Eileen Power

WORLDLY GOODS

Tomorrows shall be as yesterdays; And so for ever! saints enough Has Holy Church for priests to praise; But the chief of saints for workday stuff Afield or at board is good Saint Use, Withal his service is rank and rough; Nor hath he altar nor altar-dues, Nor boy with bell, nor psalmodies, Nor folk on benches, nor family pews. Maurice Hewlett, The Song of the Plow.

In many ways the most valuable general account of monastic property at the close of the middle ages is to be found in the great Valor Ecclesiasticus, a survey of all the property of the church, compiled in 1535 for the assessment of the tenth lately appropriated by the King[264]. It is true that only 100 out of the 126 nunneries then in existence are described with any detail and that the amount of detail given varies very much for different localities. Nevertheless the record is of the highest importance, for in order to assess the tax the gross income of each house is given (often with the sources from which it is drawn, classified as temporalities and spiritualities) and the net income, on which the tenth was assessed, is obtained by subtracting from the gross income all the necessary charges upon the house, payments of synodals and procurations, rents due to superior lords, alms and obits which had to be maintained under the will of benefactors, and the fees of the regular receivers, bailiffs, auditors and stewards.

Such a survey as the Valor Ecclesiasticus, though valuable, could not by its nature give more than the most general indication of the main classes of receipts and expenditure of the nunneries. The accounts kept by the nuns themselves, on the other hand, are a mine of detailed information on these subjects. Every convent was supposed to draw up an annual balance sheet, to be read before the nuns assembled in chapter, and though it was a constant source of complaint against the head of a house that she failed to do so, nevertheless enough rolls have survived to make it clear that the practice was common. Indeed it would have been impossible to run a community for long without keeping accounts. The finest set of these rolls which has survived from a medieval nunnery is that of St Michael’s Stamford, in Northamptonshire[265]. There are twenty-four rolls, beginning with one for the year 32-3 Edward I, and ranging over the greater part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A study of them enables the material life of the convent for two centuries to be reconstructed and gives a vivid picture of its difficulties, for though the nuns only once ended the year without a deficit and a list of debts, yet the debts owed by various creditors to them were often larger than those which they owed.

A very good series also exists for St Mary de PrÉ, near St Albans, kept by the wardens 1341-57 and by the Prioress 1461-93[266]; and there is in the Record Office a valuable little book of accounts kept by the treasuresses of Gracedieu (Belton) during the years 1414-18, which has been made familiar to many readers by the use made of it by Cardinal Gasquet in English Monastic Life[267]. Very full and interesting accounts have also survived from St Radegund’s Cambridge (1449-51, 1481-2)[268], Catesby (1414-45)[269] and Swaffham Bulbeck (1483-4)[270]. These are all prioresses’ or treasuresses’ accounts of the total expenditure of the different houses; but there are in existence also a few obedientiaries’ accounts, chambresses’ accounts from St Michael’s Stamford and Syon and cellaresses’ accounts from Syon[271]. An analysis of these accounts shows, better than any other means of information, the various sources from which a medieval nunnery drew its income, and the chief classes of expenditure which it had to meet. It will therefore be illuminating to consider in turn the credit and debit side of a monastic balance sheet.

It is perhaps unnecessary to postulate that since monastic houses differed greatly in size and wealth, the sources of their income would differ accordingly. A very poor house might be dependent upon the rents and produce of one small manor; a large house sometimes had estates all over England. The entire income of Rothwell in Northamptonshire was derived from one appropriated rectory, valued in the Valor at £10. 10s. 4d. gross and at £5. 19s. 8d. net per annum[272]. The Black Ladies of Brewood (Staffs.) had an income of £11. 1s. 6d. derived from demesne in hand, rents and alms[273]. On the other hand Dartford in Kent held lands in Kent, Surrey, Norfolk, Suffolk, Wiltshire, Wales and London[274], the Minoresses without Aldgate held property in London, Hertfordshire, Kent, Berkshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Norfolk and the Isle of Wight[275]. The splendid Abbey of Syon held land as far afield as Lancashire and Cornwall, scattered over twelve counties[276]. Similarly the proportionate income derived from house-rents and land-rents would differ with the geographical situation of the nunnery. London convents, for instance, would draw a large income from streets of houses, whereas a house in the distant dales of Yorkshire would be dependent upon agriculture. At the time of the Valor twenty-two nunneries were holding urban tenements in fifteen towns, amounting in total value to £1076. 0s. 7d., but of this sum £969. 11s. 10d. was held by the seven houses in London[277]. With this proviso the conclusion may be laid down that the money derived from the possession of agricultural land, and in particular the rents paid by tenants in freehold, copyhold, customary and leasehold land, was the mainstay of the income paid into the hands of the treasuress.

