CHAPTER V.

THE MEDIÆVAL NUN.

Dominance of the Church in the Middle Ages--The Conventual System--Occupations of the Nuns--Power of the Abbesses--Disputes between Religious Houses and the Laity--Latitude allowed to Nuns--Convents Educational Centres--Effects of the Suppression of Convents--Complaints of the Laity.

Throughout the Middle Ages the Church was the dominant power in England. It may seem absurd to characterize a period extending over several centuries by any one feature, but the supremacy of the Church is so marked as to stamp the whole of that changeful time. The relationship of the Church to the laity was that of guardian and ruler, in temporal as well as spiritual matters. Where the Church did not inspire reverence it inspired fear, and where there was not willing obedience there was dependence.

The position of women with regard to the Church was affected by this attitude of the Church to the world. As servants of this mighty organization, women who embraced a religious life were lifted by the Church’s power and influence above the heads of the rest of the community, of whom they were frequently the teachers, helpers, advisers, and general benefactors in time of need. It was in the nunneries that the education of girls of all classes was carried on. Convent schools were the only schools either for rich or poor, and the “sisters” the only women able to qualify themselves to become instructors.

The nuns, again, were the chief dispensers of charity. The lady of the manor might be a bountiful almsgiver, but she could not be so well acquainted with the needs of the poor as the convent sisters who tended them in sickness and knew all the troubles of their daily life. The convent was a centre of help and enlightenment. Even where the nuns never left their walls, they were constantly employed on benevolent works. Philanthropy, in the Middle Ages, was a religious duty, but it was only in connection with the Church that it was practised in an organized way. The dole-giving at great houses was scarcely philanthropy; it was part of the household system, and the recipients of the bounty regarded it almost as a right.

Women’s position in relation to the Church assumes a different aspect when the limitations of ordinary life are considered. There was no social work in which women could engage carried on independently of the Church. The “religious” had the field to themselves. The lay worker was of no importance whatever unless she had wealth which enabled her to confer benefits, or dignities which gave her prominence. Through the convent the Church’s influence was diffused among the people, its doctrines leavened the minds of the masses, its authority and power were felt everywhere among high and low.

Their relation to the Church elevated women to a plane above the common level. For although they were in subjection to their spiritual rulers, those rulers had authority far greater in civil matters than their successors can boast of in the present day. The humble nun who went about with downcast eyes, who was taught to obey without questioning, was the instrument of a power greater than that of kings. In the progress of civilization, it was women who, through the Church, gained the firstfruits of culture.

In the Middle Ages, and, indeed, as long as the conventual system lasted as part of the English Church, the nun was teacher, philanthropist, doctor, and nurse. Her duties were by no means confined to the cloister. At Gloucester, where there was a Benedictine convent, the nuns went about among the people, teaching, advising, consoling, and discoursing on subjects with which convent sisters are supposed to have little acquaintance. Nuns were sometimes accused of giving too much attention to housewifery. Among other things, they are said to have composed moral tales like those of Hannah More and her sisters, and to have read them to the village maidens.

“The English nuns,” writes Paul Casenigo, a Venetian traveller of the sixteenth century, “gave instruction to the poorer virgins (peasants) as to their duties when they became wives; to be obedient to their husbands, and to give good example.”

The poorer folk felt it a great loss when the kindly sisters--many of them gentlewomen of good birth--to whom they were accustomed to carry all their troubles, were ruthlessly dispersed at the time of the dissolution of the religious houses. The nunnery of Godstow, near Oxford, famous for its unblemished reputation, was quite a centre of benevolence. There were no clothing clubs in that or any other neighbourhood, no “mothers’ meetings,” no sewing-parties for making garments for the poor, no penny dinners, no dispensaries, no hospitals. If it had not been for the good nuns of Godstow, the poor must have suffered greatly. Henri Ambère, a French architect, says of Godstow, that he saw no such excellent nuns in his own country as were to be seen in that convent. Warm clothing was made for the poor, who, in winter, had to bar out the light to keep out the cold by means of shutters, and whose chimney consisted of a simple hole in the roof through which the rain and wind poured down, while the smoke struggled up ineffectually. Were there any sick? it was the nuns to whom application was made for remedies, which were compounded within the convent walls. Were there any infirm and starving? there was food for them at the convent. Was there a wedding in the village? it was the nuns who provided the bride with her simple trousseau. Every year provision was made to give a couple of suits of clothing and the sum of ten shillings to six peasant girls on their marriage.[11]

Thus we find the nuns carrying on, as part of their service to the Church, all kinds of secular work, now largely performed by lay members of the community.

