Eileen Power

THE WORLD IN THE CLOISTER

Ès maisons de nonnains aucun sont bien venut, Et as gens festyer n’a nul rÈgne tenut; On y va volentiers et souvent et menut Mais mieuls sont festyet jovÈne que li kenut. Gilles li Muisis († 1352).

In the last chapter the question of enclosure was considered only from one point of view, that of keeping the nuns within the precincts of their cloister. But there was another side to the problem. In order to preserve them unspotted from the world it was necessary not only that the nuns should keep within their cloisters, but that secular persons should keep outside. It was useless to pass regulations forbidding nuns to leave their houses, if visitors from the world had easy access to them and could move freely about within the precincts. Ottobon, Peckham, Boniface VIII, Henry VIII, and all who legislated on the subject from the earliest years to the Council of Trent, combined a prohibition against the entrance of seculars, with their prohibition against the exit of nuns[1236]. Some intercourse with seculars was bound to occur, even in the best regulated nunnery. The nuns were often served by layfolk and it was a recognised obligation that they should show hospitality to guests. In both cases they were of necessity brought in contact with worldly folk, and as usual they made the most of their opportunity.

Even more disturbing to monastic discipline were the casual visits of friends in the neighbourhood, coming to see and talk with the nuns for a few hours. Visitation documents show that there was a steady intercourse between the convent and the world. Letters and messages passed between the nuns and their friends outside, and a great many of the private affairs of the convent found their way to the ears of seculars. “From miln and from market, from smithy and from nunnery, men bring tidings” ran the proverb[1237], and complaints were common that the secrets of the chapter were spread abroad in the country side. At the ill-conducted house of Catesby in 1442 the Prioress (herself the blackest sheep in all the flock) complained that

secular folk have often recourse to the nuns’ chambers within the cloister, and talkings and junketings take place there without the knowledge of the Prioress; ... also the nuns do send out letters and receive letters sent to them without the advice of the prioress. Also ... that the secrets of the house are disclosed in the neighbourhood by such seculars when they come there. Also the nuns do send out the serving-folk of the priory on their businesses and do also receive the persons for whom they send and with whom they hold parleyings and conversations, whereof the Prioress is ignorant[1238].

At Goring in 1530 the Prioress complained that one of the nuns persisted in sending messages to her friends[1239], and at Romsey in 1509 Alice, wife of William Coke, the cook of the nunnery, was enjoined “that she shall not be a messenger or bearer of messages or troths or tokens between any nun and any lay person on pain of excommunication and as much as in her lies shall hinder communications of lay persons with nuns at the kitchen window”[1240]. At St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, it was even necessary to order the nuns to refrain from kissing secular persons[1241].

Sometimes the visitation detecta or comperta or injunctions give specific details as to the visitors who were most assiduous in haunting a nunnery. It is amusing to follow the reference to scholars of Oxford in the records of those houses which were in the neighbourhood of the University. Godstow was the nearest and the students seem to have regarded it as a happy hunting ground constituted specially for their recreation. Peckham, in his set of Latin injunctions to the Abbey, wrote after giving minute regulations as to the terms upon which nuns might converse with visitors:

When the scholars of Oxford come to talk with you, we wish no nun to join in such conversations, save with the licence of the Abbess and unless they be notoriously of kin to her, in the third grade of consanguinity at least; we order the nuns to refuse to converse with all scholars so coming; nor shall you desire to be united in any special tie of familiarity with them, for such affection often excites unclean thoughts[1242].

The most detailed information, however, is to be found in the injunctions sent by Bishop Gray to Godstow in 1432:

That no nun receive any secular person for any recreation in the nuns’ chambers under pain of excommunication. For the scholars of Oxford say they can have all manner of recreation with the nuns, even as they will desire.... Also that the recourse of scholars of Oxford to the monastery be altogether checked and restrained.... Also that (neither) the gatekeeper of the monastery, nor any other secular person convey any gifts, rewards, letters or tokens from the nuns to any scholars of Oxford or other secular person whomsoever, or bring back any such scholars or persons to the same nuns, nay, not even skins containing wine, without the view and knowledge of the abbess and with her special licence asked and had, under pain of expulsion from his office (and) from the said monastery for ever; and if any nun shall do the contrary she shall undergo imprisonment for a year[1243].

In a commission addressed two years later to the Abbot of Oseney and to Master Robert Thornton the Bishop spoke in very severe terms of the bad behaviour of the nuns, and ordered the commissioners to proceed to Godstow and to inquire whether a nun, who had been with child at the time of his visitation, had been preferred to any office or had gone outside the precincts and whether his other injunctions had been obeyed, especially “if any scholars of the university of Oxford, graduate or non-graduate, have had access to the same monastery or lodging in the same, contrary to the form of our injunctions aforesaid”[1244]. But the situation was unchanged when, thirteen years later, Alnwick came to Godstow. Elizabeth Felmersham, the Abbess, deposed

that secular folk have often access to the nuns during the divine office in quire, and to the frater at meal-time.... She cannot restrain students from Oxford from having common access in her despite to the monastery and the claustral precincts. The nuns hold converse with the secular folk that come to visit the monastery, without asking any leave of the abbess.