A word may perhaps be said as to the method by which the nuns administered their estates. Miss Jacka distinguishes two main types of administration, discernible in the Valor:

The London houses, except Syon and a number, chiefly, of the smaller nunneries scattered throughout the country, had a single staff of officials, steward, bailiff, auditor, receiver; their revenues were drawn from scattered rents and other profits rather than from entire manors. There seem to have been about forty houses of this type in addition to the London houses. The second group comprises the great country nunneries in the south of England, including Syon and a number of smaller houses whose revenues were reckoned under the headings of various manors each managed by its own bailiff.... The staff of Syon may be taken as an unusually complete and elaborate example of the usual system, whose principle appears worked out on a smaller scale, in the case of smaller nunneries. The nuns had in the first place what may be called a central staff, a steward at £3. 6s. 8d., a steward of the hospice at £23. 15s. 4d., a general receiver at £19. 13s. 4d. and an auditor at £8. 3s. 4d. Their lands in Middlesex were managed by their steward of Isleworth, Lord Wyndesore, whose fee was £3, a steward of courts at £1 and a bailiff at £2. 13s. 4d., who had a separate fee of 13s. 4d. as bailiff of the chapel of the Angels at Brentford. Their extensive possessions in Sussex were managed by a receiver and a steward of courts for the whole county, whose fees were £3 and £2 respectively, by four stewards for various districts with fees from £1. 6s. 8d. down to 13s. 4d. and by 13 bailiffs arranged under the stewards, of whom one received £2. 3s. 4d. and the rest from £1 to 6s. 8d. Their one manor in Cambridgeshire was managed by a steward at 13s. 4d. and a bailiff at £1. With the central staff was reckoned a receiver for Somerset, Dorset and Devon, whose fee was £6. 13s. 4d.; the ladies held no temporalities in Somerset; in Dorset they had a chief steward, £1. 6s. 8d., a steward of courts, 6s. 8d., and a bailiff, 11s., and their large possessions in Devon were managed by two stewards (£2. 13s. 4d.), two stewards of courts (13s. 4d., 6s. 8d.), six bailiffs, with fees ranging from 4s. to £2 and an auditor, 3s. 4d. They received £100 a year from unspecified holdings in Lancashire and had there a steward of courts at £1. Their possessions in Lincolnshire were mainly spiritual, but they employed a receiver, whose fee was 13s. 4d. In Gloucestershire they had large possessions. The two chief stewards of Cheltenham received each £3. 6s. 8d. and the chief steward of Minchinhampton £2. Two stewards of courts each received £1. 6s. 8d. and the two stewards at Slaughter £1. Three bailiffs received £2. 13s. 4d., £2 and 13s. 4d., with livery. A bailiff and receiver of profits arising from the sale of woods was paid £4 and the steward of the abbot of Cirencester was paid 6s. 8d. for holding the abbess’ view of frankpledge. In Wiltshire the nuns held a manor and a rectory and paid £1 to a steward for both: they seem to have been leased. In counties where all their possessions were spiritual they had no local officials; in Somerset both the rectories they held were leased and in Kent, although that is not stated, it is suggested by the round sums which were received (£26. 13s. 4d., £10, £20). The leasing of property for a fixed sum of course made the administration of it very much simpler. All the temporalities of the Minoresses without Aldgate were leased and their staff consisted of a chief steward, Lord Wyndesore, whose fee was £2. 13s. 4d., a receiver at £4. 5s. 10d. and an auditor at 13s. 4d.[278]

A closer analysis of the chief sources of income of a medieval nunnery, as they may be distinguished in the Valor and in various account rolls, is now possible. They may be classified as follows: Temporalities, comprising: (1) rents from lands and houses, (2) perquisites of courts, fairs, mills, woods and other manorial perquisites, (3) issues of the manor, i.e. sale of farm produce, (4) miscellaneous payments from boarders, gifts, etc.; and Spiritualities, comprising (5) tithes from appropriated benefices, alms, mortuaries, etc. The distinction between temporalities and spiritualities is a technical one and there was sometimes little difference between the sources of the two kinds of income, but the temporal revenues were usually larger[279].

(1) Rents from lands and houses. A house which possessed several manors besides its home farm would either lease them to tenants (“farm out the manor” as it was called), or put in bailiffs, who were responsible for working the estates and handing over to the convent the profits of their agriculture, and who may also have collected rents where no separate rent collector was employed. For besides the profits arising from the demesne land (of which some account will be given below), the convent derived a much more considerable income from the rents of all tenants (whatever the legal tenure by which they held) who held their land at a money rent. The number of such tenants was likely to increase by the commutation of customary services for money payments; since, except in the particular manor or manors wherein the produce of the demesne was reserved for the actual consumption of the community, it was to the interest of a convent to lease a great part of the demesne land to tenants at a money rent and so save itself the trouble of farming the land under a bailiff[280]. In addition to these rents from agricultural land an income was sometimes derived, as has already been pointed out, from the rent of tenements in towns.