With the fall of the monastic houses much of this work was dropped. The Anglican Church, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had no such hold on the people at large as the Romish Church had acquired. As an organization for dealing with the masses, it was particularly ineffective. In this century the Church has regained something of what it lost, or rather it has covered ground which it had never before really occupied. One of the most striking features of its remarkable activity at the present day is the large part taken by women. Without the service of women, the Church would be unable to carry on the greater portion of its secular work. But there is a noticeable difference between the way in which the work is undertaken in the present age and in what are called the Ages of Faith. That which is now accomplished by co-operation among individuals, without reference to any authority, was formerly only practicable under the ægis of the Church. Women could never have performed that kind of ministry to the community without the help of the Church. It was in the convent they obtained the qualification and the means, and it was the convent garb that protected them in the discharge of their outside duties.

There is another aspect in which women’s relation to the Church may be studied. The heads of the great religious houses were necessarily persons of importance, with privileges and great responsibilities. They had considerable wealth at their disposal, and in authority and influence they ranked among the nobles of the land, to whom they were often allied by birth. An abbess was a person to be reckoned with and consulted as much as an abbot. In the age of double monasteries she was superior in power. The origin of these institutions is a little obscure. It has been thought that the idea was derived from Gaul, whither the Saxon princesses were sent to be educated. Dr. Lingard has another theory. He considers the double monasteries were formed to prevent the nuns from having any excuse for intercourse with laymen. A convent could not be worked entirely by women; prejudice and tradition, as well as the limitations of sex, stood in the way.

“The functions of the sacred ministry had always been the exclusive privilege of the men, and they alone were able to support the fatigues of husbandry and conduct the extensive estates which many convents had received from the piety of their benefactors.”

Men were necessary evils; the question was how to make their presence innocuous.

“It was conceived that the difficulty might be diminished if it could not be removed, and with this view some monastic legislators devised the plan of establishing double monasteries. In the vicinity of the edifice destined to receive the virgins who had dedicated their chastity to God, was erected a building for the residence of a society of monks or canons, whose duty it was to officiate at the altar and superintend the external ceremony of the community. The mortified and religious life to which they had bound themselves by the most solemn engagements was supposed to render them superior to temptation; and, to remove even the suspicion of evil, they were strictly forbidden to enter the inclosure of the women, except on particular occasions, with the permission of the superior, and in the presence of witnesses. But the abbess retained the supreme controul over the monks as well as the nuns; their prior depended on her choice, and was bound to regulate his conduct by her instructions.”

Double monasteries were very common in Ireland, and were in vogue in England during the first eight or nine centuries of the Christian era. Over these institutions it was always a woman who had supreme rule. No abbot could be persuaded to take charge of a community of nuns, so the abbess ruled over both monks and nuns.

“The whole together formed a sort of vast family, maternity being the natural form of authority--all the more so as the neophytes were often admitted with all their dependents, as was Cædmon, who entered Whitby with all belonging to him, including a child of three years old.”[12]

Abbesses were great people in Saxon times--princesses of royal blood, like St. Hilda, who was grand-niece to Edwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria. St. Ethelburga, who also lived in the seventh century, and became abbess of Brie, in the diocese of Meaux, was the daughter of a king of East Anglia; St. Ethelreda, who built Ely monastery, was a queen, and the daughter of a king; St. Werburga of Ely was the daughter of Wulfere, king of Mercia, and niece of Ethelred, who put her to rule over all the female religious houses. With her royal uncle’s aid, she founded Trentham and Hanbury in Staffordshire, and Wedon in Northamptonshire. There were great solemnities when she became a nun and entered the Abbey of Ely, of which St. Audry was then the head. Her qualities and character were celebrated in the following lines:--

“In beaute amyable she was equall to Rachell, Comparable to Sara in fyrme fidelyte, In sadnes and wysedom lyke to Abygaell: Replete as Delbora with grace of prophecy, Equyvalent to Ruth she was in humylyte, In pulchrytude Rebecca lyke Hester in Colynesse, Lyke Judyth in vertue and proued holynesse.”[13]

For an abbess the cloister rule was relaxed. She might come and go, and see whom she pleased. Her signature is to be found to the charters of the realm, and she had the right to assist in the deliberations of the national assemblies.

