Part I chs. 1-16 of a very interesting little book, the _Traité de la

Clôture des Religieuses_, published in Paris in 1681 by Jean-Baptiste Thiers, "Prestre, Bachelier en Theologie de la Faculté de Paris et Curé de Chambrond." The treatise is divided into two parts, one of which shows "that it is not permitted to nuns to leave their enclosure without necessity," the other "that it is not permitted to strangers to enter the enclosure of nuns without necessity." The author contends that enclosure was the immemorial practice of the Church, though the first general decree on the subject was the Bull _Periculoso_; but what he proves is really that the demand grew up gradually and naturally out of the effort to reform the growing abuses in conventual life, which sprang from too free an intercourse with the world.

[1077] _Sext. Decret._ lib. III, tit. XVI. Quoted in _Reg. Simonis de Gandavo_, pp. 10 ff.; from which I quote. See also Thiers, _op. cit._ pp. 45-9.

[1078] See Thiers, _op. cit._ pp. 53-60 for these, except the reforms of Busch, for which see below, App. III. Three papal bulls were published in the sixteenth century reinforcing _Periculoso_, viz. the Bull _Circa pastoralis_ (1566) and _Decori et honestati_ (1570) of Pius V and the Bull _Deo sacris_ of Gregory XIII (1572).

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

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

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

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

[1083] _Reg. Epis. J. Peckham_, II, p. 247.

[1084] _Ib._ I, pp. 85-6.

[1085] _Reg. Epis. J. Peckham_, I, pp. 265-6, and in Wilkins, _op. cit._ II, p. 61.

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

[1087] _Reg. Epis. J. Peckham_, II, pp. 659, 664-5.

[1088] _Ib._ II, pp. 707, 806.

[1089] _Reg. Simonis de Gandavo_, pp. 10 ff., 109.

[1090] _Reg. Godfrey Giffard_, II, pp. 515, 517.

[1091] _Reg. J. de Pontissara_, p. 546.

[1092] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby_, f. 9.

[1093] _Ib._ ff. 9_d_, 10_d_, 11, 12_d_, 15_d_.

[1094] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby_, f. 10_d_.

[1095] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby_, f. 35_d_.

[1096] _Ib._ f. 16. See below, p. 441.

[1097] _Ib._

[1098] Agnes Flixthorpe. See below, p. 443.

[1099] _Ib._ f. 152.

[1100] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton_, ff. 5_d_, 32_d_, 154. For these and other cases of apostasy see Chap. XI, _passim_.

[1101] Lyndwood, _Provinciale_ (1679), Pt II, p. 155. Quoted by Mr Coulton in _Med. Studies_, No. 10, "Monastic Schools in the Middle Ages," p. 21.

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

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

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

[1105] See e.g. Fairwell, 1367. _Reg. Robert de Stretton_, p. 118. The necessity for an injunction against favouritism is shown by the _comperta_ of Archbishop Langham's visitation of St Sepulchre, Canterbury, in 1367-8. "Prioressa non permittit moniales ire in villam ad visitandum amicos suos nisi Margeriam Child et Julianam Aldelesse que illuc vadunt quociens eis placet." _Lambeth Reg. Langham_, f. 76_d_. She was also charged with allowing them to receive suspected visitors. See below, p. 399.

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

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

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

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

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

[1111] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell_, f. 100_d_.

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

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

[1114] Above, p. 348. And compare William of Wykeham's injunction to Romsey, which repeats Peckham's constitution on this point word for word. _New Coll._ MS. f. 85.

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

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

[1117] See e.g. Peckham's injunctions to Barking and Godstow. Above, p. 348. Religious houses of men were sometimes specially ordered not to receive them, e.g. Bridlington in 1287. _Reg. John le Romeyn_, I, p. 200. The necessity for such an order appears below, pp. 446 ff.

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

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

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

[1121] The rhymed Northern Rule of St Benedict for nuns (l. 2094) says that when they go away into the country they should wear "more honest" clothes. "In habitu moniali" is one of the conditions imposed on the nuns of Barrow Gurney in 1315. See above, p. 358, note 4. The necessity for such a regulation appears in the decree made by Henry Archbishop of Cologne, executing an enactment of the Provincial Council of Cologne (1310), promulgating _Periculoso_. "Nevertheless we often see that having come out of their monasteries they [the nuns] wander about the roads and public places and frequent the houses of secular persons. And, what is more deplorable, having put off their religious habit, they appear in secular dress and bear themselves in public with so much vanity that their conduct may justly be considered suspicious, although their conscience be really pure and without sin. And although hitherto they have been menaced with divers penalties, nevertheless the more strictly they are forbidden to live after this fashion, the more eagerly they disobey, so strongly do they hanker after forbidden things." The whole injunction is worthy of study. Thiers, _op. cit._ pp. 491-3. Discipline was laxer in German convents than in those of England. In England, however, there are sometimes complaints that male religious leave their convents in secular attire; see a case at Huntingdon Priory in 1439, _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 154-5.