In most account rolls a careful distinction was drawn between “rents of assize” and “farms.” The former were the payments due from the tenants (whether freehold or customary) who held their holdings at a money rent; these rents were collected by the different collectors of the nunnery or brought to the treasurers by the tenants themselves. “Farms” were leases, i.e. payments for land or houses which were held directly in demesne by the nunnery, but instead of being worked by a bailiff, or occupied by the household, were “farmed out” at an annual rent. A “farmer” might thus hold in farm an entire manor, and, for the payment of an annual sum to the nuns, he would have the right to the produce of the demesne and to the rents of rent-paying tenants. He might be quite a small person and hold in farm only a few acres of the demesne (in addition perhaps to an ordinary tenant’s holding on the manor). He might hold the farm of a mill, or a stable, or a single house[281]. In any case he paid a rent to the nuns and made what he could out of his “farm”; while they much preferred these regular payments to the trouble of superintending the cultivation of distant lands, in an age when communication was difficult and slow.

Nevertheless the rents were not always easy to collect, for all the diligence of the bailiff and of the various rent-collectors[282]. There are some illuminating entries in the accounts of St Radegund’s Cambridge. In 1449-50 the indignant treasuress debits herself with “one tenement in Walleslane lately held by John Walsheman for 6s. 8d. a year, the which John fled out of this town within the first half of this year, leaving nought behind him whereby he could be distrained save 7d., collected therefrom”; and in the following year she again debits herself “for part of a tenement lately held by John Webster for 12s. a year, whence was collected only 7s. for that the aforesaid John Webster did flit [literally, devolavit] by night, leaving naught behind him whereby he could be distrained.” Yet these nuns seem to have been indulgent landlords; in this year the treasuress debits herself “for a tenement lately held by Richard Pyghtesley, because it was too heavily charged before, 2s. 3d., ... and for a portion of the rent owed by Stephen Brasyer on account of the poverty and need of the said Stephen, by grace of the lady Prioress this time only, 15d.” and there are other instances of lowered rents in these accounts[283]. Other account rolls sometimes make mention of meals and small presents of money given to tenants bringing in their rents.

(2) Various manorial perquisites and grants. Besides the rents from land and houses the position of a religious community as lord of a manor gave it the right to various other financial payments. Of these the most important were the perquisites of the manorial courts. These varied very much according to the extent and number of the liberties which had been granted to any particular house. To Syon, beloved of kings, vast liberties had been granted (notably in 1447), so that the tenants upon its estates were almost entirely exempt from royal justice. The abbess and convent had

They had the assizes of bread and ale and wine and victuals and weights and measures. They had all the old traditional emoluments of justice, which lords had striven to obtain since the days before the conquest,

They had the right to erect gallows, pillory and tumbrel for the punishment of malefactors. They even had

In the eyes of the middle ages justice had one outstanding characteristic: it filled the pocket of whoever administered it. “Justitia magnum emolumentum est,” as the phrase went. All the manifold perquisites of justice, whether administered in her own or in the royal courts, went to the abbess of Syon if any of her own tenants were concerned. It is no wonder that out of a total income of £1944. 11s. 5¼d. the substantial sum of £133. 0s. 6d. was derived from perquisites of courts[285].

Few houses possessed such wholesale exemption from royal justice, but all possessed their manorial courts, at which tenants paid their heriots in money or in kind as a death-duty to the lord, or their fines on entering upon land, and at which justice was done and offenders amerced (or fined as we should now call it). Most houses possessed the right to hold the assize of bread and ale and to fine alewives who overcharged or gave short measure. Some possessed the right to seize the chattels of fugitives, and the abbess of Wherwell was once involved in a law suit over this liberty, which she held in the hundred of Mestowe and which was disputed by the crown officials. One Henry Harold of Wherwell had killed his wife Isabel and fled to the church of Wherwell and the Abbess had seized his chattels to the value of £35. 4s. 8d. by the hands of her reeve[286]. A less usual privilege was that of the Abbess of Marham, who possessed the right of proving the wills of those who died within the precincts or jurisdiction of the house[287]. The courts at which these liberties were exercised were held by the steward of the nunnery, who went from manor to manor to preside at their sittings; but sometimes the head of the house herself would accompany him. Christian Bassett, the energetic Prioress of DelaprÉ (St Albans), not content with journeying up to London for a lawsuit, went twice to preside at her court at Wing[288].