“In 694 abbesses were in so great esteem for their sanctity and prudence, that they were summoned to the Council at Becanceld (in Kent), and the names of five (not one abbot) subscribed to the constitutions there made.”

This is the first time they are mentioned as taking part in a synod. The Abbess Elfleda was present at a council held respecting the affairs of Wilfrid, Bishop of Leicester, early in the eighth century. She attended to represent her late brother, King Alcfrid, who died in 705, and who, in the matter of Bishop Wilfrid, had, she asserted, promised, on his death-bed, to stand by the decree of the Apostolic See.

Abbesses were also summoned to attend or to send proxies to the King’s Council in later times, as in 1306, when four abbesses

“were cited to the Great Council held to grant an aid on the knighting of the Prince of Wales--an assembly which, although not properly constituted, exercised some of the functions of a parliament.”[14]

The Parliamentary writ bears the names of the abbesses of Wilton, Wynton or Winchester, Shaftesbury, and Barking, then spelt Berkeyngg. Abbesses were required to furnish military service by proxy.

The Saxon abbesses were invested with immense powers, and owed obedience to none save the Pope. Much of the deference paid them was doubtless on account of their high rank, abbesses being always of good birth, and frequently of royal blood. In later times, as well as in the Saxon era, this was the case. Anne, Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV., was prioress of Sion monastery.

Abbesses seem to have been tenacious of their privileges, and to have known how to resist the encroachments of the clergy when any interference was attempted. It has been said that they claimed the right to ordain. At the same time, they were subject to deposition if they abused their power or were inattentive to their duties. The nuns would carry their complaints to the bishop, who would occasionally take the superintendence of a nunnery into his own hands instead of appointing any abbess--perhaps dividing the immediate governance between two of the nuns. It was the duty of an abbess not only to look after the internal affairs of the convent, but to see that the necessary repairs to the building were carried out.

The powers of an abbess varied according to period and place, for while in some cases they were free to act pretty much as they pleased, in others they were subject to strict rules, and had their liberty much curtailed.

“By a council near Paris, in the eighth century, it is ordered that the bishop, as well as the abbess, may send a nun misbehaving herself to a penitentiary; that no abbess is to superintend more than one monastery, or to quit the precincts except once a year, when summoned by her sovereign; and that the abbess must do penance in the monastery for her faults by the bishop’s direction. Charlemagne enacted that the bishop must report to the Crown any abbess guilty of misconduct, in order that she might be deposed. Abbesses were forbidden, in the reign of his successor, to walk alone, and thus were placed, in some degree, under the surveillance of the sisterhood. Charlemagne prohibited abbesses from laying hands on any one, or pronouncing the blessing.”[15]

On account of the property and lands belonging to convents, abbesses and prioresses were constantly brought into relationship with the outer world, and not always in a very pleasant way. The command which they had over the fiefs of the convent was a frequent source of friction with the laity. In 1292 the Prioress of Mynchin Buckland, in Somersetshire, was a party in a suit, together with a widow and two men, touching the right of common pasture in an appurtenance of the convent. The case went against the religious house, but the prioress and the widow both escaped paying their share of the costs on the plea of poverty.[16]

Sometimes troubles arose from the interference of the clergy. In the fourteenth century a diocesan official made himself very disagreeable to the sisters of Mynchin Buckland priory, demanding to see their title to certain churches which they had held from time immemorial. The sisters replied by demanding, in their turn, to see his commission, whereupon he grew indignant, and imposed upon them a heavy fine for contumacy. The case was carried to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who at once stopped the proceedings of the diocesan official, and restored quietude to the convent.

In the reign of Edward III. we find a prioress suing a sheriff for recovery of a pension granted to her convent in the reign of Henry III. As the sheriff positively refused to pay, the prioress carried the case to the King’s Court, where the recalcitrant sheriff was thoroughly beaten. Lands granted to a convent without due formalities sometimes created difficulties, as in the reign of Henry IV., when the Prioress of Mynchin Barrow found her claim to a meadow which had been granted without the royal licence was bringing her into conflict with the laity. However, her rights were maintained after full examination.