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

[1123] See Thiers, I, ch. XXII, who mentions the corollary that the superior of another house may be called in to correct rebellious nuns if their own head is unable to do so. See below, p. 466. In 1501 Emma Powes, then at Romsey, is said to have been professed at King's Mead near Derby "and from that place had been removed to another priory in the Hereford diocese, where she had been prioress, and thence had come to this house." A charge of incontinence was made against her, and we know from another source that she had been prioress of Lymbrook (she was deprived on or about 24 Nov. 1488, _Hereford Reg. Myllyng_, p. 112). It is interesting that in 1492 one of the nuns had asked that "a nun who has been brought in, be restored to the place to which she is professed." Liveing, _Records of Romsey Abbey_, pp. 219, 225. One of Alnwick's injunctions to Clemence Medforde, Prioress of Ankerwyke in 1441, was "that henceforth she should not admit that nun of Hinchinbrooke either into the house or to dwell among them, and also that she should not deliver to her that bond which she has from the house of Hinchinbrooke, or any other goods which she has of the same house." _Linc. Visit._ II, p. 6. In a list of the nuns of Thetford in 1526 occurs the name of "Domina Elianora Hanam, professa in Wyke (Wix)." Jessopp, _Visit. in Dioc. Norwich_, p. 243.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1133] _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 127-9.

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

[1135] Raine, _Letters from Northern Registers_ (Rolls Ser.), pp. 196-8. See also Rotha Clay, _Hermits and Anchorites of England_, pp. 93-4.

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

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

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

[1139] _Ib._ p. 184. An "ancress" was found at this house at the time of the Dissolution.

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

[1141] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby_, f. 10 (date 1300). The author of _Dives and Pauper_ declares that such secessions were rare among women: "We se that whanne men take them to be ankeris and reclusys withinne fewe yerys comonly eyther they falle in reuersys or eresyes or they breke out for womans loue or for inkyede of ther lufe or by some gile of þe fend. But of wimen ancres so inclusid is seldome herde any of these defautys, but holely they beginne and holely they ende." _Dives and Pauper_, com. VI, ch. B.

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

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

[1144] _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 122, 125.

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

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

[1147] _P.R.O. Mins. Accts._ 1260/3.

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

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

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

[1151] _Reg. Thome de Cantilupo_, p. 201.

[1152] _New Coll._ MS. f. 85_d_.

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

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

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

[1156] Amundesham, _Annales_ (Rolls Ser.), I, pp. 65-9, _passim_.

[1157] _V.C.H. Herts._ IV, p. 424.

[1158] "I will that Ilke prior and priores that comes to my beryall at y{t} day hafe iii s iiij d and Ilke chanon and Nune xij d ... and Ilke prior and priores that comes to the xxx day [i.e. the so-called "month's-mind"] hafe vj s viij d and Ilke chanon or none that comes to the said xxx day haf xx d." _Lincoln Diocese Documents_, ed. A. Clark (E.E.T.S.), pp. 50, 53.

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

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

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

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

[1163]

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

_Tale of Beryn_, p. 10. Cf. p. 6 for the scene with the holy water sprinkler.

[1164] Langland, _Piers Plowman_, B Text, Passus XII, 36-38.

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

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

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

[1168] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 172, and Dugdale, _Mon._ V, p. 654.

[1169] _V.C.H. Essex_, II, p. 124.

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

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

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

[1173]

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

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

From "De la vie dou Monde," _Rustebeufs Gedichte hg. v. Adolf Krefaner_ (1885), p. 185.

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

[1175] _Reg. Walter de Stapeldon_, p. 95. Cf. injunctions to Polsloe, above, p. 355.

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

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

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

[1179] See above, p. 81, and compare the injunctions sent by Cardinal Nicholas of Cues to the Abbess of Sonnenburg, c. 1454, forbidding her to go on pilgrimages or to visit health resorts or to attend weddings. Eckenstein, _Woman under Monasticism_, p. 425.

[1180] Quoted in Brand's _Observations on Popular Antiquities_ (ed. 1877), pp. 382, 394. Compare the almost precisely similar account given by Erasmus in his _Guide to Christian Matrimony_ (1526), quoted in Coulton, _Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation_, pp. 439-40.

[1181] See above, p. 309 and below, p. 388.

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

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

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

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

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

[1187] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 77_d_.