Other nuns deposed that sister Alice Longspey[1245] often conversed in the convent church with Hugh Sadler, a priest from Oxford, who obtained access to her on the plea that she was his kinswoman and that Dame Katherine Okeley:

holds too much talk with the strangers that come to the monastery in the church, in the chapter-house, at the church-door, the hall door and divers other places; nor is she obedient to the orders and commands of the abbess according to the rule[1246].

Other houses also found the clerks of Oxford too attractive. At Alnwick’s visitation of Littlemore Dame Agnes Marcham (a lady with a tongue) spoke of “the ill-fame which is current thereabouts concerning the place,” and said

that a certain monk of Rievaulx, who is a student at Oxford and is of the Cistercian order, has common and often access to the priory, eating and drinking with the prioress and spending the night therein, sometimes for three, sometimes for four days on end. Also she says that master John Herars, master in arts, a scholar of Oxford and a kinsman of the prioress, has access in like manner to the priory, breakfasting, supping and spending the night in the same[1247].

The state of the house in the sixteenth century was infinitely worse and it well merited its early suppression in 1526[1248]. At another house, Studley, visited by Alnwick in 1445, the significant request was made:

that the vicar of Bicester, who is reckoned to be of ripe judgment and age and sufficient knowledge, may be appointed as confessor to the convent and in no wise an Oxford scholar, since it is not healthy that scholars of Oxford should have a reason for coming to the priory[1249].

Nor does the proximity of Cambridge appear to have had a less disturbing effect upon morals and discipline. In 1373 it was found that the Prioress of St Radegund’s

did not correct Dame Elizabeth de Cambridge for withdrawing herself from divine service and allowing friars of different orders, as well as scholars, to visit her at inopportune times and to converse with her, to the scandal of religion[1250],

and in 1496, when John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, converted the nunnery into the college afterwards known as Jesus College, its dilapidation was ascribed to “the negligence and improvidence and dissolute disposition and incontinence of the religious women of the same house, by reason of the vicinity of Cambridge University”[1251]. Plainly the scholars who hung about the portals and tethered their horses in the paddocks of Godstow, and who gossiped with the sisters of Studley and Littlemore and St Radegund’s, were not of the type of that clerk of Oxenford, who loved his twenty red and black-clad books better than “robes riche or fithele or gay sautrye”; and it is to be feared that their speech was not “souninge in moral vertu.” Rather they belonged to the tribe of Absolon, who could trip and dance in twenty manners:

After the scole of Oxenforde tho,
And with his legges casten to and fro,
And pleyen songes on a small rubible,

or of hende Nicholas (“of derne love he coude and of solas”), or of those two clerks of Cambridge, Aleyn and John, who harboured with the Miller of Trumpington, or of “joly Jankin,” the Wife of Bath’s first husband. The nuns certainly got no good from these young men of light heart and slippery tongue.

Sometimes, as it appears from the cases of Alice Longspey, Katherine Okeley and Elizabeth de Cambridge, certain nuns rendered themselves particularly conspicuous for intercourse with seculars, or certain men were assiduous nunnery-haunters and forbidden by name to frequent the precincts. At a visitation of St Sepulchre’s, Canterbury, in 1367-8, it was found that

Dame Johanna Chivynton, prioress there, does not govern well the rule nor the religion of the house, because she permits the rector of Dover Castle and other suspect persons to have too much access to sisters Margery Chyld and Juliana Aldelesse, who have a room contrary to the injunction made there on another occasion by the Lord [Archbishop], and these suspect persons often spend the night there[1252].

At Nuncoton in 1531 Longland writes:

We chardge you, lady prioresse, undere payne of excommunicacon that ye from hensforth nomore suffre Sir John Warde, Sir Richard Caluerley, Sir William Johnson, nor parson ..., ne the parson of Skotton, ne Sir William Sele to come within the precincts of your monasterye, that if they by chance do unwares to you that ye streight banish them and suffre not theme ther to tary, nor noone of your sustres to commune with them or eny of them. And that ye voyde out of your house Robert lawrence and he nomore resorte to the same[1253].

Incidents such as these can be multiplied from the records of episcopal visitations[1254] and general complaints are even more common. It appears that secular persons set at naught the rule which confined them to the prioress’ hall, the parlour and the guest-house, and penetrated at will into the private parts of the monastery, haunting now the cloister, now the infirmary, now the frater, now the choir[1255]. Bishop Gynewell’s injunction to Heynings in 1351 called attention to a state of affairs which was common enough in the century which opened with Periculoso:

“Because,” he wrote, “we have heard that great disturbance of your religion hath been made by seculars, who enter into your cloister and choir, we charge you that henceforth ye suffer no secular man, save your patron or other great lord[1256] to enter your cloister, nor to hold therein parley or other dalliance with any sister of your house, whereby your silence or religion may suffer blame”[1257].