The head of a religious house, whether abbot or abbess, had a great many secular duties. At Sion Monastery, which was a double house founded by Henry V. in 1415, the abbess who was at the head had the charge of all the money derived from the proceeds of the nuns’ work, and also from the endowments of the foundation. In the charter it is set forth--

“that the abbess of the aforesaid place and her successors shall be persons able to prosecute all manner of causes and actions real and personal and mixed, of whatsoever nature or kind they may be, and to answer and defend the same as well in courts spiritual as temporal, before all judges, ecclesiastical and secular whatsoever.”[17]

There was very often a certain amount of Church patronage connected with a religious house. The Prioress of Cannyngton Priory had the living of a church in the diocese of Exeter in her hands, and frequently ecclesiastics were admitted to Holy Orders on titles granted by a prioress and her convent.

Mynchin Buckland, which was a preceptory as well as a priory, was disturbed in 1270 by the conduct of the preceptor, who did not like to see any money paid for the maintenance of the sisterhood. This was the only community of women established by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Nunneries were generally under the superintendence of the local clergy, who were responsible to the bishop, and if there were any disorders, an official was sent down to inquire into the matter. The diocesan officials had large powers, and used them liberally.

Another thing which brought the convent into relationship with the outer world, was the fact of their being used as houses of entertainment, and as places of residence for ladies temporarily in want of a home.[18] Visitors were constantly sent by the bishop to lodge and board at a priory. These ladies always lived at their own cost, and it was specially enjoined that they were not to interfere with the routine of the establishment. They brought their own servants, and sometimes remained a considerable time. These visitors never came without an express order from the bishop.

The kind of accommodation to be found in a priory may be gathered from the following inventory of the contents of a chamber allotted to one “Dame Agnes Browne” in the priory of Minster, in Sheppey.

“Stuff given her by her frends:--A fetherbed, a bolster, 2 pyllows, a payre of blankatts, 2 corse coverleds, 4 pare of shets good and badde, an olde tester and selar of paynted clothes and 2 peces of hangyng to the same; a square cofer carvyd, with 2 bed clothes upon the cofer, and in the wyndow a lytill cobard of waynscott carvyd and 2 lytill chestes; a small goblet with a cover of sylver parcell gylt, a lytill maser with a brynne of sylver and gylt, a lytell pese of sylver and a spore of sylver, 2 lytyll latyn candellstyks, a fire panne and a pare of tonges, 2 small aundyrons, 4 pewter dysshes, a porrenger, a pewter bason, 2 skyllotts [a small pot with a long handle], a lytill brasse pot, a cawdyron and a drynkyng pot of pewter.”

There were occasions when the lady abbess dispensed hospitality on a liberal scale. At the convent of Sion, in London, it was the custom at Pardon-time, which was in the month of August, for the Court of Aldermen to pay a visit to the convent.[19] It will easily be imagined that a good deal of preparation had to be made for these visitors. They recognized the demands made upon their hostess by sending the appropriate acknowledgment of a present of wine.

In the Middle Ages nuns were allowed, under regulations, to go out and see their friends. The rule was stricter in earlier periods, and strictest of all among the double monasteries. In the first six centuries of the Christian Church, the general rule seems to have been that--

“a virgin was not permitted to leave the house or monastery except for special reason, and no one had access to her but bishop or priest.”

But this was subject to variation, for in the Roman Church, about the fourth century, we read of “holy virgins” frequenting the public baths, for which they were blamed by Cyprian. A male or female devotee could, at any time, return to the world and marry.[20]

The injunctions made in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries show that a great deal of latitude was permitted to nuns. It was not until the sixteenth century that they were rigidly confined to the cloister.[21] In the Middle Ages they were not much more under restraint, in the matter of visiting, than girls in boarding-schools and colleges at the present day. They were not to go out without express permission, or to wander from house to house when they went into the neighbouring city. Sometimes it was enjoined that they should only go to places from which they could return the same day, and at other convents they were permitted to remain out one night. In one case they were not to go “beyond the vill except from great and lawful cause; in pairs and in nun’s habit.”