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

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

[1190] Their gardens are often mentioned, e.g. at Nuncoton in 1440 it was complained that the nuns had private gardens and that some of them did not come to Compline, but wandered about in the gardens, gathering herbs. _Alnwick's Visit._ f. 72. At Stainfield in 1519 a similar complaint was made that on feast days they did not stay in the church and occupy themselves in devotion, between the Hours of Our Lady and High Mass, but came out and walked about the garden and cloisters. _V.C.H. Lincs._ II, p. 131. The nuns of Sinningthwaite (1319) were ordered to provide themselves with a competent gardener for their curtilage, so that they might always have an abundance of vegetables. _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 177. Christine de Pisan's description of the great gardens of the convent of Poissy is most attractive. See below, p. 560.

[1191] Quoted in Gasquet, _English Monastic Life_, p. 177.

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

[1193] _Alnwick's Visit._ f. 71_d_.

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

[1195] See below, p. 653.

[1196] See below, p. 589.

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

[1198] _Ancren Riwle_ (King's Classics), pp. 316-7.

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

[1200] _Hereford Epis. Reg. Spofford_, p. 82.

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

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

[1203] _V.C.H. Essex_, II, p. 124.

[1204] Cf. Coulton, _Medieval Studies_ (first series, 2nd ed., p. 61) and Bishop Hallam's admonition to Shaftesbury in 1410. _V.C.H. Dorset_, II, p. 78. Also Peckham's Constitution in 1281. Wilkins, _Concilia_, II, p. 58.

[1205] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 239.

[1206] _Reg. Godfrey Giffard_, p. 267.

[1207] _Reg. Sede Vacante_ (Worc. Hist. Soc.), p. 276.

[1208] _Reg. Ralph of Shrewsbury_, p. 241.

[1209] _Reg. Walter de Stapeldon_, p. 317.

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

[1211] _The Wife of Bath's Prologue_, ll. 545-7.

[1212] _Reg. Epis. Peckham_ (Rolls Ser.), II, p. 664.

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

[1214] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell_, f. 139_d_.

[1215] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham_, f. 343.

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

[1217] _Archaeologia_, XLVII, p. 57.

[1218] _Reg. Johannis de Pontissara_, pp. 251-2.

[1219] _Reg. Epis. Peckham_ (Rolls Ser.), II, p. 707.

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

[1221] _Exempla e sermonibus vulgaribus Jacobi Vitriacensis_, ed. T. F. Crane, p. 131.

[1222] _Anecdotes Historiques, etc. d'Etienne de Bourbon_, ed. Lecoy de La Marche, p. 229.

[1223] See below, p. 460.

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

[1225] Dugdale, _Mon._ V, p. 654.

[1226] Liveing, _Records of Romsey Abbey_, p. 218.

[1227] _Poetical Works of John Skelton_, ed. Dyce, I, p. 95.

[1228] Langland, _Piers Plowman_, ed. Skeat, Text B, Passus V, ll. 304 ff.

[1229] See above, p. 373.

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

[1231] Gower, _Mirour de l'Omne_, ed. G. C. Macaulay, p. 289. Translated in Coulton, _Med. Garn._ pp. 577-8.

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

[1233] Wood, _Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies_, II, p. 35, note _b_.

[1234] Wood, _op. cit._ pp. 35-6.

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

[1236] On this subject see Part II of Thiers' treatise _De la Clôture_, pp. 265-497.

[1237] _Ancren Riwle_ (King's Classics), p. 67.

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

[1239] _V.C.H. Oxon._ II, p. 104.

[1240] Liveing, _op. cit._ p. 232.

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

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

[1243] _Linc. Visit._ I, pp. 67-8.

[1244] _Ib._ p. 65.

[1245] See below, p. 449.

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

[1247] _Ib._ II, p. 218.

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

[1249] _Op. cit._ f. 26_d_.

[1250] Gray, _Priory of St Radegund, Cambridge_, p. 35.

[1251] Dugdale, _Mon._ IV, p. 190. See below p. 602.

[1252] _Lambeth Reg. Langham_, f. 76_d_. Compare the note in Alnwick's visitation of Studley (1445): "Sister Isabel Bartone. It is said that there is great recourse of seculare guests to the aforesaid Isabel and to her chamber." _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 26_d_.

[1253] _Archaeologia_, XLVII, p. 57.