Moreover it is clear that the nuns sometimes escaped to the guest-house to enjoy a gossip with their visitors; at Alnwick’s visitation of Heynings in 1440 a lay sister deposed “that the nuns do hold drinkings of evenings in the guest-chamber even after compline, especially when their friends come to visit them” and the Bishop enjoined

for as muche as we founde that there are vsede late drynkynges and talkyng by nunnes as wele wythe yn as wythe owte the cloystere wythe seculeres, where thurgh some late ryse to matynes and some come not at thayme, expressly agayns the rule of your ordere, we charge yow and yche oon singulere that fro this day forthe ye neyther vse spekyng ne drynkyng in no place aftere complyne, but that after collacyone and complyne sayde ych oon of yow go wythe owte lengere tarying to the dormytorye to your reste[1258].

In the course of time a series of regulations was devised to govern the entrance of seculars into the nunneries, hardly less detailed than those which governed the visits of nuns to the world. An attempt was made to prevent certain classes of persons from being allowed to sleep in a house; also to keep all visitors out of certain places and during certain hours; and elaborate rules were made fixing the conditions under which nuns might hold conversations or exchange letters with seculars. The rule which forbade nuns to harbour in houses of religious men was often supplemented by a regulation forbidding friars, or other men belonging to religious orders, from being received as guests by nuns. At Godstow in 1284 Peckham forbade the reception of religious men for the night[1259] and in 1358 Bishop Gynewell enjoined the same convent “for certain reasons, that no friars of any order whatever be harboured by night within the doors of your house, nor by day save it be for great necessity and reasonable cause, and not habitually”[1260]. William of Wykeham directed a special mandate on the subject to Wherwell in 1368:

“Lately,” he says, “it has come to our ears by popular report of trusty men, that contrary to the honesty of religion you admit various religious men, especially of the mendicant orders, lightly and promiscuously to pass the night in your habitations, from which grows much matter for laxity and scandal, since the cohabitation of religious clerks and nuns is altogether forbidden by the constitutions of the holy fathers.”

He proceeds to forbid the reception of friars or other religious men to lodge in the abbey, though food might be given them in alms[1261]. As in the rules regulating visits paid by nuns, attempts were sometimes made though not insisted upon with any severity, to restrict the visitors who might spend the night to near relatives. At Godstow, for instance, Bishop Gray ordered in 1432 that strangers “in no wise pass the night there, unless they be father and mother, brother and sister of that nun for whose sake they have so come to the monastery”[1262]; and Archbishop Lee wrote to Sinningthwaite in 1534 forbidding any visitor to have recourse to the Prioress or nuns “onles it be their fathers or moders or other ther nere kynesfolkes, in whom no suspicion of any yll can be thought”[1263].

The chief efforts of the authorities were, however, directed not towards keeping certain persons altogether out of the nunneries, but towards keeping all visitors out of certain parts of the house and during certain hours. The general rule was that no secular was to enter after sunset or curfew, and elaborate arrangements were made for locking and unlocking the doors at certain times. At Esholt and Sinningthwaite Archbishop Lee enjoined

that the prioress provide sufficient lockes and keys to be sett upon the cloyster doores, incontinent after recept of thies injunctions and that the same doores surely be lockid every nyght incontinent as complane is doone, and not to be unlocked in wynter season to vij of the clock in the mornyng and in sommer vnto vj of the clock in the mornyng; and that the prioresse kepe the keyes of the same doores, or committ the custodie of them to such a discrete and religious suster, that no fault nor negligence may be imputed to the prioresse, as she will avoyde punyshment due for the same[1264].

PLATE VIII

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PLAN OF LACOCK ABBEY

At the same time, for better security, he ordered the nuns to be locked into their dorter every night until service time. Sometimes the nuns objected to being shut in the house so early in the summer time, when the days were long and the trees in the convent garden green. The nuns of Sheppey were plaintive on the subject in 1511. Amicia Tanfeld said

that the gate of the cloister is closed immediately after the bell rings for vespers and remains shut until it rings for prime[1265]; this, in the opinion of the convent is too strict, especially in summer time, because it might remain open until after supper, as she says.

Elizabeth Chatok, cantarista[1266], said the same “clauditur nimis tempestive tempore presertim estiuali”; perhaps she was thinking of better singers than herself, who piped their vespers outside that closed door,

And songen, everich in his wyse
The most solempne servyse
By note, that ever man, I trowe,
Had herd; for som of hem song lowe
Some hye and al of oon accord[1267].

Her sisters agreed with her, but the stern archbishop took no notice of their plaints[1268].

Strict regulations were also made for keeping secular visitors out of certain parts of the convent. The dorter, frater, fermery, chapter and cloister and the internal offices of the house were supposed to be entered only by the nuns[1269]:

“And in order that the quiet of your cloister be in future observed better than has been customary,” wrote Peckham to the nuns of Wherwell in 1284, “we order ... that no secular or religious person be permitted to enter the cloister, nor the interior offices, save for a manifest and inevitable reason, that is bodily infirmity, for which a confessor or doctor or near relative may be allowed to enter, but always in safe and praiseworthy company. So that no one shall hear the confession of a healthy nun or woman in cloister or chapter or in the interior offices.... And we consider healthy anyone who is able, conveniently and without danger to life, to enter the church or the parlour”[1270].

