The nun was Alice Longspey and it is significant that this particular escapade had been concealed from the Bishop at his recent visitation of Godstow[1406]. The most spirited enterprise of all, however, was the combined effort of William Fox, parson of Lea (near Gainsborough) and John Fox and Thomas de Lingiston, Friars Minor of Lincoln, who were indicted before the Kings Justices at Caistor, because they came to Brodholme Nunnery (one of the only two Premonstratensian houses in the kingdom) on January 15th, 1350, and then and there “violently took and carried away, against the peace of their lord the King, a certain nun, by name Margaret Everingham, a sister of the said house, stripping her of her religious habit and clothing her in a green gown of secular habit, taking also divers goods to the value of 40 shillings”[1407].

Much as the church hated sin, it hated scandal even more and a nun might often hope to have her frailty concealed by her fellows. Sometimes they may have condoned it, for they are occasionally found assisting an elopement[1408]; sometimes they feared episcopal interference and an evil reputation for their house. But it was not always possible to conceal these unhallowed unions and when a child was born the wretched nun could not hope to escape disgrace and punishment[1409].

And dame Peronelle a prestes file—Priouresse worth she neuere
For she had childe in chirityme—all owre chapitere it wiste.

Usually Dame Pernell fled in despair to any friendly asylum which she could find and only returned to her house after the birth and disposal of her child. Sometimes she remained there in what privacy she might; and the affair was managed with as little scandal as possible. The nuns of St Michael’s, Stamford, knew that their sister Margaret Mortimer had had a child on this side of Easter; but even the Subprioress did not know (or said she did not know) “of whom she conceived or whether she bare male or female; howbeit she was absent from quire for a fortnight”[1410]. Once we hear of an apostate, deserted and pregnant, coming back to St Mary’s, Winchester, and the wise and humane William of Wykeham writes to the Abbess bidding her receive the girl gently and kindly, and keep her in safety until the birth of her child, after which he will himself make ordinance concerning her[1411]. It is hard to discover what became of these most unwelcome children. It is not surprising that they sometimes died[1412]. But if they lived their origin probably weighed but lightly on them in those days, when it was regarded as no dishonour to have bastards, who were often acknowledged by their fathers and provided for in their wills side by side with true born sons and daughters. It is true that, like other illegitimates, they could not be ordained or hold ecclesiastical preferment, without a special dispensation. But even the son of a nun could obtain such dispensation[1413] and even the daughter of a nun did not always go undowered. There were not many monastic parents like that seventeenth century abbess of Maubuisson who was rumoured to have twelve children, who were brought up diversely, each according to the rank of the father[1414], or like the Prior of Maiden Bradley, as described by Henry VIII’s commissioner, “an holy father prior and hath but vj children and but one dowghter mariede, yet of the goods of the monasteries trysting shortly to mary the rest, [and] his sones be tale men waytting upon him”[1415]. Yet we hear of at least one Prioress who sold the goods of her house to make a dowry for her daughter[1416].If it be sought to know whether any houses were particularly liable to scandals and enjoyed a bad name, it must be answered that it is almost impossible to say. But isolated cases of immorality and apostasy come from nunneries so widely distributed in different dioceses, that one must conclude that most of them had at one time or another a sinner in their midst. Often enough the case was isolated; occasionally there was scandal about the general condition of a house in its neighbourhood. The discipline and morals of convents were apt to vary with that of their heads. It is significant that when a house is in a bad moral state the fault may nearly always be traced to a weak or immoral prioress. So it was at Wintney in 1405, at Redlingfield in 1427, at Markyate in 1433, at Catesby in 1442, at St Michael’s, Stamford, in 1445, at Littlemore in 1517, and at several Yorkshire nunneries. It is plain also that when a convent was very small and poor, it was apt to become lax and disorderly. The small Yorkshire houses bear witness to this and if further proof be required the state of Cannington in 1351 and Easebourne in 1478 may be quoted from among several other instances.

Cannington in Somerset was a small and poor house, but its nuns were drawn from some of the best county families. In 1351 it was visited by commissioners of Ralph of Shrewsbury, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and they found something more like a brothel than a priory. Maud Pelham and Alice Northlode (a young lady whom the Bishop had forced on the unwilling convent, on his elevation to the See some twenty years before) were in the habit of frequently admitting and holding discourse with suspected persons. The inevitable chaplain was again the occasion for a fall. On dark nights they held long and suspicious confabulations with Richard Sompnour and Hugh Willynge, chaplains, in the nave of the convent church. Hugh was apparently only too willing and Richard was even as Chaucer’s summoner, “as hot he was and lecherous as a sparrow,” for (say the commissioners) “it is suspected by many that as a result of these conversations they fall into yet worse sin.” Moreover

Nor was this all:

These were the most serious charges; but the same visitation revealed that the Prioress was weak and had been guilty of the simoniacal reception of four nuns, for the sake of scraping together some money, while the subprioress was incurably lazy, refused to attend matins and other canonical hours, and neglected to correct her delinquent sisters[1417]. It is plain that the whole house was utterly demoralised and the demoralisation was possibly of long standing, for there had been one of the usual election quarrels in the early part of the century, and in 1328 the then Bishop had issued a commission to inquire into the illicit wanderings of certain nuns[1418]. Yet the priory was a favourite resort of boarders.