[1254] A few more examples may be quoted. At Swine one of the _comperta_ of Giffard's visitation in 1267-8 runs: "The household of Sir Robert de Hilton, knight, wanders about far too freely (_nimis dissolute_) in the cloister and parlour, and often holds very suspicious conversations with the nuns and sisters, whence it is feared that harm may come. And this same Robert is very injurious and dangerous to them, wherefore, for fear of his oppression, the canons of the house lately, without the consent of the convent, gave him a barn full of corn, with which the convent should have been maintained." _Reg. Walter Giffard_, p. 148. At Nunmonkton in 1397 the Prioress, Margaret Fairfax, was ordered to see that John Munkton (the same who scandalised the convent by feasting and playing tables with her in her room), Sir William Aschby, chaplain, William Snowe and Thomas Pape held no conversation nor kept company with her, nor with any nun of her house, except in the presence of two of the elder nuns, and she was warned not to allow clerks to frequent the priory without reasonable cause. Dugdale, _Mon._ IV, p. 194. At Rusper in 1524 "a certain William Tychenor has frequent access to the said priory and there sows discord between the prioress and sisters and others living there." _Sussex Arch. Coll._ V, p. 257. It will be noticed how often these suspected visitors are clerics; the prefix "sir" in the Nuncoton extract quoted in the text almost certainly denotes a churchman and the persons mentioned are probably secular clergy or canons from neighbouring houses such as Newhouse, probably chantry-priests and parish chaplains. See below, p. 416.

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

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

[1257] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell_, f. 34_d_.

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

[1259] _Reg. Epis. J. Peckham_, III, pp. 851-2.

[1260] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell_, f. 100_d_.

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

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

[1263] _Yorks. Arch. Journ._ XVI, p. 441. Compare Alnwick's injunctions to Catesby (1442), Langley (1440-1) and St Michael's, Stamford (1440). _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 51, 117, _Alnwick's_ MS. f. 83_d_.

[1264] _Yorks. Arch. Journ._ XVI, p. 452 (cf. p. 440). These injunctions were very common, for the rule was often broken. Peckham's regulation for Wherwell (1284) was that no man was to enter after sunset at night, or before the end of chapter (which followed directly after Prime) in the morning. _Reg. Epis. J. Peckham_, II, p. 653. For other examples see Romsey (1302-11), Liveing, _op. cit._ pp. 102, 103; Moxby (1318), _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 239; Sopwell (1338), Dugdale, _Mon._ III, p. 366; Wroxall (1338), _Worc. Reg. Sede Vacante_, p. 275; Heynings (1351), _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell_, f. 34_d_; Elstow (1387), _ib._, _Reg. Memo. Bokyngham_, f. 343: St Mary's Neasham (1436), _V.C.H. Durham_, II, p. 107; St Helen's, Bishopsgate (1439), Dugdale, _Mon._ IV, p. 552; Nunappleton (1489), _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 172; Studley (1530-1), _Archaeologia_, XLVII, p. 59; Nuncoton (1531), _ib._ pp. 56, 59.

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

[1266] _Cantarista_ usually means a chantry-priest. The more usual word is _Precentrix_.

[1267] Chaucer, _Boke of the Duchesse_, ll. 300-4.

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

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

[1270] _Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham_, II, pp. 652-3. Compare injunctions to Barking, _ib._ I, p. 84, and to St Sepulchre's, Canterbury, _ib._ II, p. 706.

[1271] _Ib._ II, p. 663 "volentes ibi moniales curiose respicere vel cum eis garrulas attemptare."

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

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

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

[1275] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 172. He also said that "No man loge undir the dortir nor oon the baksede, but if hit be such sad persones by whome your house may be holpyne and socured w{t}out slaundir or suspicion."

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

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

[1278] As at Godstow in 1432, _Linc. Visit._ I, p. 67, or Romsey in 1523, Liveing, _Records of Romsey Abbey_, p. 244.

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

[1280] _Linc. Visit._ II, p. 116. Compare injunctions to Catesby, Langley, Markyate and St Michael's, Stamford. _Ib._ pp. 51, 177, and _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. ff. 6, 83_d_. For other examples see Lymbrook (1277), _Reg. Thome de Cantilupo_, p. 201; Polsloe (1319), _Reg. W. de Stapeldon_, p. 317; Studley (1530), _Archaeologia_, XLVII, p. 54.

[1281] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 83_d_, cf. f. 6, and _Linc. Visit._ II, p. 177.

[1282] Dugdale, _Mon._ IV, p. 554. Compare Romsey (1387), _New Coll._ MS. f. 86; Nuncoton (1531), _Archaeologia_, XLVII, p. 60. St Benedict's Rule forbids all letters (cap. LIV).

[1283] _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 46, 177; _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. ff. 39_d_, 76, 95_d_.

[1284] _Ib._ p. 119.

[1285] _Linc. Visit._ II, p. 185.

[1286] _Ib._ p. 133.

[1287] _Ib._ pp. 113, MS. ff. 71_d_, 72, 77.