At Romsey he further ordered four nuns to be made scrutineers: “Who shall expel from the cloister as suspect all persons of whatsoever condition wishing to stare at the nuns or to chatter with them”[1271]. But the rule was constantly broken and it has been shown that seculars penetrated to all parts of the convents. Injunctions order them to be excluded now from dorter, now from frater, now from fermery, according as visitation showed them to be in the habit of entering one part of a house or another. Sometimes special orders were given for the making and locking of doors separating the cloister from the outside court, or the nuns’ choir from the rest of the church, a necessary precaution when the nave of a conventual church was used as a parish church. Bishop Longland wrote to Elstow (1531):

Forasmoche as the more secrete religious persones be kepte from the sight and visage of the world and straungers, the more close and entyer ther mynd and devoc[i]on shalbe unto god, we ordeyn and Inioyne to the lady abbesse that before the natiuyte of our lorde next ensewing she cause a doore with two leves to be made and sett upp att the lower ende of the quere and that doore to be fyve foote in hight att the leaste and contynually to stand shitt the tymes of dyvyne seruice excepte it be att comming in or out of eny off the ladyes and mynystres off the said churche. And under like payne as is afore we chardge the said ladye abbess that she cause the doore betwene the convent and the parishe churche contynually to be shitt, unless itt be oonly the tymes of dyvyne service, and likewise she cause the cloistre door towardes the outward court to be continually shitt, unles itt be att suche tymes as eny necessaryes for the convent shall be brought in or borne out att the same, and thatt she suffre noo other back doures to be opened butt upon necessarye, grett and urgent causes by her approved[1272].

Special attempts were made to prevent secret communications between nuns and secular persons in corners and passages or through windows, and to block up unnecessary doors by which persons might enter:

“We ordeyn and injoyne yow, prioresse and convent,” writes Dean Kentwode to St Helens, “That ye, ne noone of yowre sustres use nor haunte any place withinne the priory, thoroghe the wiche evel suspeccyone or sclaundere mythe aryse; weche places for certeyne causes that move us, we wryte here inne owre present iniunccyone, but wole notyfie to yow, prioresse: nor have no lokyng nor spectacles owtewarde, thorght the wiche ye mythe fall into worldly dilectacyone[1273].”

Archbishop Lee showed no such desire to spare the feelings of the nuns of Esholt by not openly specifying the places where they were wont to whisper with their friends:

Item where there is on the backside of certen chambres, on the south side of the church where the sustres worke, an open way goyng to the watirside, and to the brige goyng over the water, without wall or doore, so that many ylles may be committed by reason hereof; wherfore in avoyding such inconveniences that myght folow yf it shuld so remayne, by thies presentes we inioyne the prioresse, that she, incontinent withoutzt delay aftre the recept herof cause a strong and heigh wall to be made in the said voyde place[1274].

Above all it was reiterated at visitation after visitation that no nun was to receive a man in her private chamber or to hold conversations with any stranger there and that certain conditions were to be observed in all conversations between the nuns and their visitors. Archbishop Rotherham’s injunction to Nunappleton in 1489 is typical:

At Sopwell in 1338 an interesting addition was made to the ordinary rule:

At Barking Peckham ordered in 1279 that no secular man or woman was to enter the nuns’ chambers, unless a nun were so ill that it was necessary to speak to her there, in which case a confessor, doctor, father or brother might have access to her[1277].

The rules laid down for the holding of conversations between nuns and visitors required that the permission of the head of the house should first be obtained, and that the meeting should take place in the locutorium or parlour, or occasionally in the abbess’s hall[1278], and in the hearing of “at least one other nun of sound character,” or more frequently two other nuns. Sometimes it was added that conversations were not to be too lengthy:

Alnwick’s injunction to Godstow in 1445 was couched in very similar terms:

It was also attempted to exercise control over communication between the nuns and the world by means of messages and letters. Alnwick sent injunctions on this point to Langley, Markyate and St Michael’s, Stamford (“ne that ye suffre none of youre sustres to receyve ne sende owte noyre gyfte ne lettre, but ye see the gyftes and wyte what is contyened in the lettres”)[1281], and in 1432 Dean Kentwode wrote to St Helen’s, Bishopsgate:

It is common to find among episcopal injunctions to nunneries one to the effect that no secular woman is to sleep in the dorter with the nuns. The fact that this injunction had constantly to be repeated shows that it was as constantly broken. Servants, boarders and school children seem in many houses to have shared the dorter with the nuns, an arrangement which must have been exceedingly disturbing to all parties. Alnwick found the practice at eleven out of the twenty houses which he visited in 1440-5. At Catesby, Langley, Stixwould and St Michael’s, Stamford, little girls, between the ages of five and ten, used to sleep with the nuns; there were six or seven of them at that ill-conducted house, Catesby, in the charge of Agnes Allesley, who was so disobedient to the bishop[1283]. At Gracedieu the cellaress had a boy of seven with her in the dorter[1284]. At Legbourne a nun complained that “the Prioress suffers secular women, both boarders and servants, to lie by night in the dorter among the nuns, against the rule”[1285] and at Heynings (which was much haunted by visitors) a lay sister deposed that “the infirmary is occupied by secular folk, to the great disturbance of the sisters; ... also that secular serving women do lie among the sisters in the dorter, and especially one who did buy a corrody there”[1286]. At the other houses (Godstow, Nuncoton and Stainfield) it was simply mentioned that secular persons lay in the dorter, without details as to whether they were servants, boarders or children[1287]. In all cases Alnwick strictly forbade the practice, and a prohibition to this effect is common in episcopal injunctions[1288].

