but it is unlikely that the book thus purchased by the King from his noble kinswoman was her own work.

This period of the later ages was, indeed, unfavourable to learning among monks as well as among nuns. As the universities grew, so the monasteries declined in lustre; learning had no longer need to seek refuge behind cloister walls, and the most promising monks now went to the universities, instead of studying at home in their own houses. The standard of the chronicles rapidly declined and the best chronicler of the fourteenth century was not a monk like Matthew Paris, but a secular, a wanderer, a hanger-on of princes, Froissart. As the fifteenth century passed learning declined still further; and it is evident from the visitations of the time that the monks, whatever else they might be, were not scholars. We should expect the decline in learning to be more marked still among the nuns, considering how little they had possessed in preceding centuries; and the matter is worth some study, because it concerns not only the education of the nuns themselves, but the education which they were qualified to give to the children who were sent to school with them.

A word may first be said on the subject of nunnery libraries. Concerning these we have very little information; and, such as it is, it does not leave the impression that nunneries were rich in books. No catalogue of a nunnery library[802] has come down to us and such references to libraries as occur in inventories show great poverty in this respect, the books being few and chiefly service-books. An inventory of the small and poor convent of Easebourne, taken in 1450, shows what was doubtless quite a large library for a house of its size. It contained two missals, two portiforia (breviaries), four antiphoners, one large Legenda, eight psalters, one book of collects, one tropary, one French Bible, two ordinalia in French, one book of the Gospels and one martyrology[803]. The inventories of Henry VIII’s commissioners give very little information as to books and seem to have found few that were of any value. The books found at Sheppey are thus described: “ij bokes with ij sylver clapses the pece, and vj bokes with one sylver clasp a pec, l bokes good and bad” (in the church), “vij bokes, whereof one goodly mase boke of parchement and dyvers other good bokes” (in the vestry), and “an olde presse full of old boks of no valew” (in a chapel in the churchyard) and “a boke of Saynts lyfes” (in the parlour)[804]. At Kilburn were found “two books of Legenda Aurea, one in print, the other written, both English, 4d.”; the one in print must have been Caxton’s edition, thus valued, together with a manuscript, at something like 6s. 8d. in present money for the pair! Also “two mass books, one old written, the other in print, 20d., four processions in parchment (3s.) and paper (10d.), two Legends in parchment and paper, 8d., and two chests, with divers books pertaining to the church, of no value”[805]. It will be noted that the books are almost always connected with the church services. It is perhaps significant that in only one list of the inmates of a house is a nun specifically described as librarian[806].Something may be gleaned also from the legacies of books left to nuns in medieval wills. These again are nearly always psalters or service books of one kind or another; and indeed the average layman was more likely to possess these than other books, for all alike attended the services of the church. Thus Sir Robert de Roos in 1392 leaves his daughter, a nun, “a little psalter, that was her mother’s”[807]; Sir William de Thorp in 1391 leaves his sister-in-law, a nun of Greenfield, a psalter[808]; William Stow of Ripon in 1430 leaves the Prioress of Nunmonkton a small psalter[809], William Overton of Helmsley in 1481 leaves his niece Elena, a nun of Arden, “one great Primer with a cover of red damask”[810], and so on. There may be some significance in the fact that John Burn, chaplain at York Cathedral, leaves the Prioress and Convent of Nunmonkton “an English book of Pater Noster”[811]. It strikes a strange and pleasant note when Thomas Reymound in 1418 leaves the Prioress and Convent of Polsloe 20s. and the Liber Gestorum Karoli, Regis Francie[812], and when Eleanor Roos of York in 1438 leaves Dame Joan Courtenay “unum librum vocatum Mauldebuke,” whatever that mysterious tome may have contained[813].

Some light is also thrown backward upon their possessors by isolated books which have come down to our own day and are known to have belonged to nuns. These come mostly, as might be expected, from the great abbeys of the south, where the nuns were rich and of good birth, from Syon and Barking, Amesbury, Wilton and Shaftesbury, St Mary’s Winchester, and Wherwell[814]. Sometimes the MS. records the name of the nun owner. Wright and Halliwell quote from a Latin breviary, in which is an inscription to the effect that it belonged to Alice Champnys, nun of Shaftesbury, who bought it for the sum of 10s. from Sir Richard Marshall, rector of the parish church of St Rumbold of Shaftesbury. There follows this prayer for the use of the nun:

A manuscript of Capgrave’s Life of St Katharine of Alexandria, which belonged to Katherine Babyngton, subprioress of Campsey in Suffolk, has a very different inscription:

Sometimes the owner of a manuscript is known to us from other sources. There is a splendid psalter, now in St John’s College, Cambridge, which belonged to the saintly Euphemia, Abbess of Wherwell from 1226 to 1257, whose good deeds were celebrated in the chartulary of the house[817]. In the Hunterian Library at Glasgow there is a copy of the first English translation of Thomas À Kempis’s Imitatio Christi, which belonged to Elizabeth Gibbs, Abbess of Syon from 1497 to 1518; it is inscribed

the date 1502 is given[818].The books known to have been in the possession of nuns throw, as will be seen, but a dim light upon the educational attainments of their owners. More specific evidence must be sought in bishops’ registers, and in such references to the state of learning in nunneries as occur in the works of contemporary writers. It is clear that nuns were expected to be “literate”; bishops sending new inmates to convents occasionally assure their prospective heads that the girls are able to undertake the duties of their new state[819]. What to be sufficiently lettered meant, from the convent point of view, appears in injunctions sent to the Premonstratensian house of Irford, forbidding the reception of any nun “save after such fashion as they are received at Irford and Brodholme, to wit that they be able to read and to sing, as is contained in the statute of the order”[820]; and again in injunctions sent by Bishop Gray to Elstow about 1432:

Further light is thrown on the question by an episode in the life of Thomas de la Mare, Abbot of St Albans from 1349 to 1396. At that time the subordinate nunnery of St Mary de PrÉ consisted of two grades of inmates, nuns and sisters, who were never on good terms. The Abbot accordingly transformed the sisters into nuns and ordained that no more sisters should be received, but only “literate nuns.” But hitherto the nuns also had been illiterate; “they said no service, but in the place of the Hours they said certain Lord’s Prayers and Angelic Salutations.” The Abbot therefore ordered that they should be taught the service and that in future they should observe the canonical hours, saying them without chanting, but singing the offices for the dead at certain times. Since they had apparently no books, from which to read the services, he gave them six or seven ordinals, belonging to the Abbey of St Albans, which caused not a little annoyance among the monks. In order that nuns should not be rashly and easily admitted, he ordered that henceforth all who entered the house were to profess the rule of St Benedict in writing[822].