[1288] For other examples see Romsey (1311), Liveing, _op. cit._ p. 104; Clementhorpe (1317), Hampole (1308, 1314), Nunappleton (1346), Rosedale (1315), Arthington (1315, 1318); _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, pp. 129, 163-4, 172, 174, 188. Sopwell (1338), Dugdale, _Mon._ III, p. 366; Heynings (1392), _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham_, f. 397_d_; Lymbrook (1437), _Hereford Epis. Reg. Spofford_, p. 81; Burnham (1432-6), _Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Lincoln_, I, p. 24; Redlingfield (1514), _Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich_, pp. 139-40; Flamstead (1530), _V.C.H. Herts._ IV, p. 433; Nuncoton (1531), _Archaeologia_, XLVII, p. 58; Sinningthwaite (1534), _Yorks. Arch. Journ._ XVI, pp. 440-1. The injunction to St Helen's, Bishopsgate, in 1432 has an odd variation: "withowte specialle graunte hadde in the chapetter house, among yow alle." Dugdale, _Mon._ IV, pp. 553-4.

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

[1290] _Wykeham's Reg._ II, pp. 162-3. On this couple, see Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, pp. 364 ff.

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

[1292] _Reg. J. de Grandisson_, pt. I, p. 190.

[1293] _V.C.H. Beds._ I, p. 355.

[1294] _Reg. John le Romeyn_, I, p. 114.

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

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

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

[1298] _Linc. Visit._ II, p. 185.

[1299] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 76. Compare a _compertum_ at St Sepulchre, Canterbury, in 1367-8. "Perhendinantes male fame steterunt cum priorissa, ad quas habebatur eciam accessus nimium suspectus," _Lambeth Reg. Langham_, f. 76_d_.

[1300] _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 120, 122.

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

[1302] _Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. of Lincoln_, I, p. 87.

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

[1304] _V.C.H. Yorks._ II, p. 165.

[1305] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 39_d_.

[1306] Possibly a priest.

[1307] _Sussex Arch. Coll._ IX, p. 18.

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

[1309] _Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Lincoln_, I, pp. 48-9. Compare Gray's injunction, laying more stress on married boarders. _Ib._ p. 53.

[1310] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell_, f. 34_d_.

[1311] _Visit. Linc._ II, p. 135. For other injunctions against boarders see Godstow, Gracedieu, Harrold, Langley, Nuncoton, Stixwould, _ib._ pp. 115, 124-5, 131, 177, _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. ff. 77_d_, 75_d_; Wherwell, Romsey (1284), Sheppey (1286), _Reg. Epis. Peckham_, II, pp. 653-4, III, p. 924; Wilberfoss, Nunkeeling and Nunappleton (1281-2), _Reg. William Wickwane_, pp. 112-3, 140-1; Polsloe (1319), _Reg. W. de Stapeldon_, p. 317; Canonsleigh (1391), _Reg. of Brantyngham_, pt. II, p. 724; Farwell (1367), _Reg. R. de Stretton_, p. 119; Polesworth (1352, 1456), _V.C.H. Warwick_, II, p. 63. These are only a few examples taken at random; the registers of the Archbishops of York and of the Bishops of Lincoln alone record many more. (See the _V.C.H._ for the counties in these dioceses, _passim_.)

[1312] _Reg. Epis. J. Peckham_, II, p. 664; Liveing, _op. cit._ pp. 102, 165.

[1313] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell_, f. 100_d_; _Linc. Visit._ I, p. 67; II, p. 115.

[1314] _Gynewell_, f. 139_d_, _V.C.H. Beds._ I, p. 355; _Linc. Visit._ I, pp. 48-9, 53.

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

[1316] _Reg. of Brantyngham_, pt. II, p. 724.

[1317] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 173.

[1318] See examples above, p. 410.

[1319] See Ch. VI, _passim_.

[1320] _Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich_ (Camden Soc.), p. 290.

[1321] _Cal. of Papal Letters_, IV, pp. 37-8.

[1322] _Ib._ IV, p. 212.

[1323] _Ib._ IV, p. 167.

[1324] _Ib._ IV, p. 182.

[1325] _Ib._ IV, p. 394.

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

[1327] _Ib._ VI, p. 132.

[1328] _Ib._ VII, p. 220.

[1329] _Ib._ V, p. 91.

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

[1331] _Cal. of Papal Letters_, IV, p. 170.

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

[1333] _Le Livere de Engletere_ (Rolls Series), p. 344.

[1334] _Cal. of Close Rolls_ (1318-23), p. 428.

[1335] _Ib._ (1323-7), pp. 88-9; cf. _Le Livere de Engletere_, p. 350.

[1336] _V.C.H. Lincs._ II, p. 184.

[1337] _Cal. of Close Rolls_ (1307-13), p. 114.

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

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

[1340] Browning, _Fra Lippo Lippi_.

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

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

[1343] _V.C.H. Hants._ II, p. 135.

[1344] Dugdale, _Mon._ III, p. 369.

[1345] Gibbons, _Ely Epis. Records_, p. 406.

[1346] _Cal. of Pat. Rolls_ (1381-5), p. 355.

