431]. At Markyate also the servants had to be warned “that honestly and not sturdyly ne rebukyngly thai hafe thaym in thaire langage to the sustres”[432]and at Studley a maidservant had boxed the ears of a novice of tender age[433]. At Sheppey in 1511 it was said that “the men servants of the prioress do not behave properly to the prioress, but speak of the convent contemptuously and dishonestly, thus ruining the convent”[434].

The peculiar difficulties suffered in this respect by an important house, which maintained a large body of servants, are best illustrated, however, in the case of Romsey Abbey. At this house in 1302 Bishop John of Pontoise ordained

that a useless, superfluous, quarrelsome and incontinent servant and one using insolent language to the ladies shall be removed within a month, ... and especially John Chark, who has often spoken ill and contumaciously in speaking to and answering the ladies, unless he correct himself so that no more complaints be made to the bishop[435].

John Chark possibly learned to bridle his tongue, but the tone among the Romsey servants was not good, for in 1311 Bishop Henry Woodlock ordered that “no women servants shall remain unless of good conversation and honest; pregnant, incontinent, quarrelsome women and those answering the nuns contumaciously, all superfluous and useless servants, [are] to be removed within a month”[436]. In 1387 the difficulties were of another order; writes William of Wykeham:

the secular women servants of the nuns are wont too often to come into the frater, at times when the nuns are eating there, and intothe cloister while the nuns are engaged there in chapter meetings, contemplation, reading or praying, and there do make a noise and behave otherwise ill, in a way which beseems not the honesty of religion. And these secular women often keep up their chattering, carolling (cantalenas) and other light behaviour, until the middle of the night, and disturb the aforesaid nuns, so that they cannot properly perform the regular services. Wherefore we ... command you that you henceforth permit not the aforesaid things, nor any other things which befit not the observances of your rule, to be done by the said servants or by others, and that you permit not these servants to serve you henceforth in the frater, and a servant or any other secular person who does the contrary shall be expelled from the monastery. Moreover we forbid on pain of the greater excommunication that any servants defamed for any offence be henceforth admitted to dwell among you, or having been admitted, be retained in your service, for from such grave scandals may arise concerning you and your house[437].

We have spoken hitherto about the regular hired servants of the house; but it must not be forgotten that nuns normally had a larger community dependent in part upon them. From time to time they were wont to hire such additional labour as they required, whether servants in husbandry taken on for the haymaking and harvest season, artificers hired to put up or repair buildings, workers in various branches of the cloth industry to make the liveries of the servants, itinerant candle-makers to prepare the winter dips, or a variety of casual workers hired at one time or another for specific purposes. The nuns of St Radegund’s, Cambridge, entered in their accounts a large number of payments besides those to their regular servants. In moments of stress they were wont to fall back upon a paragon named Katherine Rolf. We first meet her in 1449-50 weeding the garden for four days, for the modest sum of 4½d.; but soon afterwards behold her on the roof, aiding the thatchers to thatch two tenements, at 1½d.a day for twelve days. In the next year she is more active still; first of all she is found helping the candle-makers to make up 14 lbs. of tallow candles for the guest-house. Then she combs and cleans a pound of wool for spinning. Then she appears in the granary helping the maltster to thresh and winnow grain. In the midst of these activities she turns an honest penny by selling fat chickens to the convent. The nuns also disburse small sums of money to the man whocleanses the convent privies, to theslawtermanfor killing beasts for the kitchen, to Richard Gardyner for beating stockfish, to Thomas Osborne for making malt, to Thomas the Smith for providing a variety of iron implements andcart-clowtes, for shoeing the horses and for mending the ploughshares, and for “blooding the horses on St Stephen’s day” (Dec. 26), to Thomas Boltesham,cowper, for mending wooden utensils, to Thomas Speed for helping in the kitchen on fair-day and to John Speed for working in the garden. Besides these they hire various day-labourers to work in the fields during the sowing season, hay-making and harvest, or to lop trees round the convent and hew up firewood, or to prune and tie up the vines (for there were English vineyards in those days). Then there is a long list of carpenters, builders, thatchers, and plumbers engaged in making and repairing the buildings of the convent and its tenants. Finally there are the various cloth workers, spinners, weaver, fuller, shearman, dyer and tailor hired to make the servants’ clothes, concerning whom something has already been said[438].

Thus many persons came to depend upon a nunnery for part of their livelihood, who were not the permanent servants of the house, and this goes further than any imagined reverence for the lives and calling of their inmates to explain the anxiety shown in some places for the preservation of nunneries when the day of dissolution came. The convents were not only inns and boarding-houses for ladies of the upper class and occasionally schools for their daughters; they were the great employers and consumers of their districts, and though their places must sooner or later be taken by other employers and consumers, yet at the moment many a husbandman and artificer must have seen his livelihood about to slip away from him. The nuns of Sheppey, in their distant and lonely flats, clearly employed a whole village[439]. They couldnot count on hiring carpenter and thatcher for piece-work when they wanted them in that thinly populated spot, so they must hire them all the year round. Twenty-six hinds and seven women they had in all, working in their domestic offices or on the wide demesne, most of which they farmed themselves, for food was far to buy if they did not grow it. Three shepherds kept their large flock, a cowherd drove their kine and hogs, a horse-keeper looked to their 17 horses. All the other men and women were busy with the beasts and the crops in the field, or with work in the brew house, the “bultyng howse,” the bakehouse and the dairy. So also at the abbey of Polesworth, where fifteen nuns employed in all thirty-eight persons, women servants, yeomen about the household and hinds. “In the towne of Pollesworth,” said the commissioners, who were gentlemen of the district and not minded to lose the house:

ar 44 tenementes and never a plough but one, the resydue be artifycers, laborers and vitellers, and lyve in effect by the said house.... And the towne and nonnery standith in a harde soile and barren ground, and to our estymacions, yf the nonnery be suppressed the towne will shortely after falle to ruyne and dekaye, and the people therin, to the nombre of six or seven score persones, are nott unlike to wander and to seke their lyvyng as our Lorde Gode best knowith[440].

So also at St Mary’s, Winchester, whose household we have described:

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