The Superior of the convent of St. Helen’s, London, was admonished to be circumspect, and not to let women have the keys of the postern door, “for there is moche comyng in and oute at unlefull tymys.” That there should be any coming and going of this promiscuous kind shows how much latitude was allowed in religious houses.

Anchoresses were under stricter rules, and had less to do with the outer world.

“An anchoress must not become a schoolmistress, nor turn her anchoress-house into a school for children. Her maiden may, however, teach any little girl concerning whom it might be doubted whether she should learn among boys, but an anchoress ought to give her thoughts to God only.”[22]

The directions to the women attending on the anchoresses show how in the thirteenth century, when these rules were framed, personal cleanliness was still regarded as among the errors to be avoided, or at least a luxury to be renounced.

“Let no man see them unveiled, nor without hood. Let them look low. They ought not to kiss, nor lovingly embrace any man, neither of their acquaintance nor a stranger, _nor to wash their head_, nor to look fixedly on any man, nor to romp nor frolic with him.”

But the anchoresses themselves have permission to wash “whensoever it is necessary, as often as ye please.” They were enjoined to occupy themselves with useful and charitable work. “Assist with your own labour, as far as ye are able, to clothe yourselves and your domestics as St. Jerome teacheth.”

In 1534 the Archbishop of York wrote, among other things, the following injunction to the convent of Synningthwaite:--

“We enjoin and command by these presents that from henceforth the prioress shall diligently provide that no secular nor religious persons have resort or recourse at any time to her or any of the said sisters on any occasion, unless it be their fathers and mothers or other near kinsfolk.”

Also--

“We command and exhort the said prioress in virtue of obedience that she from henceforth license none of her sisters to go forth of the house unless it be for the profit of the house, or to visit their fathers and mothers or other their near kinsfolk, if the prioress shall think it convenient, and then the prioress shall assign some sad and discreet religious sister to go with her, and that she limit them a time to return, and that they be not over long out of the monastery.”

The nuns were accustomed to indulge in amusements, for there are injunctions which show that games and revels were common.

“Also we enjoyne you that alle daunsyng and revelyng be utterly forborne among you except Christmasse and other honest tymys of recreacyone, among yourse selfe in absence of seculars in all wyse.”

The nuns of Appleton, Yorkshire, were apparently rather jovial, and the prioress is commanded in 1489 to see “that none of your sisters use the alehouse nor the watersyde where course of strangers dayly resorte.” It was likewise ordered that the sisters should not--

“bring in, receave, or take any layman religious or secular into the chambre or any secrete place day or night, nor with thaim in such private places to commine, ete or drinke, without lycence of your priorisse.”

At Sion Monastery the rule was stricter.

“Conversation with seculars was permitted only in company and with the license of the abbess from noon to vespers, and this only on Sundays, and the great feasts of the Saints, not however by going out of the house, but by sitting at the appointed windows; for to none was it permitted after their entrance to leave the cloisters of the monastery. If any sister desired to be seen by her parents or honest and dear friends, she might, with the permission of the abbess, open the window occasionally during the year; but if she did not open it, a more abundant reward was assured to her hereafter.”[23]

This monastery is described by Wriothesley as “the vertues [most virtuous] house of religion that was in England.” Taine speaks of it in very different terms: “Au monastère de Sion les moines confesseurs des nonnes les debauchent et les absolvent tout ensemble.” Sion Monastery was of the Order of St. Bridget which was reputed to be one of the best. It was suppressed in 1539.

That there was laxity in the government of some of the convents which resulted in idleness and waste of money is evident. The Bishop of Lincoln, Longland, sent very peremptory orders to the Superior of the nuns of Cottam or Cottram, in Lincolnshire, respecting her duties:

“Ouer this I charge you lady prioresse undre the said payne that ye yereby make your accompte openly and truely in your chaptour house afore the mooste part, and the senours of your susters that they may knowe frome yere to yere the state of said house, and that ye streight upon sight hereof dymynishe the nombre of your seruants as well men as women, whiche excessyve nombre that ye kepe of them bothe is oon of the grette causes of your miserable povertye.”

This was in the second quarter of the sixteenth century.