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

[1348] _Linc. Reg. Dalderby_, f. 16.

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

[1350] _Cal. of Pat. Rolls_ (1340-3), p. 127.

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

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

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

[1354] Dugdale, _Mon._ II, pp. 316, 452, 636.

[1355] Serjeantson, _Delapré Abbey_ (1909), pp. 21-3.

[1356] Graham, _Essay on Engl. Monasteries_ (Hist. Ass. 1913), p. 29. The text of the assessment is given in the notes to the _Taxatio Ecclesiastica Pape Nicholai_ (Record Com. 1802).

[1357] _The Chronicle of Lanercost_, translated by Sir Herbert Maxwell [1913], p. 136.

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

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

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

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

[1362] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 160, cp. the case of Armathwaite below. The muniments of Carrow were burnt during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Hoare, C. M., _Hist. of an East Anglian Soke_ (Bedford 1918), p. 112. "The destruction of charters, privileges and muniments was a severe loss; evidence for the holding of each strip of land and in support of every custom was of the utmost importance." Graham, _St Gilb. of Semp. and the Gilbertines_, p. 138.

[1363] _V.C.H. Cumberland_, II, p. 190, and Dugdale, _Mon._ III, pp. 271-2.

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

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

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

[1367] Dugdale, _Mon._ II, pp. 452, 636.

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

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

[1369] _Raoul de Cambrai_, pub. P. Meyer et A. Longnon, _Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr._ 1882, stanzas LXIII-LXXI, _passim_ (pp. 42-50).

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

[1371] See M. K. Brady, _Psycho-Analysis and its Place in Life_ [1919], p. 117; H. O. Taylor, _The Medieval Mind_ [2nd ed., 1914], I, ch. XX.

[1372] See above, p. 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. 422 ff.

[1375] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton_, ff. 5_d_, 32_d_.

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

[1377] _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby_, f. 16. Translated in R. M. Serjeantson, _Hist. of Delapré Abbey, Northampton_, pp. 7-8.

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

[1379] _P.R.O. Chancery Warrants_, Series I, File 1759; _Cal. of Pat. Rolls_, 1401-5, pp. 418, 472.

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

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

[1382] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 159.

[1383] _V.C.H. Lincs._ II, p. 138. The surname "Suffewyk" should probably read Luffewyk, i.e. Lowick.

[1384] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 171.

[1385] _Ib._ III, p. 177.

[1386] See for Renaissance Italy, J. A. Symonds, _The Renaissance in Italy_ (1886), VI, p. 340; A. Gagnière, _Les Confessions d'une Abbesse du xvi{e} siècle_ (Paris, 1888), pp. 128 ff. (Felice Rasponi); G. Marcotti, _Donne e Monache_ (Firenze, 1884); but ecclesiastics were found among these _monachini_. In France the same pursuit became fashionable under the League. For a later date the _Memoirs_ of Casanova provide the most striking illustrations.

[1387] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 39_d_.

[1388] _Linc. Visit._ I, p. 84.

[1389] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 113.

[1390] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. ff. 83, 83_d_.

[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. 129_d_.

[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 the _Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy_) made Gascoigne his implacable enemy, while there is no foundation for his statement that Stafford was of illegitimate birth. His charge is therefore unworthy of belief. The scandal which later connected the name of John Stokesley, Bishop of London, with Anne Colte, Abbess of Wherwell, seems likely to be equally devoid of foundation, though she was several times summoned before the Council in 1534; the King and Cromwell evidently resented her refusal to give a farm to one of their protégés. _L. and P. Hen. VIII_, VI, 1361, VII, 527-9, 907; _V.C.H. Hants._ II, p. 136.

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

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

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

[1401] See above, pp. 386-9, 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 the _Liber Poenitentialis_ of Theodore the Anglo-Saxon nun guilty of immorality is given eight years of penance and ten if there be a child; a married layman and a nun who are lovers have six years of penance and seven if there be a child. Here, as ever, the Church went on the principle that sin was bad but scandal worse; _si non caste tamen caute_. Of the practice of abortion I find no record in English pre-Reformation documents, though Henry VIII's disreputable commissioner, Dr Layton, accused the Yorkshire nuns of taking potations "ad prolem conceptum opprimendum." _Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries_ (Camden Soc. 1843), p. 97. There is a proved case of it in Eudes Rigaud's visitation of St-Aubin (1256), and a suspicion at St Saëns (1264), _Reg. Visit. Rigaud_, ed. Bonnin, pp. 255, 491. See below, p. 668. One of Caesarius of Heisterbach's _exempla_ hangs upon it. Caes. Heist. _Dial. Mirac._ ed. Strange, II, p. 331. In seventeenth and eighteenth century Italy the practice seems to have been common, witness Casanova.

[1410] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 96.