These injunctions against the use of the dorter by seculars illustrate another aspect of the movement for enclosure. The majority of the other injunctions which have been quoted were attempts to regulate the intercourse of nuns with casual visitors, strangers who came for a day, or perhaps for two or three days. But a far more dangerous menace to the quiet of the cloister lay in the constant presence of secular boarders and corrodians, who made their home in a nunnery. Ladies who wished to end their days in peace sometimes went there as boarders or as corrodians; it is, no doubt, decent sober women such as these, who are sometimes exempted by name in episcopal injunctions ordering the exclusion of boarders from a house. But more often women would seek the temporary hospitality of a nunnery when, for some reason, they wished to leave their homes. A monastic house was, on the whole, a safe refuge, and many a knight going to the wars went with a lighter heart when he knew that his wife or daughter was sleeping within convent walls. In 1314 John of Drokensford, Bishop of Bath and Wells, licensed the Prioress of Cannington to lodge and board the wife and two daughters of John Fychet during his absence abroad[1289], and in 1372 William of Wykeham sent letters to the Abbesses of Romsey and Wherwell on behalf of another wife left alone in England:

and so, in spite of a recent prohibition to these houses to receive boarders, they are to take in Lady Berkeley[1290]. Sometimes the wording of these licences shows that the ladies required only a temporary shelter and had by no means retired from the world. Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury gave leave to Joan Wason and Maude Poer to stay at Cannington from December 1336 till the following Easter, and Isabel Fychet received a similar licence; in 1354 Isolda wife of John Bycombe was licensed to stay there from March till August[1291]. Sometimes these ladies brought their servants or gentlewomen with them; Joan Wason and Maude Poer had permission to take two “dammoiselles” and Isabel Fychet one maid to Cannington; when Lady Margery Treverbyn, a widow, went with every profession of piety to Canonsleigh in 1328, she was accompanied by “a certain priest, a squire (domicellus) and a damsel (domicella)”[1292]; the widow of Sir John Pateshull was licensed to dwell in Elstow with her daughter and maids in 1350[1293]; the familia of Elizabeth Berkeley is mentioned in William of Wykeham’s licence and in 1291 John le Romeyn, Archbishop of York, gave the convent of Nunappleton permission to receive Lady Margaret Percy as a boarder for a year, “provided that her household during that time shall not be other than respectable (honesta)”[1294]. In the list (compiled by Mr Rye) of boarders in Carrow Priory during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, several ladies are mentioned as being accompanied by servants; Lady Maloysel and servant, Isabell Argentoin and servant, the Lady Margaret Kerdeston and woman, Margaret Wryght and servant, Lady Margaret Wetherby, her servant Matilda and her chaplain William. The same list shows that not only women but men were received as boarders, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by their wives, and though some of the names given are doubtless those of little boys, who were receiving their education in the nunnery, others can be clearly identified as adults[1295]. The Paston Letters afford a famous case in which both a girl and her betrothed, who had quarrelled with her parents, were lodged for a time in a nunnery. Margery Paston had fallen in love with her brother’s bailiff, Richard Calle, to the fury of her family, who swore that “he should never have their good will for to make her to sell candle and mustard in Framlingham.” The two lovers plighted their troth, a ceremony as binding in the eyes of the Church as marriage itself, and Richard Calle appealed to the Bishop of Norwich to set the matter beyond doubt by an inquiry. The spirited Margery “rehearsed what she had said, and said, if those words made it not sure, she said boldly that she would make that surer or than she went thence, for she said she thought in her conscience she was bound, whatsoever the words were,” whereupon her mother refused to receive her back into her house, and the Bishop himself was obliged to find a lodging for her. This he did at first with some friends and afterwards at a nunnery, where Richard Calle also was lodged, for John Paston mentions him shortly afterwards in a letter to his brother, “As to his abiding it is in Blakborow nunnery a little fro Lynn and our unhappy sister’s also”[1296].

It is plain from visitation records that the boarders who flocked to the nunneries were exceedingly disturbing to conventual life and sometimes even brought disrepute upon their hostesses by behaviour more suited to the world than to the cloister. Alnwick’s register contains some amusing and instructive evidence on this point. At Langley, a very worldly and aristocratic person, Lady Audley, was occupying a house or set of rooms (domum) within the Priory, paying 40s. yearly and keeping the house in repair; but she had no intention of giving up the ways of the world; pet dogs were her hobby, and the helpless Prioress complained to Alnwick (a Bishop must sometimes have had much ado to keep a straight face at these revelations):