In rather a different class from grants of jurisdictional liberties were special grants of free warren, felling of wood and fairs. Monasteries which possessed lands within the bounds of a royal forest were not allowed to take game or to cut down wood there without a special licence from the crown; but such grants to exercise “free warren” (i.e. take game) and to fell wood were often granted in perpetuity, as an act of piety by the king, or for special purposes. The Abbess of Syon had free warren in all her possessions, and in 1489 it was recorded that the Abbess of Barking had free chase within the bailiwick of Hainault to hunt all beasts of the forest in season, except deer, and free chase within the forest and without to hunt hares and rabbits and fox, badger, cat and other vermin[289]. Grants of wood were more often made on special occasions; thus in 1277 the keeper of the forest of Essex was ordered to permit the Abbess of Barking and her men to fell oak-trees and oak-trunks in her demesne woods within the forest to the value of £40[290], while in 1299 the Abbess of Wilton was given leave to fell sixty oaks in her own wood within the bounds of the forest of Savernake, in order to rebuild some of her houses, which had been burnt down[291]. The grant of fairs and markets was even more common and more lucrative, for the convent profited not only from the rents of booths and from the entrance-tolls, but not infrequently from setting up a stall of its own, for the sale of spices and other produce[292]. Henry III granted the nuns of Catesby a weekly market every Monday within their manor of Catesby and a yearly fair for three days in the same place; and almost any monastic chartulary will provide other instances of such rights[293].

The majority of the special perquisites which have been described would originate in special grants from the Crown; but it must be remembered that every manorial lord could count on certain perquisites ex officio, for which no specific grant was required. For his manor provided him with more than agricultural produce on the one hand and rents and farms on the other. Through the manor court he also received certain payments due to him from all free and unfree tenants, in particular those connected with the transfer of land, the heriot and the fines already mentioned. From unfree tenants he could also claim various other dues, the mark of their status; merchet, when their daughters married off the estate, leyrwite, when they enjoyed themselves without the intermediary of that important ceremony, a fine when they wished to send their sons to school and a number of other customary payments, exacted at the manor court and varying slightly from manor to manor. Moreover the tolls from the water- or wind-mill at which villeins had to grind their corn all went to swell the purse of the lord[294]. This is not the place for a detailed description of manorial rights, which can be studied in any text-book of economic history[295]; a word must, however, be said about the mortuary system, which did not a little to enrich the medieval church.

When a peasant died the lord of the manor had often the right to claim his best animal or garment as a mortuary or heriot, and by degrees there grew up a similar claim to his second best possession on the part of the parish priest.

From these claims, partly manorial and partly ecclesiastical, religious houses benefited very greatly, and their accounts sometimes mention mortuary payments. The Prioress of Catesby in the year 1414-15 records how her live stock was enriched by one horse, one mare and two cows coming as heriots, while she received a payment of 20s. for two oxen coming as heriot of Richard Sheperd[297]. In the chartulary of Marham is recorded a mortuary list of sixteen people, who died within the jurisdiction of the house, and the mortuaries vary from a sorrel horse and a book to numerous gowns and mantles[298]. The system was obviously capable of great abuse, and Mr Coulton considers that it did much to precipitate the Reformation, for the unhappy peasant resented more and more bitterly the greed of the church, which chose his hour of sorrow to wrest from him the best of his poor possessions; it must have seemed hard to him that his horse or his ox should be driven away, if he could not buy it back, to the well-stocked farm of a community which was vowed to poverty, far harder than if his lord were a layman, as free as he was himself to accumulate possessions without soiling the soul. When the parish priest followed the convent with a claim upon what was best, his despair must have grown deeper and his resentment more bitter. It was often difficult to collect these payments, just as it was often difficult to collect tithes, even when a priest was less loth to curse for them than Chaucer’s poor parson. Vicars were obliged to sue their wretched parishioners in the ecclesiastical courts, and monasteries were sometimes fain to commute such payments for an annual rent, collected by the tenants[299]. But the best ecclesiastics recognised that the system was somewhat out of keeping with Christian charity. Caesarius of Heisterbach has a story of Ulrich, the good head of the monastery of Steinfeld, who one day