[1411] _Wykeham's Reg._ II, pp. 114-5.

[1412] "Et proles obiit immediate post." Jessopp, _op. cit._ p. 109.

[1413] See e.g. faculty given "to dispense twenty persons of illegitimate birth of the realms of France and England, whether sons of priests or married persons, or monks, _or nuns_, to be ordained and to hold two benefices apiece." _Cal. of Papal Letters_, IV, p. 170.

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

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

[1416] See below, Note F.

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

[1418] _Reg. John of Drokensford_, pp. 60, 126, 167, 287.

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

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

[1421] Dugdale, _Mon._ II, p. 334.

[1422] _Cal. of Pap. Letters_, III, p. 169. She was born 11 March 1278 and took the veil at the age of seven years. Some annalists put the date of her profession at 1285 and some at 1289; in any case the Warenne charge was not made until 1345. See above, p. 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] See Note 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), from _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton_, f. 154.

[1431] _V.C.H. Beds._ I, p. 389.

[1432] _V.C.H. Northants._ II, p. 126.

[1433] _V.C.H. Oxon._ II, p. 103.

[1434] _V.C.H. Beds._ I, p. 360.

[1435] _V.C.H. Lincs._ II, p. 179.

[1436] _V.C.H. Bucks._ I, p. 383.

[1437] _V.C.H. Northants._ II, p. 114.

[1438] _V.C.H. Northants._ II, p. 101.

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

[1440] _Linc. Visit._ I, pp. 81-2.

[1441] _Linc. Visit._ I, pp. 82-6.

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

[1443] Lambeth, _Reg. Courtenay_, I, f. 336.

[1444] _Linc. Visit._ I, p. 50. Flemyng adds "or manifestly suspect."

[1445] _Ib._ p. 54.

[1446] _Ib._ p. 65.

[1447] _Ib._ pp. 69-71.

[1448] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 6.

[1449] See above, p. 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] See _V.C.H. Hants._ II, pp. 129-31 (Romsey, where the date is wrongly given as 1312 by a slip), 124, 135, 151. Unfortunately all but the Romsey visitation are given in the barest summary.

[1456] _V.C.H. Hants._ II, p. 130.

[1457] Above, pp. 453-4.

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

[1459] _Linc. Visit._ II, p. 48.

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

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

[1462] _V.C.H. Dorset_, II, p. 78.

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

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

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

[1466] _V.C.H. Beds._ I, p. 389.

[1467] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 39_d_. 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 in _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, pp. 175, 189. There is an extremely severe penance imposed by Archbishop Zouche on a nun who had several times run away from Thicket, _ib._ p. 124, and another by Archbishop Lee in 1535 cited in the last note.

[1473] Jessopp, _Visit. in Dioc. Norwich_, p. 110.

[1474] _V.C.H. Suffolk_, II, p. 84.

[1475] "Expresse inhibentes, ne infuturum aliqua monialis de crimine incontinencie conuicta vel publice diffamata, antequam de innocencia sic diffamate constiterit, ad aliquod officium domus predicte et precipue ad ostiorum custodiam admittatur." Lambeth, _Reg. Courtenay_, I, f. 336. Injunction to Elstow in 1390 and repeated by Bishop Flemyng in 1421. See above, p. 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 and VII, p. 373.

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

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

[1485] See below, p. 491.

[1486] Bede, _Eccles. Hist._ Book IV, ch. 25.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1493] For these ladies, see references in p. 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 a _detectum_ at Crabhouse (1514): "Item, the younger nuns are disobedient and when the seniors charge them with their faults the prioress punishes alike the reformers and the sinners." _Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich_, ed. Jessopp, p. 109.

[1496] _Linc. Visit._ I, p. 50. Compare _Reg. Walter Giffard_, p. 249; _Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich_, ed. Jessopp ("Item Dna. A. D. et Dna. G. S. ... revelant secreta religionis et correctionis factae in conventu") _Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham_, ff. 397, 397_d_ ("Et quod nullum decetero capitulum in domo capitulari in presencia secularis seu extranee persone quoquomodo teneatur sub pena iniunccionis nostre infrascripta").

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

[1498] See below, Note F.

[1499] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 164.

[1500] _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 47, 120.

[1501] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 118.

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

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

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

[1505] See _Gesta Abbat._ II, p. 212.

[1506] Quoted from _P.R.O. Early Chancery Proceedings_, 181/4 in _V.C.H. Herts._ IV, pp. 424-5.

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

[1508] _V.C.H. Herts._ IV, p. 425.

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

[1510] _Gesta Abbat._ III, p. 519.

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

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

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

[1514] _V.C.H. Yorks._ III, p. 176 (quoting Dugdale, _Mon._ V, pp. 464-5 and _Reg. Giffard_ (Surtees Soc.), p. 295).