The requirements seem to be that the nun should be able to take part in the daily offices in the quire, for which reading and singing were essential. It was not, it should be noted, essential to write, though Abbot Thomas de la Mare required the nuns of St Mary de PrÉ to profess the rule in writing and about 1330 the nuns of Sopwell (another dependency of St Albans) were enjoined by the commissary of a previous Abbot to give their votes for a new Prioress in writing[823]. Nevertheless, strange as this may appear to many who are wont to credit the nuns with teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and a number of other accomplishments to their pupils, it is probable that some of the nuns of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were unable to write. The form of profession of three novices at Rusper in 1484 has survived and ends with the note “Et quelibet earum fecit tale signum crucis manu sua propria ?”[824] which might possibly imply that these nuns could not write their names. It is significant that the official business of convents, their annual accounts and any certificates which they might have to draw up, were done by professional clerks, or sometimes by their chaplains. Payment to the clerk who made the account occurs regularly in their account rolls; and the Visitations of Bishop Alnwick, to which reference will be made below, show that they were often completely at a loss, when writing had to be done and there was no clerk to do it.

Again it would seem clear that the nun who was fully qualified to “bear the burden of the choir” ought to be able to understand what she read, as well as to read it, and this raises at once the study of Latin in nunneries. Here again the nuns do not emerge very well from inquiry. Some there were no doubt who knew a little Latin, even in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but the more the inquirer studies contemporary records, the more he is driven to conclude that the majority of nuns during this period knew no Latin; they must have sung the offices by rote and though they may have understood, it is to be feared that the majority of them could not construe even a Pater Noster, an Ave or a Credo. Let us take the evidence for the different centuries in turn. The language of visitation injunctions affords some clue to the knowledge of the nuns. It must be remembered that throughout the whole period Latin was always the learned and ecclesiastical language; and the communications addressed by a bishop to the monastic houses of his district, notices of visitation, mandates and injunctions would normally be in Latin; and when he was addressing monks they were in fact almost always in this tongue. After Latin the language next in estimation was French. This had been the universal language of the upper class and up till the middle of the fourteenth century it was still par excellence the courtly tongue. But it was rapidly ceasing to be a language in general use and the turning-point is marked by a statute of 1362, which ordains that henceforth all pleas in the law courts shall be conducted in English, since the French language “is too unknown in the said realm.” At the close of the century even the upper classes were ceasing to speak French and the English ambassadors to France in 1404 had to beseech the Grand Council of France to answer them in Latin, French being “like Hebrew” to them[825]. In the fifteenth century French was a mere educational adornment, which could be acquired by those who could get teachers.

The linguistic learning of English nuns at different periods was similar to that of the gentry outside the convent. It was not possible after the beginning of the fourteenth century (perhaps even during the last half of the thirteenth century) to assume in them that acquaintance with Latin, the learned and ecclesiastical tongue, which was generally assumed in their brothers the monks. Their learning was similar to that of contemporary laymen of their class, rather than of contemporary monks; and it went through exactly the same phases as did the coronation oath. About 1311 the King’s oath occurs in Latin among the State documents, with the note appended that “if the King were illiterate” he was to swear in French, as Edward II did in 1307; but in 1399 when Henry IV claimed the throne, he claimed it in English, “In the name of the Fadir, Son and Holy Gost, I Henry of Lancastre, chalenge Þis Rewme of Yngland”[826]. Similarly towards the close of the thirteenth century the English bishops begin to write to their nuns in French, because they are no longer “literate,” in the sense of understanding Latin. Throughout this century the nuns are able to speak the courtly tongue; they use it for their petitions; and Chaucer’s Prioress boasts it among her accomplishments at the close of the century,

And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For French of Paris was to her unknowe.

But French, like Latin, is beginning to die away. It hardly ever occurs in petitions after the end of the century; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Bishops almost invariably send their injunctions to the nuns in English. The majority of nuns during these two centuries would seem to have understood neither French nor Latin[827].

The evidence of the bishops’ registers is worth considering in more detail. The bishops were genuinely anxious that the reforms set forth in their injunctions should be carried out by the nuns, and they were therefore at considerable pains to send the injunctions in language which the nuns could understand. There are few surviving injunctions belonging to the thirteenth century; and their evidence is missed. Archbishop Walter Giffard in 1268[828] and Archbishop Newark in 1298[829] write to the nuns of Swine in Latin, a language which they seem to have employed habitually when writing to nunneries. Archbishop Peckham sometimes writes to the Godstow nuns in Latin (1279) and sometimes in French (1284)[830]; it is to be noted that his French letter is of a more familiar type. Bishop Cantilupe of Hereford writes about 1277 to the nuns of Lymbrook in Latin, but his closing words raise considerable doubt as to whether an understanding of Latin can be generally assumed in nunneries at this period, for he says “you are to cause this our letter to be expounded to you several times in the year by your penancers, in the French or English tongue, whichever you know best”[831].

The evidence for the next century is even less ambiguous, for nearly all injunctions are in French and sometimes it is specifically mentioned that the nuns do not understand Latin. Bishop Norbury in 1331 translates his injunctions to Fairwell into French[832], because the nuns do not understand the original in Latin, and Bishop Robert de Stretton, writing to the same house in 1367, orders his decree to be “read and explained in the vulgar tongue by some literate ecclesiastical person on the day after its receipt”[833]. Bishop Stapeldon’s interesting injunctions to Polsloe and Canonsleigh in 1319 are in French, but he seems to assume some knowledge of Latin in the nuns, for he orders that if it be necessary to break silence in places where silence is ordained, speech should be held in Latin, though not in grammatically constructed sentences, but in isolated words[834]. In 1311 Bishop Woodlock sending a set of Latin injunctions to the great Abbey of Romsey, announces that he has caused them to be translated into French, that the nuns may more easily understand them[835]; but Wykeham writes to them in Latin in 1387[836]. In the Lincoln diocese during this century the custom of the bishops varies. Gynewell writes to Heynings and to Godstow in French, but to Elstow in Latin[837]; Bokyngham writes to both Heynings and Elstow in Latin, but in ordering the nuns of Elstow in 1387 to keep silence at due times, he adds “Et vulgare gallicum addiscentes inter se eo utantur colloquentes”[838], a significant contrast to Stapeldon’s recommendation of Latin in similar circumstances some seventy years earlier.

When we pass from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century it is clear that even French was becoming an unknown tongue to the nuns; nearly all injunctions are from this time forward written in English. At Redlingfield in 1427, the seven nuns and two novices were assembled in the chapter house, where the deputy visitor read his commission, first in Latin and then in the vulgar tongue, in order that the nuns might better understand it[839]. It is true that Bishops Flemyng and Gray send Latin injunctions to Elstow and DelaprÉ Abbeys in 1422 and 1433 respectively; but Flemyng orders “that the premises, all and sundry, be published and read openly and in the vulgar mother tongue eight times a year”[840], and Gray writes that his injunctions are to be translated into the mother tongue and fastened in some conspicuous place[841]. The best evidence of all for the state of learning in nunneries during the first half of the fifteenth century is to be found in the invaluable records of Alnwick’s visitations of the Lincoln diocese. Now it should be noted that when Alnwick visited houses of monks or canons, the sermon, which was generally preached on such occasions by one of the learned clerics who accompanied him, was invariably preached in Latin. Moreover, all injunctions sent to male houses after visitation were sent in Latin also. The assumption still was that these monasteries were homes of learning and acquainted with the language of learning. With the nunneries it was otherwise. The sermons were always preached “in the vulgar tongue” and the injunctions were always sent in English. It was not even pretended that the nuns would understand Latin. Moreover it is quite plain that when the preliminary notices of visitation had been sent in Latin, they had been very imperfectly understood; and that when it was necessary for a Prioress herself to draw up a certificate in writing, she was often quite unable to do so.