Easebourne, again, was a poor but very aristocratic house, containing towards the close of the fifteenth century from six to ten nuns. In 1478 Bishop Story of Chichester visited it and found grave need for his interference. One of the nuns, Matilda Astom, deposed

(Another nun deposed that they did.)

Another nun, Joan Stevyn, deposed that the two nuns had each had, long before their withdrawal, “children or a child.” Another said that Sir John Senoke (i.e. Sevenoaks, clearly the same as John Smyth)

All the nuns agreed in blaming the Prioress for not having properly punished the two sinners and one raked up a vague story that “she had had one or two children several years ago”; but as she admitted that this was hearsay and as the Prioress was then at least fifty years old, too much credit must not be given to it. On the same day a certain “Brother William Cotnall,” evidently attached in some capacity, perhaps as custos, to the house, appeared before the Bishop and confessed that he had sealed a licence to Joan Portsmouth to go out of the Priory and had himself sinned with Philippa King. The two priests, Smyth and Cotnall, had not only debauched the convent, but had done their best to ruin it financially; for they had persuaded the Prioress to pawn the jewels of the house for fifteen pounds, in order to purchase a Bull of Capacity for Cotnall, who had then sealed with the common seal of the convent, against the wish of the Prioress, a quittance for John Smyth concerning all and every sort of actions and suits which the convent might have against him, and especially the matter of the jewels[1419].

But if small houses fell easily into disorder, great abbeys were not exempt from contagion. Cases of immorality are found at Wilton, Shaftesbury, Romsey, St Mary’s Winchester, Wherwell and Elstow, all of them abbeys and among them the oldest and richest in the land. It is the same with two other houses, famous in legend, Amesbury, where Guinevere “let make herself a nun and wore white clothes and black,” and Godstow, where Fair Rosamond lay buried in the chapter house. Here, where deathless romance had its dwelling place, it is not strange that the winged god ever and again took his toll of the nuns. But what sorry substitutes for Guinevere and Rosamond were the trembling apostates, who fled into hiding to bear their miserable infants and were haled back by bishops to do penance in the cloister.

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath.

The ancient house of Amesbury fell into evil ways in the twelfth century. In 1177 its abbess was said to have borne three children and its nuns were notorious for their evil lives, whereupon the convent was dissolved, most of the nuns being placed in other houses, and Amesbury was then reconstituted as a cell of Fontevrault and peopled with a prioress and twenty-four nuns, brought over from that house[1420]. Queen Eleanor, widow of Henry III, took the veil there and by her influence Edward I allowed his daughter Mary to become a nun there, together with twelve noble maidens[1421]. But the sin of Guinevere haunted it. About Mary herself there is an ancient unexplained scandal, for in a papal mandate she is declared to have been seduced by John de Warenne, the rather disreputable Earl of Surrey[1422]; and she seems to have been as much out of her house as in it, for she constantly visited court and went on pilgrimages. Later still the papal benevolence was exerted on behalf of Margaret Greenfield, nun of Amesbury, who had borne a child after her profession (1398)[1423], and Cecily Marmyll, who “after having lived laudably for some time in the said monastery, allowed herself to be carnally known by two secular priests and had offspring by each of them” (1424)[1424]. These ladies were doubtless well born, with wealthy friends, who could afford to petition the Pope and buy restoration to the monastic dignities and offices, which they had lost by their fault. The story of Godstow is very similar. There seems to have been some scandal about the morals of the subprioress in 1284, but Peckham announced that he did not believe a word of it[1425]. In 1290, however, a nun of noble birth was (as we saw) carried off from her carriage; and she and two others were apostate in the following year. Another apostate repented and was absolved in 1339. In 1432 a nun was found by the bishop with child and in 1445 Dame Alice Longspey indulged in the escapades already described with an Oxford priest and a monk of Eynsham. All through the career of the convent, it was continually being warned against the recourse of scholars from Oxford. Both Amesbury and Godstow enjoyed fame and good repute and at the latter children were received for education. Their history shows that even the most aristocratic and popular houses fell sometimes on evil days and sometimes sheltered unworthy inmates.