“Let a warning be directed to Lady Audley to remove her dogs from the church and the choir,” says a note in the Register; and Lady Audley, followed by her twelve dogs, recedes for ever from our view, unless reincarnated four centuries later in the person of Hawker of Morwenstow. A boarder at Legbourne had a different taste in pets. Dame Joan Pavy informed the Bishop: “That Margaret Ingoldesby, a secular woman, lies of a night in the dorter among the nuns, bringing with her birds, by whose jargoning silence is broken and the rest of the nuns is disturbed”[1298]. Exasperated Dame Joan, trying to steal some sleep before groping her way down to matins! She had never heard of Vert-Vert, nor even of Philip Sparrow and she would not have been of the young and pretty novices, whose toilet the immortal parrot superintended with a connoisseur’s eye. The Bishop cut the Gordian knot for her by ordering all seculars to be turned out of the dorter. At Stixwould there were two widows, Elizabeth Dymmok and Margaret Tylney, with their maidservants, staying with the Prioress, and two other adult women staying with the cellaress; and

At Gracedieu it was found that the Prioress divulged the secrets of the house to her secular boarders[1300]. At other houses also it was complained that the boarders not only disturbed convent life, but attracted many visitors. At Nuncoton the Subprioress “prays that the lodgers be removed from the house, so that they mingle not among the nuns, for if there were none the Prioress might be able to come constantly to frater; and because there is great recourse of strangers to the lodgers, to the sore burthen of the house”; another nun also deposed “that there is great recourse of guests on account of the lodgers” and a third asked that boarders of marriageable age should be altogether removed from the house, frater and dorter, “by reason of the divers disadvantages which arise to the house out of their stay”[1301]. At Godstow in 1432 Bishop Gray enjoined:

It is indeed easy to understand why bishops objected so much to the reception of these worldly women as boarders. If instead of Felmersham’s wife we read “the wife of Bath” all is explained. That lady was not a person whom a Prioress would lightly refuse; the list of her pilgrimages alone would give her the entrÉe into any nunnery. Smiling her gat-toothed smile and riding easily upon her ambler, she would enter the gates and alight in the court, and what a month of excitement would pass before she rode away again. It is hard not to suspect that it was she who introduced “caps of estate” (were they “as broad as is a buckler or a targe”?) to the Prioress of Ankerwyke and crested shoes to the nuns of Elstow; and it may have been she (alas) who taught some of them to step “the olde daunce”[1303]. Bad enough for their peace of mind to meet her at a pilgrimage, but much worse to have her settled in their midst, gossiping as endlessly as she gossiped in her prologue, and amplifying her reminiscences for a less sophisticated audience. This was one reason why the bishops made a special injunction against the reception of married women. The presence of men was open to even more serious objections. At Hampole in 1411 the Archbishop of York made the significant injunction that the Prioress was not to allow any corrodiarii or others to retain suspected women with them in the house[1304]. At St Michael’s, Stamford, in 1442 Alnwick discovered

So also at Easebourne in 1478 it was deposed that “a certain Sir John Senoke[1306] much frequented the priory or house, so that during some weeks he passed the night and lay within the priory or monastery every night, and was the cause ... of the ruin” of two nuns who had gone into apostasy at the instigation of various men[1307].

The reception of secular women as boarders without the consent of the diocesan was forbidden as early as 1222 by the Council of Oxford[1308] and the bishops henceforth pursued a steady policy of ejection:

Always the reason given is that these boarders are a disturbance to conventual discipline:

But the attempt to clear the convents of secular boarders was entirely unsuccessful. The bishops had two powerful forces against them, the desire of the impoverished nuns to make money and the desire of seculars for a quiet and inexpensive hostel; and the nuns continued to take boarders, in spite of a series of prohibitions. At Romsey, for instance, Peckham forbids boarders, c. 1284; in 1311 Bishop Woodlock has to repeat the prohibition “because of the continual sojourn of seculars we find the tranquillity of the nuns to be much disturbed and scandals to arise in your monastery”; in 1346 Edynton orders the removal of all secular persons within a month; in 1363 he has to write again, complaining that he has heard by public report that they have not obeyed his former letter and ordering them to remove all perhendinatrices within fifteen days[1312]. At Godstow injunctions to this effect are made in succession by Gynewell (1358), Gray (1432-4) and Alnwick (1445)[1313]; at Elstow by Gynewell (1359), Bokyngham (1387), Flemyng (1421-2) and Gray (c. 1432)[1314]. Moreover the bishops themselves were sometimes obliged to leave the nuns a loophole of escape, by excepting certain women from the general prohibition; thus Alnwick excepted the two widows Elizabeth Dymmok and Margaret Tylney at Stixwould[1315]; Brantyngham excepted “the noble woman Lady Elizabeth Courtenay, wife of the noble man Sir Hugh de Courtenay, Knight” at Canonsleigh (1391)[1316]; and Archbishop Rotherham at Nunappleton (1489) excepted children “or ellis old persones, by which availe biliklyhood may growe to your place”[1317]. Often too they were persuaded to grant licences to boarders, at the prayer of influential persons who must not be offended[1318]. The largest loophole which they were obliged by the pressure of circumstances to leave open was, however, the permission to receive small children for education[1319].