A few extracts from Alnwick’s records will illustrate the complete ignorance of Latin and general illiteracy in these houses. At Ankerwyke (1441) it is noted:

At Markyate (1442), when the same certificate was asked for, the Prioress

Similarly the Prioress of Fosse showed the original mandate in place of the certificate, and the Prioresses of St Michael’s Stamford and Rothwell had failed to draw up the certificate[844]. The Prioress of Gokewell (1440) was said to be “exceedingly simple,” all the temporalities of the house being ruled by a steward; she also declared that “she knows not how to compose a formal certificate, in that she has no lettered persons of her counsel who are skilled in this case,” and she had been unable to find the document reciting the confirmation of her election[845]. The poor convent of Langley seems to have been reduced to complete confusion by the episcopal mandate. The Prioress

It is unnecessary to multiply the evidence of visitation records for the rest of the fifteenth and for the early sixteenth century: the general effect is to show us nuns who know only the English language[847]. Let us turn to the interesting corroborative evidence provided by those who were at pains to make translations for their use. It must be admitted that this evidence only confirms the suggestion made above that the nuns often did not understand the very services which they sang, let alone the Latin version of their rule, or the Latin charters by which they held their lands. That they often sang the services uncomprehendingly like parrots is actually stated by Sir David Lyndesay, the Scottish poet, in his Dialog concerning the MonarchÉ (1553). He apologises for writing in his native tongue, unlike those clerks, who wish to prohibit the people from reading even the scriptures for themselves, and adds

Tharefore I thynk one gret dirisioun
To heir thir Nunnis & Systeris nycht and day
Syngand and sayand psalmes and orisoun,
Nocht vnderstandyng quhat thay syng nor say,
Bot lyke one stirlyng or ane Papingay
Quhilk leirnit ar to speik be lang usage
Thame I compair to byrdis in ane cage[848].

Several translations of the rule of St Benet were made for the special use of nuns, who knew no Latin. A northern metrical version of the early fifteenth century explains

Monkes and als all leryd men
In Latin may it lyghtly ken,
And wytt tharby how they sall wyrk
To sarue god and haly kyrk.

Bott tyll women to mak it couth,
That leris no latyn in thar youth,
In inglis is it ordand here,
So that thay may it lyghtly lere[849].

About a century later, in 1517, Richard Fox, the Bishop of Winchester, published for the benefit of the nuns of his diocese another English translation of the Rule of St Benedict. In the preface he rehearses how nuns are professed under the Rule and are bound to read, learn and understand it:

He adds that in order to save the souls of his nuns, and in particular to ensure that novices understand the Rule before profession,

The inconvenience of not being able to read the foundation charter and other legal documents of the house, as confessed by the Prioress of Langley at Alnwick’s visitation, was very great; and about 1460 Alice Henley, the Abbess of Godstow, caused a translation to be made of the Latin register, in which were copied all the charters of her abbey. The translator’s preface to the work is interesting:

It will be noticed that the benevolent translator of this Godstow register says that the nuns are for the most part well learned in English books. The same impression is given by the translations which were made for the nuns of Syon. The most famous of these is the Myroure of Oure Ladye, written for the nuns by Thomas Gascoigne (1403-58) and first printed in 1530. This book contains a devotional treatise on divine service, with a translation and explanation of the “Hours” and “Masses” of our Lady, as they were used at Syon. The author explains his purpose thus:

He adds that he has explained the various parts of the divine service for “symple soulles to vnderstonde,” but that he has translated few psalms, “for ye may haue them of Rycharde hampoules drawynge, and out of Englysshe bibles, if ye haue lysence therto”[852].

From a passage in the Myroure it appears that the sisters were accustomed to spend some of their time in reading and advice is given to them as to the sort of books to read and the way in which to profit by them; from this it is quite clear that secular learning had no place among them, their reading being confined to works of ghostly edification[853]. It was their ignorance of Latin which caused the insertion of English rubrics in the Latin Processionale of the house and which inspired Richard Whytford, one of the brothers, to translate the splendid Martilogium, which is now in the British Museum, “for the edificacyon of certayn religyous persones unlerned that dayly dyd rede the same martiloge in Latyn, not understandynge what they redde”; his translation was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1526[854]. Gascoigne’s mention of English bibles is interesting. Miss Deanesly, in her study of The Lollard Bible, has shown that “it is likely that English nuns were the most numerous orthodox users of English bibles between 1408 and 1526,” but that the evidence for this use is slight and drawn almost entirely from Syon and Barking, two large and important houses[855]. Her conclusion is that

This goes to confirm the conclusion that even in the greatest houses, where the nuns were drawn from the highest social classes and might be supposed to be best educated, the knowledge of Latin was dying out.

Other occupations besides reading filled the working hours of the nuns and of these spinning and needlework were the most important. Most women in the middle ages possessed the art of spinning and Aubrey’s Old Jacques may have remembered aright how “he saw from his house the nuns of the priory (Kington St Michael) come forth into the nymph-hay with their rocks and wheels to spin,” though his memory misled him sorely as to the number of these ladies. Sometimes a visitation report gives us a glimpse of the nuns at work: at Easebourne in 1441 the nuns say that the Prioress “compels her sisters to work continually like hired workwomen and they receive nothing whatever for their own use from their work, but the prioress takes the whole profit”[856] and at Catesby in the following year a young nun complains that the Prioress “setts her to make beds, to sewing and spinning and other tasks”[857]. Nevertheless it does not seem that the nuns were in the habit of spinning the wool and flax for their own and their servants’ clothes and account rolls often contain payments made to hired spinsters, as well as to fullers and weavers.

It is more probable that they busied themselves with needlework and embroidery, which were the usual occupations of ladies of gentle birth[858]. Very few traces have unfortunately survived of the work of English nuns. In earlier centuries English needlework had been famous and the nuns had been pre-eminent in the making of richly embroidered vestments. In the thirteenth century, too, English embroidery far surpassed that made in other countries and it has been conjectured that “the most famous embroidered vestments now preserved in various places in Italy are the handiwork of English embroiderers between 1250 and 1300 though their authorship is not as a rule recognised by their present possessors”[859]. Some of these may have been made by nuns; it is thought that the famous Syon cope, for long in the possession of the nuns of Syon, may have been made in a thirteenth century convent in the neighbourhood of Coventry; but such examples of medieval embroidery as have survived usually bear no trace of their origin; since a vestment cannot be signed like a book and it must be remembered that there was a large class of professional “embroideresses” in the country.

Some, however, of the splendid vestments and altar cloths possessed by the richer nunneries were probably the work of the nuns. At Langley in 1485 there were, among other rich pieces of embroidery

Many of these embroideries and tapestries were doubtless legacies or gifts; but it is impossible not to picture the white fingers of the nuns at work on swans and roses, harts’ heads and butterflies, stars and true-love knots. One may deduce that the nuns of Yorkshire, at least, busied themselves in these pursuits from an injunction sent to Nunkeeling, Yedingham and Wykeham in 1314 that no nun should absent herself from divine service “on account of being occupied with silk work” (propter occupacionem operis de serico)[861].