(3) Issues of the manor. Before passing on to sources of income of a more specifically ecclesiastical character, some account must be given of the third great class of receipts which came to a convent in its capacity of landowner, to wit the “issues of the manor.” Attached to almost every nunnery was its home farm, which provided the nuns with the greater part of their food[301]. A large nunnery would thus reserve for its own use several manors and granges, but usually other manors in its possession would be farmed by bailiffs, who sold the produce at market and paid in the profits to the treasuress or to one of the obedientiaries; or else a manor would be leased to a tenant. The surplus produce of the home farm, which could not be used by the nuns, was also sold. The treasuress usually entered the receipts and expenditure of the home farm in her household account and she had to keep two sets of records, the one a careful account of all the animals and agricultural produce on the farm, with details as to the use made of them; and the other (under the heading of “issues of the manor”) a money record of the sums obtained from sales of live stock, wool or grain. An analysis of the produce of the home farm of Catesby (1414-5)[302] shows that the chief crops grown were wheat and barley. Of these a certain proportion was kept for seed to sow the new crops; almost all the rest of the wheat was paid in food allowances to the servants and 1 qr. 3 bushels in alms “to friars of the four orders and other poor”; most of the barley was malted, except 6 qrs. delivered to the swineherd to feed hogs; and what remained was stored in the granaries of the convent. Oats and peas were also grown and part of the crop used for seed, part for food-allowances to the servants and oatmeal for the nuns. The Prioress also kept a most meticulous account of the livestock on her farm. All were numbered and classified, cart-horses, brood-mares, colts, foals, oxen, bulls, cows, stirks (three-year old), two-year old, yearlings, calves, sheep, wethers, hogerells, lambs, hogs, boars, sows, hilts, hogsters and pigs. In each class it was carefully set down how many animals remained in stock at the end of the year and what had been done with the others. We know something of the consumption of meat by the nuns of Catesby and their servants in this year of grace 1414-5, when the old rule against the eating of meat was relaxed; and we see something of the cares of a medieval housewife in those days before root-crops were known, when the number of animals which could be kept alive during the winter was strictly limited by the amount of hay produced on the valuable meadow land. Only in summer could the convent have fresh meat; and on St Martin’s day (Nov. 11) the business of killing and salting the rest of the stock for winter food began[303]. From good Dame Elizabeth Swynford’s account it appears that five oxen, one stirk, thirty hogs and one boar were delivered to the larderer to be salted; in summer time, when the convent could enjoy fresh meat, five calves, fourteen sheep, ten hogs and twelve pigs were sent in to the kitchen; and twenty cows were divided between the larder and the kitchen, to provide salt and fresh beef. There is unfortunately no record of the produce of the dairy, which supplied the convent with milk, cheese, eggs and occasional chickens.

But the home-farm served the purpose of providing money as well as food. The hides of the oxen and the “wool pells” of the sheep, which had been killed for food or had fallen victim to that curse of medieval farming, the murrain, were by no means wasted. Five hides belonging to animals which had died of murrain were tanned and used for collars and other cart gear on the farm; but all the rest were sold, thirty-six of them in all. Most lucrative of all, however, was the sale of wool pells and wool, and Dame Elizabeth Swynford is very exact; eighteen wool pells, from sheep which the convent had eaten as mutton, sold before shearing for 35s. 10d., thirty-eight sold after shearing for 9s. 6d., thirty-six lamb skins for 1s.; and 6d. was received “for wynter lokes sold.” Moreover the convent also sold one sack and eight weight of wool at £5. 4s. the sack, for a total of £6. 16s. Altogether the “issues of the manor” amounted to the substantial sum of £24. 8s. 8d., chiefly derived from these sales of wool and wool pells and from the sale of some timber for £6. 13s. 4d.[304] These details about wool are interesting, for it is well known that the monastic houses of England, especially in the northern counties, were great sheep farmers. Most accounts mention this important source of revenue and in the series of rolls kept by the treasuresses of St Michael’s Stamford, it is regularly entered under the heading “Fermes, dismes, leynes et pensions,” a somewhat miscellaneous classification[305]. In the thirteenth-century Pratica della Mercatura of Francesco Pergolotti there is incorporated a list of monasteries which sell wool, compiled for the use of Italian wool merchants and giving the prices per sack of the different qualities of wool at each house. The list contains a section specially devoted to nunneries, in which twenty houses are mentioned, all but two of them in Lincolnshire or Yorkshire[306]. Armed with this information the Italians would journey from nunnery to nunnery and bargain with the nuns for their wool: the whole crop would sometimes be commissioned by them in advance, sold on the backs of the sheep. The English distrusted these dark smooth-spoken foreigners; many years later the author of the Libel of English Policie charged them with dishonest practices and complained of the freedom with which they were allowed to buy in England:

In Cotteswold also they ride about,
And all England, and buy withouten doubte
What them list with freedome and franchise,
More than we English may gitten many wise[307].