As places of education the convents exercised the most important influence on the outside world. Even in the ninth century children were sent to England from the continent to be educated in the schools established by Theodorus and Hadrian.[24] This is the more remarkable, as in the seventh century there were so few convents in England that many of the nobility sent their daughters to be educated in France. The religious house of Brie, of which mention has already been made, as having a Saxon abbess, received the daughter of Earconberth, King of Kent, during the rule of the Abbess Fara in 640. Eight hundred years later Sir Thomas Boleyn sent his ill-fated daughter Anne, during her sojourn in France, to a convent at Brie to complete her education. It seems probable that it was the same religious house.

In the seventh and eighth centuries, the nuns were as much occupied with literary studies as the monks, reading theology and even classics, copying manuscripts, which they adorned with wonderful embellishments. They were able to correspond in Latin; some were acquainted with Greek, and they appear to have been very assiduous in the pursuit of such literature as was available.

The Abbess Eadburga and her pupil Leobgitha were both correspondents of the famous Archbishop Boniface, who lived in the eighth century. On one occasion Leobgitha sends Boniface some Latin hexameters of her own composition. In her letter she says--

“These underwritten verses I have endeavoured to compose according to the rules derived from the poets, not in a spirit of presumption, but with the desire of exciting the powers of my slender talents, and in the hope of thine assistance therein. This art I have learnt from Eadburga, who is ever occupied in studying the divine law.”

The lines run thus--

“Arbiter omnipotens solusqui cuncta creavit, In regno patris semperqui lumine fulget; Qua jugiter flagrans sit regnet gloria Christi, Illæsum servet semper te jure perenni.”[25]

Another nun, St. Erkenwald, had as a teacher Hildelitha--

“a woman as well excellentlie learned in the liberall sciences as verie expert in skill of religious discipline and life.”

For many centuries, indeed as long as the conventual system lasted, the only schools for girls were the convent schools, where, says Robert Aske, “the daughters of gentlemen were brought up with virtue.” From the educational point of view, the suppression of the convents was decidedly a blunder; and they were not merely schools for book-learning. Among other things were taught the treatment of various disorders, the compounding of simples, the binding up of wounds. The custom of bleeding people for every form of illness, and to ward off possible sickness, created the necessity for some kind of bandage ready prepared to apply to the place where the incision was made. It was common to make these bandages of silk, and offer them as presents.[26]

The pupils were also taught what might be called fancy cookery, such as the making of sweetmeats. Writing, drawing, needlework of all kinds, and music, both vocal and instrumental, entered into the curriculum.

“In the convents the female portion of the population found their only teachers, the rich as well as the poor, and the destruction of the religious houses by Henry was the absolute extinction of any systematic education for women during a long period. Thus at Winchester Convent, the list of the ladies being educated within the walls at the time of the suppression shows that these Benedictine nuns were training the children of the first families in the country. Carrow, in Norfolk, for centuries gave instruction to the daughters of the neighbouring gentry, and as early as A.D. 1273 a papal prohibition was obtained from Pope Gregory X., restraining the nobility from crowding this monastery with more sisters than its income would support.”[27]

Of Mynchin Buckland we read--

“It was, doubtless, also a noted seminary for the daughters of the great neighbouring families. The Berkeleys, Erleghs, Montacutes, Wrothams, Bouchers, and others, were ever at home at Buckland, and learned from the good sisters all the mental accomplishments which they in after-life possessed. Reading, writing, some knowledge of arithmetic, the art of embroidery, music, and French, ‘after the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,’ were the recognized course of study, while the preparation of perfumes, balsams, simples, and confectionery was among the more ordinary departments of the education afforded.”

When the suppression took place, the laity, who enjoyed great benefits from the presence of the religious houses, made ineffectual protests against their dissolution. The famous convent of Godstow, in Oxfordshire, was particularly regretted, as it was one--

“where there was great strictness of life, and to which were most of the young gentlewomen of the county sent to be bred, so that the gentry of the county desired the king would spare the house.”