Reference to the sale of embroidery by nuns is surprisingly rare in account rolls. The household roll of the Countess of Leicester in 1265 contains an item, “Paid to the nuns of Wintney, for one cope to be made for the use of Brother J. Angelus by the gift of the Countess at Panham 10d.”[862], which small sum must have been a part payment in advance, perhaps towards the purchase of materials; the nuns of Gracedieu, too, sold a cope to a neighbouring rector for £10, early in the fifteenth century[863], and on one occasion the cellaress of Barking derived a part of her income for the year from the sale of a cope[864], but search has revealed no further instances. The nuns also probably made little presents for their friends, such as purses (though the Gracedieu nuns always bought the purses which they gave to their bailiff, to Lady Beaumont, or to other visitors) and the so-called “blood-bands.” In an age when bleeding was the most common treatment for almost every illness and when monks, in particular, were regularly bled several times a year, these little bandages were common presents, being sometimes made of silk. The author of the Ancren Riwle thus bade his anchoresses “make no purses to gain friends therewith, not blodbendes of silk, but shape and sew and mend church vestments and poor people’s clothes”[865]. The nuns of the diocese of Rouen in the mid-thirteenth century were accustomed to knit or embroider silken purses, tassels, cushions or needlecases for sale or as gifts, and Archbishop Eudes Rigaud was continually forbidding them to do any silk work except for church ornament[866]. There is some reason to think that the nuns, then as now, sometimes eked out their income by doing fine needlework for ladies of the world, though there is no mention of it in nunnery accounts, or indeed in any English records. Among the correspondence of Lady Lisle in the first half of the sixteenth century, however, are several letters to and from a certain Antoinette de Favences at Dunkirk, who would appear to have been a nun, for she signs herself sister Antoinette de Favences and is addressed by Lady Lisle as Madame and Dame. This woman was employed to make caps and coifs for Lady Lisle’s family and friends and there is much correspondence between them as to night-caps which are too wide, lozenge-work and such matters; in one letter Lady Lisle speaks of sending “16 rozimbos and 2 half angels of Flanders, a Carolus of gold,” in payment for the caps[867].

What other accomplishments the nuns may have possessed we do not know. They were possibly skilled in herbs and in the more simple forms of home medicine and surgery, for it was the function of the lady of the manor to know something of these things, though doctors were available (for nuns as well as for lay folk) in more serious illnesses[868]. They doubtless bled each other as did the monks, else how was the wicked Prioress of Kirklees, who slew Robin Hood, so skilled?:

Doun then came Dame PriorÈss
Doun she came in that ilk,
With a pair of blood-irons in her hand,
Were wrappÈd all in silk....
She laid the blood-irons to Robin’s vein
Alack the more pitye!
And pierc’d the vein and let out the blood
That full red was to see.

There is an occasional brief reference to the recreation of nuns in their “seynys” in visitations[869], but the precaution was less necessary and less frequent than it was in houses of monks[870]. No doubt, also, the nuns sometimes nursed their boarders, some of whom must have been old and ailing; wills are occasionally dated from nunneries[871]. The nuns of Romsey had a hospital attached to the house, in which were received as sisters any parents and relatives of the nuns, who were poor and ill[872], but this does not prove that the nuns nursed them, and references in visitation reports show that even sick nuns were often looked after by lay servants in the infirmary, or if permanently disabled, occupied a separate room, with a separate maid to attend them. It is not likely that the nuns left their convents, save very occasionally, to undertake sick-nursing; this would have been against the spirit of their rule, for their main business was not (as was that of the sisters who looked after spitals) to care for the sick, but to live enclosed in their houses, following the prescribed round of church services. It is however of interest that the will of Sir Roger Salwayn, knight of York (1420) contains this legacy: “Also I will that the Nunne that kepid me in my seknes haue ij nobles, and that ther be gif into the hous that she wonnes in xxs, for to syng and pray for me”[873]. Nuns may have emerged sometimes to nurse friends and relatives, whose sick-beds they were always allowed to attend; but there is no documentary evidence for the belief of modern writers, who would fain turn the nun into a district visitor, smoothing the pillows of all who ailed in her native village.

These then were the educational attainments of the English nuns in the later middle ages: reading and singing the services of the church, sometimes but not always writing, Latin very rarely after the thirteenth century, French very rarely after the fourteenth century; needlework and embroidery; and perhaps that elementary knowledge of physic, which was the possession of most ladies of their class. It was, in fact, very little more than the education possessed by laywomen of the same social rank outside and there is little trace of anything approaching scholarship. The study of the education of the nuns during this period leads naturally to one of the most vexed questions in the field of monastic history, the extent to which the nunneries acted as girls’ schools. There is no doubt that every nunnery was prepared to educate young girls who entered in order to take the veil; if the nunnery were fairly large these scolae internae probably included several novices at a time. At Ankerwyke in 1441 three young nuns complained that they had no governess to instruct them in “reading, song and religious observance,” and mention is made of three other sisters “of tender age and slender discretion, seeing that the eldest of them is not more than thirteen years of age”; the Bishop appointed a nun to be their teacher, “enjoining her to perform the charge laid upon her and to instruct them in good manners”[874]. Similarly at Thetford, where there were three novices in 1526, the Bishop found “non habent eruditricem”[875]. At the larger houses, such as Romsey, the magistra noviciarum was a regular obedientiary[876].

PLATE V

PAGE FROM LA SAINTE ABBAYE

(In the bottom left hand corner the mistress of the novices, with birch in hand, is instructing two young novices; in the bottom right hand corner the abbess and a nun are at prayer.)

The vexed question, however, does not concern these schools for novices. It has been the custom, not only of writers on monasticism but also of the man in the street, to assume that the nunneries were almost solely responsible for the education of girls in the middle ages. There was little evidence for the assumption, but it was always made, and until the combined attack made upon it in 1910 by Mr Coulton and Mr Leach it was unchallenged[877]. With the publication of bishops’ registers, however, we have something more definite to go upon and it is now possible to come to some sort of conclusion, based on the evidence of visitation injunctions, account rolls and other miscellaneous sources. This conclusion may be summarised as follows. It was a fairly general custom among the English nuns, in the two and a half centuries before the Dissolution, to receive children for education. But there are four limitations, within which and only within which, this conclusion is true. First, that by no means all nunneries took children and those which did take them seldom had large schools; secondly, that the children who thus received a convent education were drawn exclusively from the upper and the wealthy middle classes, from people, that is to say, of birth and wealth; thirdly, that the practice was a purely financial expedient on the part of the nuns, at first forbidden, afterwards restricted and always frowned upon by the bishops, who regarded it as subversive of discipline; and fourthly, that the education which the children received from the nuns, so far as book-learning as distinct from nurture is concerned, was extremely exiguous. In fine, though nunneries did act as girls’ schools, they certainly did not educate more than a small proportion even of the children of the upper classes, and the education which they gave them was limited by their own limitations[878].