But it must have been a great day for the impoverished nuns of Yorkshire when slim Italian or stout Fleming came riding down the dales under a spring sun to bargain for their wool crop. What a bustling hither and thither there would be, and what a confabulation in the parlour between my lady Prioress and her steward and her chaplain and the stranger sitting opposite to them and speaking his reasons “ful solempnely.” What a careful distinguishing of the best and the medium and the worst kind of wool, which the Italian calls buona lana and mojano lana and locchi. What a haggling over the price, which varies from nunnery to nunnery, but always allows the merchant to sell at a good profit in the markets of Flanders and Italy. What sighs of relief when the stranger trots off again, sitting high on his horse and taking with him a silken purse, or a blood-band or a pair of gloves in “courtesy” from the nuns. What blessings on the black-faced sheep, when the sorely-needed silver is locked up in the treasury chest and debts begin to look less terrible, leaking roofs less incurable, pittances less few and far between.

(4) Miscellaneous payments. A last source of temporal revenue consisted in the sums paid for board and lodging by visitors, regular boarders and schoolchildren. Though such visitors were frowned at by bishops as subversive of discipline, the nuns welcomed their contributions to the lean income of the convent, and in most nunnery accounts payments by boarders will be found among other miscellaneous receipts.

(5) Spiritualities. In the revenues which have hitherto been considered, the monastic rent-rolls differed in no way from those of any lay owner of land. The source of revenue now to be distinguished was more specifically ecclesiastical. All monasteries derived a more or less large income from certain grants made to them in their capacity as religious houses. Most important of these was the appropriation of benefices to their use. When a church was appropriated to a monastery, the monastery was usually supposed to put in a vicar at a fixed stipend to serve the parish, and the great tithes (which would otherwise have supported a rector) were taken by the corporation. Sometimes half a church was so appropriated and half the tithes were taken. The practice of appropriating churches was widespread; not only the king and other lay patrons, but also the bishops used this means of enriching religious bodies and the favourite petition of an impecunious convent was for permission to appropriate a church[308]. Over and over again the gift of the advowson of a church to a monastery is followed by appropriation[309]. The permission of the bishop of the diocese and of the pope was necessary for the transaction, but it seems rarely to have been refused; and

The practice of appropriation became a very serious abuse, for not all monasteries were conscientious in performing their duties to the parishes from which they derived such a large income, and ignorant and underpaid vicars often enough left their sheep encumbered in the mire, or swelled with their misery and discontent the democratic revolution known by the too narrow name of the Peasants’ Revolt[311]. Moreover there is no doubt that sometimes the monks and nuns neglected even the obvious duty of putting in a vicar, and the hungry sheep looked up and were not fed. The Valor Ecclesiasticus throws an interesting light on this subject. The nuns of Elstow Abbey held no less than eleven rectories, from which they derived £157. 6s. 8d., but they paid stipends to four vicars only, and the total of the four was £6. 6s. 8d.[312] The nuns of Westwood received £12. 12s. 10d. from two rectories and paid to a deacon in one of them 11s. 4d.[313] The Minoresses without Aldgate held four rectories; from that of Potton (Beds.) they received £16. 6s. 8d. and paid the vicar £2; from that of Kessingland, Suffolk, £9 and paid the vicar £2. 4s. 4d.[314] Another very common practice which cannot have conduced to the welfare of the parishioners was that of farming out the proceeds of appropriated churches, just as manors were farmed out. The farmer paid the nuns a lump sum annually and took the proceeds of the tithes. The purpose of such an arrangement was convenience, since it saved the convent the trouble of collecting the revenues and tithes. It was open to objection from all points of view; for on the one hand the nuns might, and often did, make bad bargains, and on the other they were still less likely to care for the spiritual welfare of the unfortunate parishioners, whose souls were to all intents and purposes farmed out with their tithes; though the payment of a vicar was sometimes made by the nuns or stipulated for in the agreement with the farmer. The Valor Ecclesiasticus gives the total spiritual revenue of the 84 nunneries holding spiritualities as £2705. 17s. 5d. and of this sum spiritualities to the value of £1075. 0s. 6d., belonging to 33 houses were entered as being at farm[315].

Account rolls often throw a flood of light upon the income derived from appropriated churches. To the nuns of St Michael’s Stamford had been assigned by various abbots of Peterborough the churches of St Martin, St Clement, All Souls, St Andrew and Thurlby, and in the reign of Henry II two pious ladies gave them the moieties of the church of Corby and chapel of Upton[316]. Moreover in 1354, after the little nunnery of Wothorpe had been ruined by the Black Death, all its possessions were handed over to St Michael’s and included the appropriation of the church of Wothorpe; the bishop stipulated that the proceeds of the priory with the rectory should be applied to the support of the infirmary and kitchen of St Michael’s and that the nuns should keep a chaplain to serve the parish church of Wothorpe[317]. Corby and Thurlby were afterwards farmed out by the nuns[318] and in 1377-8 they brought in £19 and £20 respectively, while the nuns got £26. 0s. 8d. from “the church of All Saints beyond the water,” £1. 13s. 4d. from the parson of Cottesmore and a pension of 6s. 8d. from the church of St Martin. They paid the vicar of Wothorpe a stipend of £2 a year[319]. Over half their income was usually derived from “farms, tithes and pensions,” i.e. from ecclesiastical sources of revenue.