The abbess herself wrote a long letter to Thomas Cromwell, complaining of the treatment to which she was subjected. Some portions of it may be read with interest:--

“Pleaseth hit your Honour with my moste humble dowtye, to be advertised, that where it hath pleasyd your Lordship to be the verie meane to the King’s Majestie for my preferment, most unworthie to be Abbes of this the King’s Monasterie of Godystowe.... I trust to God that I have never offendyd God’s laws, neither the King’s, wherebie this poore monasterie ought to be suppressed. And this notwithstanding, my good Lorde, so it is, that Dr. London, whiche (as your Lordship doth well know) was agaynst my promotion, and hath ever sence borne me great malys and grudge, like my mortal enemye, is sodenlie cummynd unto me, with a great rowte with him, and here doth threaten me and my Sisters, saying that he hath the King’s commission to suppress this House spyte of my teeth. And when he saw that I was contente that he sholde do all things according to his Commission, and shewyd him playne that I wolde never surrender to his hande, being my awncyent enemye; now he begins to entreat me, and to invegle my Sisters, one by one, otherwise than ever I herde tell that the King’s subjects bathe been handelyd, and here tarieth and contynueth to my great coste and charges, and will not take my answere that I will not surrender till I know the King’s gracious commandment, or your good Lordship’s....

“And notwithstanding that Dr. London, like an untrew man, hath informed your Lordship that I am a spoiler and a waster, your good Lordship shall know that the contrary is trewe; for I have _not alienatyd one halporthe_ of goods of this monasterie, movable or unmovable, but have rather increas’d the same, nor never made lease of any farme or peece of grounde belongyng to this House, or then hath been in times paste, alwaies set under Convent Seal for the wealthe of the House. And therefore my very truste is, that I shall find the Kynge as gracious Lord unto me, as he is to _all other_ his subjects, seyng I have not offendyd.”

The letter is dated from Godstow, or, as it was spelt then, Godistow, and signed--

“Your most bounden Beds Woman, “Katherine Bulkeley, _Abbes there_.”

From other convents came pathetic appeals from the helpless inmates, who were threatened with loss of home and livelihood. One abbess wrote to Cromwell--

“But now as touchynge my nowne parte, I most humbly beseche yow to be so specyall good mayster unto me yowre poore bedewoman as to give me yowre best advertysment and counseyle what waye shal be best for me to take, seynge there shal be none left here but myselfe and thys poore madyn.... Trustynge and nothynge dowtynge in youre goodnes, that ye wyll so provyd for us, that we shall have syche onest lyvynge that we shall not be drevyn be necessyte nether to begge nor to fall to other unconvenyance.”

The Prioress and nuns of Legborne wrote, saying--

“And whereas we doo here that a grete nombre of abbyes shal be punnyshid, subprest, and put downe, bicause of theire myslyvyng, and that all abbyes and pryoryes under the value of £200 be at oure moste noble prynces pleasure to sub-presse and put downe, yet if it may pleas youre goodnes we trust in God ye shall here no compleyntes agaynst us nother in oure lyvyng nor hospitalitie keepyng. In consideracion whereof if it may please youre goodnes in oure great necessitie to be a meane and sewter for youre owne powre pryory, that it may be preserved and stand, you shal be a more higher ffounder to us then he that first foundid oure howse.”

When the conventual system came to an end, the relation of women to the Church was materially changed. They were no longer the Church’s administrators and her authorized servants. And while they could not, as before, dispense its alms and hospitality, or impart the knowledge they had acquired in the cloister, they themselves were deprived of its protecting care. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries the “religious” women did not exceed 1560,[28] but to a large number of others the cloister was a temporary retreat, a possible home, a refuge in time of distress. The effect upon women of the sweeping away of monastic institutions may be considered from various points of view--from the educational, social, as well as the religious side. It may be regarded as the work of a reformer or of a destroyer. Mr. Lecky describes it as “far from a benefit to women or the world.”[29] But that it greatly affected the position of women there can be no question. It loosened, although it did not sever, the close tie which had bound women to the spiritual authority as to a foster-mother. The Anglican Church stood in a different relation, socially speaking, to the people. It was a less personal relation. And the Protestant clergy did not make use of women in any special way as the instruments of the Church. As will be seen later on, the tendency during the first two centuries of the religious revolution, as it may be termed, was to ignore women as workers. The Roman Church, while it plainly proclaimed women to be inferior morally, and by inference intellectually, to men, availed itself to the full of their capacities. Until modern times, the Protestant Church went on its way regardless of the fact that a great unused power was lying close at hand. It was in movements outside the Church that the religious emotion in women first found vent in the Protestant era.