That the custom of receiving schoolgirls was fairly general appears from the wide area over which notices of such children are spread. The references range in date from 1282 to 1537; they give us, if a doubtful reference to King’s Mead, Derby, be accepted, the names of forty-nine convents, which at one time or other had children in residence. These convents are situated in twenty-one counties. The greater number of references naturally occur in those dioceses for which the episcopal registers are most complete; Yorkshire affords fifteen names and two which are doubtful; Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire and Leicestershire, counties in the large Lincoln diocese, afford seventeen between them, five from Lincolnshire and two from each of the others. These references do not prove that the houses in question had continuously throughout their career a school for girls; sometimes only one or two children are mentioned and usually the evidence concerns but a single year out of two and a half centuries. Sometimes, however, a happy chance has preserved several references to the same house, spread over a longer period, from which it is perhaps not too rash to conclude that it was the regular practice of that house to receive children. For Elstow, for instance, there is an early reference to a boy of five sent there for education by St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, towards the close of the twelfth century. In 1359 Bishop Gynewell prohibited all boarders there, except girls under ten and boys under six. In 1421 Bishop Flemyng prohibited all except children under twelve and in 1432 Bishop Gray altered this to girls under fourteen and boys under ten, and children are mentioned at Alnwick’s visitation in 1442. Similarly at Godstow there are references to children in 1358, 1445 and 1538, at Esholt in Yorkshire in 1315, 1318 and 1537, at Sopwell in 1446 and 1537, at Heynings in 1347, 1387 and 1393, at Burnham in 1434 and 1519.

The mention of boys in these references needs perhaps some further emphasis, for it is not usually recognised that the nunneries occasionally acted as dame-schools for very young boys. “Abstinence the abbesse myn a.b.c. me tau?te,” says Piers Plowman, “And conscience com aftur and kennide me betere.” It is true that a Cistercian statute of 1256-7 forbade the education of boys in nunneries of that order[879], but the ordinance soon became a dead letter, and five of the convents at which Alnwick found schoolboys (c. 1445) were Cistercian houses. Boys were specifically forbidden at Wherwell in 1284, at Heynings in 1359 and at Nuncoton in 1531, which argues that they were then present, and they are mentioned at Romsey (1311), at five Yorkshire convents (1314-17), at Burnham (1434), at Lymbrook (1437), at Swaffham Bulbeck (1483) and at Redlingfield (1514), a chronologically and geographically wide range of houses. Occasionally some details as to a particular boy may be gleaned; the five year old Robert de Noyon, sent by Bishop Hugh to Elstow “to be taught his letters,” the two Tudor boys commended to Katharine de la Pole, the noble Abbess of Barking; the little son and heir of Sir John Stanley, who made his will in 1527 and then became a monk, leaving the boy to be brought up until twelve years of age by another Abbess of Barking, after which he was to pass to the care of the Abbot of Westminster; and Cromwell’s son Gregory and his little companion, sent to be supervised, though not taught by Margaret Vernon, Prioress of Little Marlow[880]. But as a rule the boys in nunneries were very young; it was not considered decorous for them to stay with the nuns later than their ninth or tenth year; the bishop forbade it and besides, the education which the good sisters could give them would not have been considered sufficient. The rule which gives a man child to a man for education is of very old standing.

Such is the evidence for concluding that the custom of receiving children for education in nunneries was widespread. It remains to consider carefully the limitations within which this conclusion is true. In the first place, not all nunneries received children. It is obviously impossible, considering the gaps in our evidence, to attempt an exact estimate of the proportion which did so. Some sort of clue may be obtained by an analysis of the Yorkshire visitations of Archbishops Greenfield and Melton at the beginning of the fourteenth century (1306-20) and of Alnwick’s Lincoln visitations (1440-5). The Yorkshire evidence is rather scanty, being based on the summaries of injunctions, which are given in the Victoria County Histories, and any statistics must needs be approximate only. The two archbishops between them visited nineteen nunneries and mention of children is made at twelve, i.e. about two-thirds. The information given by the invaluable Alnwick is more exact. From the detecta of some of the nuns and from the number of prohibitions of this practice, it is obvious that Alnwick was accustomed to ask at his visitations whether children were sleeping in the nuns’ dorter; he also made careful inquiry as to the boarders. The probability, therefore, is that we have in his register an exact record of those houses in which children were received. Analysis shows that of the twenty houses which he visited he found children, often boys as well as girls, at twelve, i.e. a little over two-thirds, which is substantially the same result as was given by the Yorkshire analysis a century earlier. The estimate is interesting, but it cannot be considered conclusive without the corroborative evidence from other dioceses, which is unfortunately lacking. It is a hint, a straw, which shows which way the wind of research is blowing, for if it is unsafe to argue from silence that the nuns of other convents did take pupils, it is equally unsafe to argue that they did not.

The fact is, however, clearly established that all nunneries did not take children; possibly about two-thirds of them did. The further fact has then to be recognised that even those nunneries had not necessarily what we should regard as a school for girls. Not only does it sometimes seem as though children were taken occasionally and intermittently, rather than regularly, but the numbers taken were rarely great. Sometimes we do hear of a house with a large number of pupils. At St Mary’s Winchester in 1536 there were as many as twenty-six children, to twenty-six nuns; and at Polesworth in 1537 Henry VIII’s commissioners state vaguely that “repayre and resort ys made to the gentlemens childern and studiounts that ther doo lif, to the nombre sometyme of xxx^ti and sometyme xj^ti and moo.” There were fifteen nuns in the house at the time and it is likely that the number of children given is a pardonable exaggeration by local gentlemen who were interested in preserving the nunnery; but it seems undoubted that there was a comparatively large school there. At Stixwould, again, in 1440 there were about eighteen children to an equal number of nuns. These, however, are the largest schools of which we have record. At St Michael’s Stamford in 1440 there were seven or eight children to twelve nuns, at Catesby in 1442 six or seven children to seven nuns. At Swaffham Bulbeck, where there were probably eight or nine nuns, there were nine children in 1483. These also are schools, though small schools. But at other houses there were only one or two children at a time. The accounts of the Prioress of St Helen’s Bishopsgate in 1298 mention only two children, there were only two at Littlemore in 1445 and two at Sopwell at the time of the Dissolution. It must be remembered that many nunneries were themselves very small and their inmates could not have looked after a large number of children. The examples quoted above suggest that the number of children hardly ever exceeded the number of nuns. To what conclusion are we driven when we find that a possible two-thirds of the convents of England received children and that the largest school of which we have record numbered only twenty-six children (or thirty if we take the higher and less probable figure for Polesworth), while most had far fewer? Surely to represent a majority of girls, or even a majority of girls of gentle birth, as having received their nurture in convents, would be on the evidence absurd.

The second limitation of convent education in medieval England is contained in the words “girls of gentle birth.” Tanner’s statement that “the lower rank of people, who could not pay for their learning”[881], as well as noblemen’s and gentlemen’s daughters, were educated in nunneries has not a shred of evidence to support it, though it has been repeated ad nauseam ever since he wrote it. Every scrap of evidence which has come down to us goes to prove that the girls educated in nunneries were of gentle birth, daughters of great lords, or more often daughters of country gentlemen, or of those comfortable and substantial merchants and burgesses, who were usually themselves sprung from younger sons of the gentry. The implication is plain in Chaucer’s description, in The Reves Tale, of the Miller’s wife, who was “y-comen of noble kin” and daughter of the parson of the toun, and who “was y-fostred in a nonnerye”:

Ther dorste no wight clepen hir but “dame” ...
And eek, for she was somdel smoterlich
She was as digne as water in a dich;
And ful of hoker and of bisemare.
Her thoughte that a lady sholde hir spare,
What for hir kinrede and hir nortelrye
That she had lerned in the nonnerye.