It was also very common to make grants of tithes out of piety to a monastery, even when a grant of the advowson of the church was not made. A lord would make over to it the tithes of wheat, or a portion of the tithes, in certain parishes, or perhaps the tithes of his own demesne land. Sometimes the rector of a parish would pay the monks or nuns an annual rent in commutation of their tithes; sometimes he would dispute their claim and the tedious altercation would drag on for years, ending perhaps in the expense of a law-suit[320]. Besides advowsons and tithes various other pensions and payments were bestowed upon religious houses by benefactors, who would leave an annual pension to a monastery as a charge upon a particular piece of land, or church, or upon another monastery[321].

Another “spiritual” source of revenue consisted in alms and gifts given to the nuns as a work of piety. Sometimes a nunnery possessed a famous relic, and the faithful who visited it showed their devotion by leaving a gift at the shrine. The Valor sometimes gives very interesting information about these cherished possessions, described under the unkind heading Superstitio. The Yorkshire nuns possessed among them a great variety of relics, some of them having the most incongruous virtues. At Sinningthwaite was to be found the arm of St Margaret and the tunic of St Bernard “believed to be good for women lying in”[322], at Arden was an image of St Bride, to which women made offerings for cows that had strayed or were ill. The nuns of Arthington had a girdle of the Virgin and the nuns of St Clement’s York and Basedale both had some of her milk; at St Clement’s pilgrimages were made to the obscure but popular St Syth[323]. In other parts of the country it was the same. St Edmund’s altar in the conventual church of Catesby was a place of pilgrimage, for he had bequeathed his pall and a silver tablet to his sister Margaret Rich, prioress there[324]; and in 1400 Boniface IX granted an indult to the Abbess of Barking to have mass and the other divine offices celebrated in an oratory called “Rodlofte” (rood-loft), in which was preserved a cross to which many people resorted[325]. The nuns of St Michael’s Stamford not infrequently record sums received from a pardon held at one of their churches, and almost every year they received sums of money in exchange for their prayers for the souls of the dead. “Almes et aventures,” souls and chance payments, was a regular heading in their account roll, and the name of the person for whose soul they were to pray was entered opposite the money received. Miscellaneous alms from the faithful were always a source of revenue, though necessarily a fluctuating source[326].

Such were the chief sources from which a medieval nunnery derived its income. We must now consider the chief expenses which the nuns had to meet out of that income. It has already been shown that the total income of a nunnery was paid into the hands of the treasuress or treasuresses, save when the office of treasuress was filled by the head of the house, or when a male custos was appointed by the bishop to undertake the business. It has also been shown that the treasuress paid out certain sums to the chief obedientiaries (notably to the cellaress), to whose use certain sources of income were indeed sometimes earmarked, and that these obedientiaries kept their separate accounts. The majority of nunnery accounts which have survived are, however, treasuresses’ accounts; that is to say they represent the general balance sheet at the end of the year, including all the chief items of income and expenditure. The different houses adopt, as is natural, different methods of classifying their expenses[327]. The great abbey of Romsey classifies thus: (1) The Convent, including sums for clothing, for the kitchen expenses and for pittances, amounting in all to £105. 17s. 10d. (2) The Abbess, who kept her separate household in state; this includes provisions for herself and for her household and divers of their expenses, a sum of £8. 12s. in gifts, a sum in liveries for the household and spices for the guest-house and a sum in servants’ wages, amounting to £108. 17s. in all. (3) Divers outside expenses, including repairs of houses belonging to the Romsey mills, a sum for legal pleas, another for annuities to the convent and to the king’s clerks, who had stalls in the abbey, over £40 in royal taxes and £1. 14s. 8d. in procurations, amounting to £108 in all. (4) Miscellaneous expenses include £8. 19s. 4d. in alms to the poor, £6. 13s. 4d. in wine for nobles visiting the abbess, a sum for mending broken crockery, a sum for shoeing the horses of the Abbess’ household, and in horse-hire and expenses of men riding on her business, 14s. in oblations of the Abbess and her household and £10 in gift to Henry Bishop of Winchester on his return from the Holy Land. (5) Repairs and other expenses at six manors belonging to this wealthy house, amounting to £77. 2s. 6½d. The total expenses of the abbey this year (1412) came to £431. 18s. 8d., against a revenue of £404. 6s. 1d., drawn from six manors and including rents, the commutation fees for villein services, the sale of wool, corn and other stores and the perquisites of the courts. The deficit is characteristic of nunneries[328].