[1515] See _Linc. Visit._ II, _passim_, and also the Editor's admirable introduction to _Linc. Visit._ I, pp. ix-xiii.

[1516] See above, p. 250.

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

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

[1519] _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 49-50.

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

[1521] _Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham_, II, pp. 706-8 (injunctions), 708-9 (mandate to commissary). Compare the proceedings at Ankerwyke six months after Alnwick's visitation. _Linc. Visit._ II, p. 7.

[1522] _Linc. Visit._ I, pp. 82-3.

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

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

[1525] _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 184-5.

[1526] _Ib._ p. 4.

[1527] _Ib._ pp. 120, 122, 123-4.

[1528] _V.C.H. Lincs._ II, p. 76.

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

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

[1531] _Alnwick's Visit._ MS. f. 39_d_.

[1532] See above, pp. 388-9, 460.

[1533] See above, p. 469.

[1534] Liveing, _Records of Romsey Abbey_, p. 220.

[1535] _Linc. Visit._ II, p. 5.

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

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

[1538] Liveing, _op. cit._, pp. 99, etc.

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

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

[1541] See E. Gilliat Smith, _St Clare of Assisi, her Life and Legislation_ (1914); Mrs Balfour, _Life and Legend of the Lady St Clare_, with introd. by Father Cuthbert (1910); Fr. Marianus Fiege, _The Princess of Poverty_ (Evansville, Ind. 1900) which contains a translation of Thomas of Celano's _Life of St Clare_ (_Acta SS. Aug._ t. II, pp. 754-67), Paschal Robinson, _Life of St Clare_ (1910), Locatelli, _Ste Claire d'Assise_ (Rome, 1899-1900). Also _La Vie et Légende de Madame Sainte Claire par Frère Françoys de Puis_, 1563, ed. Arnauld Goffin (Paris, 1907).

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

[1543] Pirckheimer, _B. Opera_, ed. Goldast (1610). See also, T. Binder, _Charitas Pirkheimer_ (1878), and Eckenstein, _op. cit._ pp. 458-76.

[1544] _The Life of St Theresa of Jesus, written by Herself_, tr. D. Lewis, ed. Zimmerman (1904). _The Letters of St Theresa_, tr. J. Dalton (1902). See also G. Cunningham Grahame, _Santa Teresa_, 2 vols. (1894).

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

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

[1547] _Acta SS. Aprilis_, t. II, pp. 266-365. See also Huysmans, _Ste. Lydwine de Schiedam_ (3rd ed. Paris, 1901).

[1548] _Acta SS. Jun._ t. IV, pp. 270 ff. See also Th. Wollersheim, _Das Leben der ekstatischen Jungfrau Christina von Stommeln_ (Cologne, 1859); and Renan, _Nouvelles Études d'Histoire Religieuse_ (1884) (_Une Idylle Monacale au xiii{e} siècle: Christine de Stommeln_), pp. 353-96. Extracts from Christina's correspondence and life by Peter of Sweden are translated in Coulton, _Med. Garn._ pp. 402-21.

[1549] On these saintly and learned women see Eckenstein, _op. cit._ cc. III and IV, and Montalembert, _The Monks of the West_ (introd. Gasquet), vol. IV, Book XV. The great fourteenth century mystic Julian of Norwich (1343-c. 1413) was, it is true, connected with Carrow Priory, but she was an anchoress and never a nun there; see above, p. 366.

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

[1551] Langland, _Piers Plowman_, ed. Skeat. C text, Passus X, 72-5.

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

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

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

Bujeaud, J., _Chants et chansons populaires des provinces de l'ouest_ (1866), I, pp. 136-7.

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

[1555] Uhland, _Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder_ (1844-5), t. II, p. 854 (No. 328). A slightly modernised version. Also printed in _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_, ed. von Arnim and Brentano (Reclam ed.), p. 25, and in _Deutsches Leben im Volkslied um 1530_, ed. Liliencron (1884), p. 226. Translation by Bithell, _The Minnesingers_, I (1909), p. 200, except the last two lines, which are by Mr Coulton; there is another in Coulton, _Med. Garn._ p. 476.

[1556] Ferrari, _Canzone per andare in maschera per carnesciale_, pp. 31-2. Referred to in Jeanroy, _op. cit._ I have been unable to consult the book.

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

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

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

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

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

[1562] See below, p. 611.

[1563] _The Court of Love in Chaucer's Poetical Works_, ed. R. Morris (1891), IV, pp. 38-40.

[1564] Lydgate's _Temple of Glas_, ed. J. Schick (E.E.T.S. 1891), p. 8.

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

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

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

[1567] _An Alphabet of Tales_, ed. M. M. Banks (E.E.T.S.). No. CCCCLXVIII, pp. 319-20. (In this and the following quotations from this work in this