An analysis of some of the schoolgirls whose names have come down to us confirms this impression. The commissioners who visited St Mary’s, Winchester, in 1536 drew up a list of the twenty-six “chyldren of lordys, knyghttes and gentylmen brought up yn the saym monastery.” They were

The house was evidently at this time a fashionable seminary for young ladies. It must be remembered that it was a general custom among the English nobility and gentry to send their children away to the household of a lord, or person of good social standing, in order to learn breeding and it was not uncommon to send boys to the household of an abbot. In 1450 Thomas Bromele, Abbot of Hyde, thus entertained in his house eight “gentiles pueri,” there were many “pueri generosi” at Westacre in 1494, and Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, is stated by Parsons to have had, among his 300 servants, “multos nobilium filios”[882]. It was doubtless much in the same way that the children of lords, knights and gentlemen were put in the charge of the Abbess of St Mary’s Winchester, a great lady, who had her own “gentlewoman” to attend upon her and her own private household. It is probable that the nuns taught these children, but the boys who went as wards to abbeys seem often to have taken their tutors with them, or at least to have been taught by special tutors. At Lilleshall, for instance, the commissioners found four “gentylmens sons and their scolemaster”[883] and it is significant that when little Gregory Cromwell was sent to be brought up by Margaret Vernon, Prioress of Little Marlow, he was taught by a private tutor and not by the nun.

Other references to the children received in nunneries confirms the impression that they were of gentle birth. At Polesworth, as at St Mary’s, Winchester, the commissioners specified “gentylmens childern and studiounts.” At Thetford a daughter of John Jerves, generosus, is mentioned in 1532 and two daughters of Laurens Knight, gentleman, were at Cornworthy, c. 1470. The accounts of Sopwell in 1446 mention the daughter of Lady Anne Norbery; at Littlemore in 1445 the daughter of John FitzAleyn, steward of the house, and the daughter of Ingelram Warland are boarders. Among the Carrow boarders, who may be set down as children, are the son and two daughters of Sir Roger Wellisham, the daughter of Sir Robert de Wachesam, a niece of William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, and girls with such well-known names as Fastolf, Clere, Baret, Blickling, Shelton and Ferrers, though the last two may be adult boarders. The Gracedieu boarders nearly all bear the names of neighbouring gentry and one was the daughter of Lord Beaumont. In the course of time, as the urban middle class grew and flourished, the daughters of the well-to-do bourgeoisie were sometimes sent to convents for their education. Thus among the Carrow boarders we find a daughter of John de Erlham, a merchant and citizen of Norwich, and Isabel Barber, daughter of Thomas Welan, barber, who afterwards, however, became a nun. It is plain from the wills which have been preserved that the wealthy Norwich burgesses were in the habit of sending their daughters as nuns to Carrow, and it is a natural supposition that they should have sent them sometimes as schoolgirls; but by birth and by wealth these city magnates were not far removed from the neighbouring gentry. The school at Swaffham Bulbeck in 1483 was less fashionable than that at Carrow and did not cater for the nobly born; it was a small house and the names of the children suggest a sound middle class establishment, perhaps the very one in which Chaucer’s Miller’s wife of Trumpington was educated, full of the sons and daughters of the burgesses of Cambridge, Richard Potecary of Cambridge, William Water, Thomas Roch, unnamed fathers “of Cambridge,” “of Chesterton,” Parker “of Walden,” and “the merchant.”

None of these examples can possibly be twisted into a case for the free, or even the cheap, education of the poor. Just as we never find low-born girls as nuns, so we never find them as schoolgirls and for the same reason; “dowerless maidens,” as Mr Leach says, “were not sought as nuns.” As will be seen hereafter, the reception of school children was essentially a financial expedient; one of the many methods by which the nuns sought to raise the wind[884]. The fees paid by these children are recorded here and there, in nunnery accounts; education was apparently thrown in with board, and the usual rate for board for children during the century and a half before the Dissolution seems to have been about 6d. a week, though the charge at Cornworthy c. 1470 was 10d. a week and at Littlemore in 1445 only 4d. a week[885]. Occasionally the good nuns suffered, like so many schoolmistresses since their day, from the difficulty of extracting fees. Among the debts owing to the nuns of Esholt at the Dissolution was one of 33s. from Walter Wood of Timble in the parish of Otley for his child’s board for a year and a half; and at Thetford in 1532 the poor nuns complained that “John Jerves, gentleman, has a daughter being nurtured in the priory and pays nothing.” The most melancholy case of all has been preserved to us owing to the fact that the nuns, goaded to desperation, sought help from the Chancellor. About 1470 Thomasyn Dynham, Prioress of Cornworthy, made petition to the effect that Laurens Knyghte, gentleman, had agreed with Margaret Wortham the late Prioress, that she should take his two daughters “to teche them to scole,” viz. Elizabeth, aged seven years, and “Jahne,” aged ten years, at the costs and charges of Laurens, who was to pay 20d. a week for them. So at Cornworthy they remained during the life of Margaret, to the great costs and charges and impoverishing of the said poor place, by the space of five years and more, until the money due amounted to £21. 13s. 4d., “the which sum is not contented ne paid, nor noo peny thereof.” Laurense meanwhile departed this life, leaving his wife “Jahne” executrix, and Jahne, unnatural mother that she was, married again a certain John Barnehous and utterly refused to pay for her unhappy daughters. One is uncertain which to pity most, Thomasyn Dynham, a new Prioress left with this incubus on her hands, or Elizabeth and Jane Knyghte, trying hard to restrain their appetites and not to grow out of their clothes under her justly incensed regard. Jane was by now grown up and marriageable according to the standards of the time and it is tantalising not to know the end of the dilemma. A proneness to forget fees seems to have been shared by greater folk than Mistress Knyghte, as the petition of Katherine de la Pole, Abbess of Barking, concerning Edmond and Jasper Tudor, whose “charges, costs and expenses” she had taken upon herself, will show.

Both this matter of fees and the names of schoolgirls which have survived are against any suggestion that the nuns gave schooling to poor girls. There is not the slightest evidence for anything like a day school, and the only hint for any care for village girls on the part of the nuns is contained in a letter from Cranmer, when fellow of Jesus College, to the Abbess of Godstow:

But this is obviously an isolated discourse and in any case it has nothing to do with education. So far as it is possible to be certain of anything for which evidence is scanty, we may be certain that poor or lower-class girls were no more received in nunneries for education, than they were received there as nuns. No single instance has ever been brought of a lowborn nun or a lowborn schoolgirl, in any English nunnery, for the three centuries before the nunneries were dissolved.