An interesting picture of many sides of monastic life is given by a general analysis of the chief classes of expenditure usually mentioned in account rolls. They may be classified as follows: (1) internal expenses of the convent, (2) divers miscellaneous expenses connected with external business, (3) repairs, (4) the expenses of the home farm and (5) the wage-sheet.

(1) The internal expenses of the convent. The details of this expenditure are sometimes not given very fully, because they were set forth at length in the accounts of the cellaress and chambress; but a certain amount of food and of household goods and clothes was bought directly by the treasuress and occasionally the office of cellaress and treasuress was doubled by the same nun, whose account gives more detail. Expenditure on clothing appears in one of two forms, either as dress-allowances paid annually to the nuns[329], or as payments for the purchase of linen and cloth and for the hiring of work-people to spin and weave and make up the clothes[330]. Expenditure on food is usually concerned with the purchase of fish and of spices, the only important foods which could not be produced by the home farm.

Among other internal expenses are the costs of the guest-house and the alms, in money and in kind, which were given to the poor. Account rolls sometimes throw a side light on the fare provided for visitors: for instance the treasuress of St Radegund’s, Cambridge, enters upon her roll in 1449-50 the following items under the heading Providencia Hospicii:

In this year the total receipts were £77. 8s. 6½d. and the expenditure £72. 6s. 4¾d., so that quite a large proportion of the nuns’ income was spent on hospitality. On the other hand the food was no doubt partly consumed by these “divers noble persons,” who paid the convent £8. 14s. 4d. this year for their board and lodging. It is a great pity that the separate guest-house account book referred to has not survived. At St Michael’s Stamford the roll for 15-16 Richard II contains a payment of 26s. 10d. “for the expenses of guests for the whole year,” and 6s. 8d. “for wine for the guests throughout the year”[332]; this is a very small amount out of a total expenditure of £116. 15s. 4½d. and it seems likely that the greater part of the food used for guests was not accounted for apart from the convent food.

The expenditure of nuns on alms is interesting, since almsgiving to the poor was one of the functions enjoined upon them by their rule; and many houses held a part of their property on condition that they should distribute certain alms. Some information as to these compulsory alms, though not of course as to the voluntary almsgiving of the nuns, is given in the Valor Ecclesiasticus. A few entries may be taken at random. St Sepulchre’s, Canterbury, paid 6s. 8d. for one quarter of wheat to be given for the soul of William Calwell, their founder, the Thursday next before Easter[333]. Dartford was allowed £5. 12s. 8d. for alms given twice a week to thirteen poor people[334]; Haliwell distributed 12s. 8d. in alms to poor folk every Christmas day in memory of a Bishop of Lincoln[335]. Nuneaton was allowed “for certain quarters of corn given weekly to the poor and sick at the gate of the monastery at 12d. a week, by order of the foundress, £2. 12s. 0d.; for certain alms on Maundy Thursday in money, bread, wine, beer and eels by the foundation, to poor and sick within the monastery, £2. 5s. 4d.”[336] Polesworth gave “on Maundy Thursday at the washing of the feet of poor persons, in drink and victuals, by the foundation £1. 6s. 0d.”[337] A chartulary of the great Abbey of Lacock, drawn up at the close of the thirteenth century, contains an interesting list of alms payable to the poor and pittances to the nuns themselves on certain feasts and anniversaries. It runs:

We ought to feed on All Souls’ day as many poor as there are ladies, to each poor person a dry loaf and as a relish two herrings or a slice of cheese, and the convent the same day shall have two courses. On the anniversary of the foundress (24 Aug. 1261) 100 poor each shall have a wheaten loaf and two herrings, be it a flesh-day or not, and the convent shall have to eat simnels and wine and three courses and two at supper. On the anniversary of her father (17 April 1196) each year thirteen poor shall be fed. On the anniversary of her husband thirteen poor shall be fed, and the convent shall have half a mark for a pittance. On the anniversary of Sir Nicholas Hedinton they should distribute to the poor 8s. and 4d., or corn amounting to as much money, i.e. wheat, barley and beans, and the convent half a mark for a pittance. The day of the burial of a lady of the convent 100 poor, to each a mite or a dry loaf.... The day of the Last Supper, after the Maundy, they shall give to each poor person a loaf of the weight of the convent loaf, and of the dough of full bread, and half a gallon of beer and two herrings, and half a bushel of beans for soup[338].