It is clear from the evidence of visitation documents that nuns often took boarders of their own free will, for the sake of the money which thus accrued to their impecunious houses; certainly no episcopal injunction was more consistently disobeyed. On the other hand great ladies often thrust themselves upon a convent, which dared not say them nay, and it is not at all unusual to find the nuns complaining of the disturbance caused to their daily life by visitors. The matter was complicated by the fact that the exercise of hospitality was one of the chief functions of monastic houses in the middle ages, and was so far regarded as a right by their neighbours that remonstrances were actually made if the quality of the entertainment offered was not considered sufficiently good. At Campsey in 1532 one of the nuns declared that “well-born guests (hospites generosae) coming to the priory complained of the excessive parsimony of the Prioress”[1320]. Complaints by the nuns of the spiritual disturbance caused by this influx of visitors, show that the right was vigorously exercised. In 1364 the Pope granted permission to Margaret de Lancaster, an Augustinian Canoness of the same nunnery of Campsey, to transfer herself to the Order of St Clare, she having already caused herself to be enclosed at Campsey in order to avoid the number of nobles coming to the house[1321]; and in 1375 he commanded the Bishop of St Andrews to make order concerning the Prioress and nuns of the Benedictine convent of North Berwick, “who have petitioned for perpetual enclosure, they being much molested by the neighbourhood and visits of nobles and other secular persons”[1322]. Even enclosure was not always a protection against visitors; for the Popes constantly granted indults to great persons, allowing them to enter, with a retinue, the houses of monks and nuns belonging to enclosed orders. A few instances may be taken at random. John of Gaunt in 1371 received an indult to enter any monasteries of religious men and women once a year, with thirty persons of good repute[1323]; Joan Princess of Wales in 1372 was given permission to enter monasteries of enclosed nuns with six honest and aged men and fourteen women and to eat and drink, but not to pass the night therein[1324]; Thomas of Gloucester and his wife, the notorious Eleanor de Cobham, had an indult to enter monasteries of enclosed monks and nuns six times a year, with twenty persons of either sex[1325]. Sometimes, it is true, the visitors were forbidden to eat, drink or spend the night in the house[1326], but often they received special permission to do so; thus in 1408 Philippa, Duchess of York, was given an indult allowing her to take five or six matrons and to stay in monasteries of enclosed nuns for three days and nights at a time[1327] and in 1422 Joan Countess of Westmoreland received one to enter any nunnery with eight honest women, and to stay there with the nuns, eating, drinking and talking with them and spending the night[1328]. An indult granted in 1398 to Margery and Grace de Tylney “noblewomen,” to enter “as often as they please with six honest matrons, the monastery of enclosed nuns of the Order of St Clare, Denney”[1329], and a faculty granted in 1371 to “John, Cardinal of Sancti Quatuor Coronati”[1330], empowering him to give leave to a hundred women of high birth of France and England, to enter nunneries once a year, accompanied each by four matrons[1331], give some idea of the extent to which it was usual for guests to visit even houses belonging to enclosed orders.

Nuns do not seem to have concerned themselves with political movements, unlike the monks, who in great abbeys were sometimes keen politicians. But it sometimes happened that the strife and intrigue and tragedy of the outside world entered into quiet convents, through this custom of using them as boarding houses. Not otherwise can we account for a curious case in which the nuns of Sewardsley were involved in 1470, when a certain Thomas Wake accused Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, of making an image of lead to be used in witchcraft against the King and Queen, which image he said had been shown to various persons and exhibited in the nunnery of Sewardsley[1332]. Moreover echoes of great doings came to nuns when the hapless wives and daughters of the King’s enemies were placed in their custody, a kindlier fate than imprisonment in a fortress or in charge of some loyal noble’s sharp-tongued wife. The course of Edward II’s troubled reign may be traced in the story of the women who were successively sent as prisoners, or (worse still) as nuns, to various priories. The first to suffer was the King’s niece Margaret; she had been married by him to Piers Gaveston and had seen her husband miserably slain at Thomas of Lancaster’s behest; she was married again to Sir Hugh Audley and ten years later, poor pawn in the game of politics, she suffered for her second husband’s share in Lancaster’s rebellion, when the crime of Blacklow Hill was expiated on the hill of Pontefract.