The third limitation to which convent education was subjected is an important one; the reception of children by the nuns was never approved and always restricted by their ecclesiastical superiors. The greater number of references to schoolchildren which have come down to us are these restrictive references. The attitude of monastic visitors towards children was in essence the same as their attitude towards boarders. The nuns received both, because they were nearly always in low water financially and wished to add to their scanty finances by the familiar expedient of taking paying guests. But the bishops saw in all boarders, whether adults or schoolchildren, a hindrance to discipline; they objected to them for the same reason that they objected to pet dogs and silver girdles and with just as little success.

The ecclesiastical case against schoolchildren may be found delightfully set forth in the words addressed, it is true, to anchoresses, but expressing the same spirit as was afterwards shown by Eudes Rigaud, Johann Busch and other great medieval visitors towards nuns. Aelred, the great twelfth century Abbot of Rievaulx, writes thus:

Similarly the author of the Ancren Riwle warns his three anchoresses:

The gist of the matter was that the children constituted a hindrance to claustral discipline and devotion. It is plain, however, that in this, as in so many other matters, the reformers were only “beating the air” in vain with their restrictions. Sympathy must be with the needy nuns, for even if discipline were weakened thereby, the reception of children was in itself a very harmless, not to say laudable expedient; and so the neighbouring gentry as well as the nuns considered it.

An analysis of the attitude of medieval visitors to schoolchildren shows us the usual attempt to limit what it was beyond their power to prohibit. Eudes Rigaud, the great Archbishop of Rouen, habitually removed all the girls and boys whom he found in the houses of his diocese, when he visited them during the years 1249 to 1269. But in England, at least, the nuns very soon became too strong for the bishops, who gradually adopted the policy of fixing an age limit beyond which no children might remain in a nunnery and sometimes of requiring their own licence to be given before the boys and girls were admitted. Since the danger of secularisation could not be removed, it was at least reduced to a minimum, by ensuring that only very young boys and only girls, who had not yet attained a marriageable age, should be received. The age limit varied a little with different visitors and different houses. In the Yorkshire diocese early in the fourteenth century the age limit was twelve for girls; boys are rarely mentioned, but at Hampole in 1314 the nuns were forbidden to permit male children over five to be in the house, as the bishop finds has been the practice. Bishop Gynewell in 1359 allowed girls up to ten and boys up to six at Elstow, but forbade boys altogether at Heynings. Bishop Gray allowed girls under fourteen and boys under eight at Burnham in 1434 and Bishop Stretton in 1367 allowed boys up to seven at Fairwell. The age limit tended, it will be seen, to become higher in the course of time; Alnwick writing to Gracedieu in 1440, forbade all boarders “save childerne, males the ix and females the xiiij yere of age, whom we licencede you to hafe for your relefe”[889]; he allowed boys often at Heynings and Catesby and boys of eleven (an exceptionally high age) at Harrold.

There was a special reason, besides the general interference with discipline, for which the bishops objected to children in nunneries. It seems very often to have been the custom for the nuns to take, as it were, private pupils, each child having its own particular mistress. This custom grew as the practice of keeping separate households grew. Thus at Catesby the Prioress complained to Alnwick that sister Agnes Allesley had “six or seven young folk of both sexes, that do lie in the dorter”; at St Michael’s Stamford, he found that the Prioress had seven or eight children, at Gracedieu the cellaress had a little boy and at Elstow, where there were five households of nuns, it was said that “certain nuns” brought children into the quire. In fact, the nuns would appear to have kept for their own personal use the money paid to them for the board of their private pupils. This was a sin against the monastic rule of personal poverty and the bishops took special measures against such manifestations of proprietas. William of Wykeham in 1387 forbids the nuns of Romsey to make wills and to have private rooms or private pupils, giving this specific reason, and at St Helen’s Bishopsgate in 1439 Dean Kentwode enjoined “that no nonne have ne receyve noo schuldrin wyth hem ... but yf that the profite of the comonys turne to the vayle of the same howse.” Similarly the number of children who might be taken by a single nun was sometimes limited; Gynewell wrote to Godstow in 1358 “that no lady of the said house is to have children, save only two or three females sojourning with them” and at Fairwell in 1367 no nun might keep with her for education more than one child.

Another habit against which bishops constantly legislated was that of having the children to sleep in the dorter with the nuns. This practice was exceedingly common, for many of the nunneries which took children were small and poor; they had possibly no other room to set aside for them, and no person who could suitably be placed in charge of them. Moreover in some cases adult boarders and servants also slept in the dorter. Alnwick was constantly having to bid his nuns “that ye suffre ne seculere persones, wymmen ne children lyg by nyghte in the dormytory,” but Atwater and Longland in the sixteenth century still have to make the same injunction. Bokyngham in 1387 ordered that a seemly place outside the cloister should be set apart for the children at Heynings; the reason was that (as Gynewell had expressly stated on visiting this house forty years before) “the convent might not be disturbed.” Indeed little attempt was made by the nuns to keep the children out of their way. They seem to have dined in the refectory, when not in the separate rooms of their mistresses, for Greenfield forbids the Prioress and Subprioress of Sinningthwaite (1315) to permit boys or girls to eat flesh meat in Advent or Sexagesima, or during Lent eggs or cheese, in the refectory, “contrary to the honesty of religion,” but at those seasons when they ought to eat such things, they were to be assigned other places in which to eat them. There are references, too, to disturbances and diversions created by the children in the quire. At Elstow in 1442 Dame Rose Waldegrave said that “certain nuns do sometimes have with them in time of mass the boys whom they teach and these do make a noise in quire during divine service”[890]. To us the picture of these merry children breaking the monotony of convent routine is an attractive one; more attractive even than the pet dogs and the Vert-Verts. But to stern ecclesiastical disciplinarians it was not so attractive, and their constant restriction, though it never succeeded in turning out the children, must have kept down the number who were admitted.

The evidence which has so far been considered shows that, though the reception of children to be boarded and taught in nunneries was fairly common, it was subjected to well marked limitations. There remains to be considered one more question the answer to which is in some sort a limitation likewise. What exactly did the nuns teach these children? We are hampered in answering this question by the difficulty of obtaining exact contemporary evidence. Most modern English writers content themselves with a glib list of accomplishments, copied without verification from book to book, and all apparently traceable in the last resort to Fuller and John Aubrey, the one writing a century, the other almost a century and a half after the nunneries had been dissolved. Fuller (whom Tanner copies) says:

Aubrey, speaking of Wiltshire convents says:

One would have thought the familiar note of the laudator temporis acti to be plainly audible in both these extracts. But a host of modern writers have gravely transcribed their words and even, taking advantage no doubt of Aubrey’s “etc.” (much virtue in etc.), improved upon them. In the work of one more recent writer the list has become “reading, writing, some knowledge of arithmetic, the art of embroidery, music and French ‘after the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,’ were the recognised course of study, while the preparation of perfumes, balsams, simples and confectionary was among the more ordinary departments of the education afforded”[893]. Another adds a few more deft touches: “the treatment of various disorders, the compounding of simples, the binding up of wounds, ... fancy cookery, such as the making of sweetmeats, writing, drawing, needlework of all kinds and music, both vocal and instrumental”[894]. The most recent writer of all gives the list as “English and French ... writing, drawing, confectionary, singing by notes, dancing, and playing upon instruments of music, the study also of medicine and surgery”[895]. Though the historian must groan, the student of human nature cannot but smile to see music insinuate itself into the list and then become “both instrumental and vocal”; confectionery extend itself to include perfumes, balsams, simples, and the making of sweetmeats; arithmetic appear out of nowhere; and (most magnificent feat of the imagination) dancing trip in on light fantastic toe. From this compound of Aubrey, memories of continental convents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and familiarity with the convent schools of our own day, let us turn to the considered opinion of a more sober scholar, who bases it only upon contemporary evidence:

Direct evidence is therefore absolutely lacking; all we can do is to deduce probabilities from what we know of the education of the nuns themselves, and it must be conceded that this was not always of a very high order. It is quite certain, from the wording of some of the visitation injunctions, that the quality and extent of the teaching must have varied considerably from house to house. It was probably good (as the education of women then went) at the larger and more fashionable houses, mediocre at those which were small and struggling. Latin could not have been taught, because, as has already been pointed out, the nuns at this period did not know it themselves; but the children were probably taught the Credo, the Ave and the Pater Noster in Latin by rote. They may have been taught French of the school of Stratford atte Bowe, as long as that language was fashionable in the outside world and known to the nuns, but it died out of the convents after the end of the fourteenth century. It seems pretty certain that the children must have been taught to read. “Abstinence the abbesse myn a.b.c. me tau?te,” says Piers Plowman; the Abbess of St Mary’s Winchester buys the matins books for little Bridget Plantagenet; and it will be remembered that the nuns of Godstow were said about 1460 (fifteen years after Alnwick visited the house and gave permission for children to be boarded there) to be “for the more party in Englyssh bokys well y-lernyd.” Caesarius of Heisterbach has a delightful story, repeated thus in a fifteenth century Alphabet of Tales:

Whether girls were taught to write, as well as to read, is far more doubtful. It is probable that the nuns did not always possess this accomplishment themselves, nor did sober medieval opinion consider it wholly desirable that girls should know how to write, on account both of the general inferiority of their sex, and of a regrettable proclivity towards clandestine love letters[898]. Still, writing may sometimes have formed part of the curriculum; there is no evidence either way. For drawing (by which presumably the art of illumination must be meant) there is no warrant; a medieval nunnery was not a modern “finishing” school.

So much for what may be called book learning. Let us now examine for a moment the other accomplishments with which nunnery-bred young ladies have been credited. We may, as Mr Leach suggests, make a guess at spinning and needlework, though here also there is no evidence for their being taught to schoolgirls. Jane Scroupe, into whose mouth Skelton puts his “Phyllyp Sparowe,” was apparently being brought up at Carrow, and describes how she sewed the dead bird’s likeness on her sampler,

I toke my sampler ones,
Of purpose, for the nones,
To sowe with stytchis of sylke
My sparow whyte as mylke.

Confectionery does not seem very probable, for at this period the cooking for the convent was nearly always done by a hired male cook and not (as laid down in the Benedictine rule) by the nuns themselves, who were apt to complain if they had to prepare the meals. For “home medicine” there is absolutely no evidence, though all ladies of the day possessed some knowledge of simples and herb-medicines and the girls may equally well have learned it at home as among the nuns. It is probable that the children learned to sing, if the nuns took them into the quire; but for this there is no definite evidence, nor has any document been quoted to prove that they learned to play upon instruments of music. It is true that the flighty Dame Isabel Benet “did dance and play the lute” with the friars of Northampton[899] and that “a pair of organs” occurs twice in Dissolution inventories of nunneries[900], but an organ is hardly an instrument of secular music to be played by the daughter of the house in a manorial solar; and Dame Benet’s escapade with the lute was a lapse from the strict path of virtue. Finally to suggest that the nuns taught dances verges upon absurdity. That they did sometimes dance is true, and grieved their visitors were to hear it[901]; but what Alnwick would have said to the suggestion that they solemnly engaged themselves to teach dancing to their young pupils is an amusing subject for contemplation. Evidence for everything except the prayers of the church and the art of reading is non-existent; we can but base our opinion upon conjecture and probability; and the probability for instrumental music is so slight as to be non-existent. If it be argued that gentlewomen were expected to possess these arts, it may be replied that the children whom we find at nunneries probably had opportunity to learn them at home, for they seem sometimes to have spent only a part of the year with the nuns. It is true that board is sometimes paid for the whole year, and that little Bridget Plantagenet stayed at St Mary’s Winchester for two or three years, while her parents were absent in France; moreover we have already heard of poor Elizabeth and Jane Knyghte, left for over five years at Cornworthy. But an analysis of the Swaffham Bulbeck accounts shows that the children (if indeed they are children) stayed for the following periods during the year 1483, viz., two for forty weeks, one for thirty weeks, one for twenty-six weeks, two for twenty-two weeks, one for sixteen weeks, one for twelve weeks and one for six weeks. It is much more likely that girls were sent to the nuns for elementary schooling than for the acquirement of worldly accomplishments.

As has already been pointed out, it is difficult to get any specific information as to the life led by the schoolchildren in nunneries. But by good fortune some letters written by an abbess shortly before the Dissolution have been preserved and give a pleasant picture of a little girl boarding in a nunnery. The correspondence in question took place between Elizabeth Shelley, Abbess of St Mary’s Winchester, and Honor, Viscountess Lisle, concerning the latter’s stepdaughter, the lady Bridget Plantagenet, who was one of the twenty-six aristocratic young ladies then at school in the nunnery[902]. Lord Lisle was an illegitimate son of Edward IV, and had been appointed Lord Deputy of Calais in 1533; and when he and his wife departed to take up the new office, they were at pains to find suitable homes for their younger children in England. A stepson of Lord Lisle’s was boarded with the Abbot of Reading and his two younger daughters, the ladies Elizabeth and Bridget Plantagenet, were left, the one in charge of her half-brother, Sir John Dudley, and the other in that of the energetic Abbess of St Mary’s Winchester. It must be admitted that the correspondence between the abbess and Lady Lisle shows a greater preoccupation with dress than with learning. The Lady Bridget grew like the grass in springtime; there was no keeping her in clothes.

But for the matins books, sandwiched uncomfortably between gowns and hosen, there is no clue here as to what the Lady Bridget was learning.

The tenor of the next letter, written about seven months later, is the same, for still the noble little lady grew:

(What flesh-days there must have been in the refectory!)

Another letter shows that the wardrobe difficulty was no whit abated, but the Abbess dealt with it by the rather hard-hearted expedient of sending poor Bridget away on a visit to her father’s steward at Soberton in Hampshire, in her outgrown clothes, in order that he might be moved to amend her state. Clearly it was not always easy to get what was requisite for a schoolgirl from a gay and busy mother, disporting herself across the sea:

“This is to advertise your ladyship,” says the Abbess, “Upon a fourteen or fifteen days before Michaelmas, mistress Waynam and mistress Fawkenor came to Winchester to see mistress Bridget Lisle, with whom came two of my lord’s servants, and desired to have mistress Bridget to sir Anthony Windsor’s to sport her for a week. And because she was out of apparel, that master Windsor might see her, I was the better content to let her go; and since that time she came no more at Winchester: Wherein I beseech your ladyship think no unkindness in me for my light sending of her: for if I had not esteemed her to have come again, she should not have come there at that time.”