In the same year the Abbess of Barking was ordered “to cause the body of Elizabeth de Burgo, late wife of Roger Damory, within her abbey, to be kept safely and not to permit her to go outside the abbey gates in any wise until further orders”[1334]. In 1324 another rebel, Roger Mortimer, broke his prison in the Tower and escaped across the sea to France. But three poor children, his daughters, could not escape, and on April 7th of the same year the sheriff of Southampton received an order to cause Margaret, daughter of Roger Mortimer of Wygmore, to be conducted to the Priory of Shouldham, Joan, his second daughter, to the Priory of Sempringham, and Isabella, his third daughter, to the Priory of Chicksand, “to be delivered to the priors of those places (all were Gilbertine houses) to stay amongst the nuns in the same priories.” The Prior of Shouldham had 15d. weekly for Margaret’s expenses and a mark yearly for her robe, and each of the other two little girls received 12d. weekly for expenses and a mark for her robe[1335]. The she-wolf of France bided her time, and when the game was hers she was no less swift to avenge her wrongs; to Sempringham (where her lover’s daughter had gone two years before) now went the two daughters of the elder Hugh Despenser, to pray for the souls of a father and brother done most dreadfully to death[1336]. The perennial wars with Scotland also found their echo in the nunneries. In 1306 the Abbess of Barking was ordered “to deliver Elizabeth, sister of William Olifard [? Olifaunt] Knight, who is in their custody by the King’s permission to Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, the King having granted her to the said Henry”[1337]; she was doubtless a relative of that “Hugh Olyfard, a Scot, the King’s enemy and rebel,” who together with one “William Sauvage the King’s approver” had broken his prison at Colchester some three years before, and fled into sanctuary in the convent church[1338]. Barking was a favourite prison, doubtless on account of its situation, and in 1314 the sheriffs of London were ordered “to receive Elizabeth, wife of Robert de Brus, from the Abbess of Berkyngg, with whom she had been staying by the King’s order and to take her under safe custody to Rochester and there deliver her to Henry de Cobham, constable of the castle”[1339].

The mention of the Scot Hugh Olyfard, who took sanctuary in the church of Barking, recalls another reason for which the world might break into the cloister. The terrified fugitive from justice would take sanctuary in a convent church if it lay nearest to him, and the peace of chanting nuns would be rudely broken, when that unkempt and desperate figure sprang up the choir between them and flung itself upon their altar steps. The hand of a master has drawn for us what the trembling novices saw, peeping from their stalls:

... the breathless fellow at the altar foot,
Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there
With the little children round him in a row
Of admiration, half for his beard and half
For that white anger of his victim’s son
Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,
Signing himself with the other because of Christ
(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this
After the passion of a thousand years),
Till some poor girl, her apron o’er her head
Which the intense eyes looked through, came at eve
On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,
Her pair of ear-rings and a bunch of flowers
The brute took growling, prayed and then was gone[1340].But sometimes more than a momentary disturbance was occasioned to the nunnery; in 1416, for instance, Edith Wilton, Prioress of Carrow, was attached, together with one of her nuns, on the charge of harbouring in sanctuary the murderers of William Koc of Trowse, at the appeal of his widow Margaret. She was arrested, imprisoned and called to answer at Westminster, but after the court had adjourned many times she was acquitted[1341]. An abbess of Wherwell was involved in a lawsuit over a case of sanctuary for somewhat different reasons; she claimed the right of seizing chattels of fugitives in the hundred of Mestowe[1342], a right 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 promptly seized his chattels to the value of over £35, by the hands of her reeve[1343].

These cases of violence will lead us to the consideration of breaches of enclosure which were in no sense the fault of the unhappy nuns. Visits from their peaceful friends they welcomed; the sojourn of great folk they bore; but they would fain have passed their days undisturbed by war’s alarms and by the assault and battery of private feuds. But it was not to be. Alarums and excursions sometimes shattered their peace and, especially in the Northern counties, violent attacks at the hands of robbers, lawless neighbours, or enemies of the realm were only too common. Disorder was general and grew worse in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The nunnery of Markyate was once assaulted in the night by fifty robbers and the nuns pillaged and robbed of everything valuable[1344], and in 1408 the Bishop of Ely gave an indulgence for the relief of the nuns of Rowney, “whose chalices, books, ornaments and other goods have been stolen by evil men, so that they have not the wherewithal to perform the divine office”[1345].

Neighbourly disagreements sometimes developed into petty warfare, as the Paston Letters show, and an almost exact parallel to the dispute between John Paston and Lord Molynes over the manor of Gresham is to be found in a complaint made in 1383 by the Prioress of Brodholme, who asserted that a gang of men (whom she named)

Such instances might be multiplied[1347]. Sometimes the presence of secular boarders led to unpleasant experiences for the nuns. The Lincoln registers record two such cases, which incidentally furnish an additional reason why the reception of boarders was frowned upon by the Church. In 1304 certain

Their object was apparently to seize a certain Isabella de Kent, a married woman then dwelling in the nunnery, and they pursued her to the belfry, where she had taken refuge and dragged her away with them[1348]. An even worse disturbance took place at Rothwell in 1421-2. A gang of ruffians broke open the cloister and doors, seized one Joan (a boarder) and carried her away to a lonely house, where their leader forcibly violated her, with every circumstance of brutality. She escaped back to the priory, whereupon the leader

Even more significant is the licence granted to the Abbess and Convent of Tarrant Keynes in 1343 to cut down two hundred acres of under-wood in their demesne land, “on their petition setting forth that their house and possessions in the county of Dorset had been burned and destroyed by an invasion of the king’s enemies in those parts”[1350]; or the permission given to the Abbess of Shaftesbury in 1367 to crenellate her Abbey, presumably for purposes of defence[1351]. The south coast was a constant prey to pirates, and it was still within the memory of man that, at the beginning of the French war

the Normayns Pycardes and Spanyerdes entred into the toune (of Southampton) and robbed and pilled the toune, and slewe dyvers and defowled maydens, and enforced wyves, and charged their vessels with the pyllage and so entred agayne into their shyppes[1352].