It is of considerable interest to study the condition of all the nunneries in a particular part of the country at a particular date. An analysis of the references to the Yorkshire houses has been made elsewhere[1426]; here we may study a diocese in which the conditions of daily life were less abnormal than they were on the Scottish border. A rather imperfect view of the state of the diocese of Lincoln between the years 1290 and 1360 may be gleaned from the registers of Bishops Sutton, Dalderby, Burghersh and Gynewell; it is imperfect because there are not many visitation records, and information has chiefly to be derived from episcopal mandates for the return of apostates[1427], which leave us with little knowledge of the internal discipline of houses from which nuns did not happen to run away. The names of eleven out of the four and thirty[1428] nunneries of the diocese occur in connection with apostates during these years, six Benedictine, four Augustinian and one Cluniac. The apostasy of three Godstow nuns in 1290 has already been described[1429]. There was an apostate at Wothorpe in 1296[1430] and two years later a nun of Harrold was found guilty of unchastity[1431]. Apostates are also mentioned from Sewardsley in 1300[1432], from Goring in 1309 and again in 1358[1433], from Markyate in 1336[1434] and from St Leonard’s, Grimsby, in 1337[1435]. At Burnham there is the case of Margery Hedsor, who was excommunicated at intervals for apostasy between 1311 and 1317[1436]. St Mary in the Meadows (DelaprÉ), Northampton, seems to have been in a bad state, for in 1300 three nuns, said to have been professed for some years, were excommunicated for leaving their convent and living in carnal sin in the world, and in 1311 there was another apostate from the house[1437]. St Michael’s, Stamford, provides the curious story of Agnes de Flixthorpe, and the almost equally tragic case of Agnes Bowes, ex-Prioress of Wothorpe, all of whose fellows had died in the Black Death and whose house had therefore been annexed to St Michael’s, Stamford, in 1354. She was evidently unable to settle down in her new home and she ran away from it five years later[1438]. In the plague year 1349, Ella de Mounceaux, a nun of Nuncoton, who had obtained leave of absence and instead of returning had become the mistress of John Haunsard, appeared with tears before the Bishop and begged to be sent back to her house[1439].

This list of apostates is, as has been said, necessarily incomplete and gives no details as to the state of the nunneries absolved. A much more exact impression can be gained of the diocese a century later, during the twenty years between 1430 and 1450, when Bishops Gray and Alnwick were visiting the religious houses under their control; Alnwick’s Register is particularly valuable, since the verbal evidence of the nuns is preserved. If we take Gray’s Register first, we find serious charges of general misconduct made against three houses, Markyate and Flamstead in 1431 and Sewardsley in 1432. The Bishop wrote to a canon of Lincoln that

The canon is accordingly told to inquire into the scandals and punish delinquents[1440]. Unfortunately the result of the inquiry has not been preserved; three years later the Bishop deputed another commissioner to inquire into the condition of Markyate and from his letters of commission it is plain that he had himself visited the house, but that the Prioress and sisters had managed to conceal their misdeeds from him. Since then he had learnt that one of the nuns, Katherine Tyttesbury, had been guilty of immorality and apostasy and that the Prioress herself had failed to obey his injunctions. The commissioner was therefore ordered to go to Markyate, absolve the apostate if she made submission and, if necessary, depose the Prioress. The result of the inquiry was that the Prioress, Denise Loweliche, was charged with having consorted with Richard, the steward of the Priory, for five years and more, up to the time of his death, so that “public talk and rumour during the said time were busy touching the premises in the town of Markyate and other places, neighbouring and distant, in the diocese of Lincoln and elsewhere.” The Prioress denied the charge and begged to be allowed to clear herself, so the commissioner ordered her, in addition to her own oath, to find five out of her ten nuns as compurgatresses, i.e. to swear to her innocence. She sought in vain for help among her sisters; at the appointed hour she begged for an extension of time and the commissioner granted her this boon, “so that she might be able meanwhile to communicate and take counsel with her sisters,” and also “of a more liberal grace,” declared himself ready to take the word of four nuns on her behalf. The picture of the wretched Prioress going from nun to nun, imploring each to forswear herself, with heaven knows what threats and entreaties, is a melancholy one. Not even four nuns could be found to swear to her innocence, so clear and notorious was her guilt, and she laid her formal resignation in the hands of the bishop[1441].

The other nunnery against which a general charge of immorality was made by the Bishop in 1434 was the Cistercian house of Sewardsley, of which he said that the Prioress and nuns,

The report of the inquiry held has not been preserved, but there was obviously something seriously amiss. Gray had also to deal with individual cases of immorality at three other houses. Already at Elstow in 1390 Archbishop Courtenay on his metropolitan visitation had made a general injunction that

an injunction repeated verbatim by Bishop Flemyng of Lincoln in 1421[1444]. Now in 1432 Gray found that a nun named Pernell had been “several times guilty of fleshly lapse” and was leading an apostate life in secular dress outside the house; which speaks but ill for the moral state of an important abbey[1445]. In the same year he found one of the nuns of Godstow enceinte[1446], and in 1433 inquiry showed that Ellen Cotton, nun of Heynings, had recently had a child[1447].

The worst cases found by Alnwick when he visited the religious houses of the diocese ten years later have already been described and the evidence of his register can be summarised briefly. All was well at Elstow, Heynings and Markyate; Dame Pernell [Gauthorpe], Dame Ellen Cotton and Dame Katherine Tyttesbury were all dwelling peaceably among their sisters; even the disreputable Denise Loweliche was still, in spite of her resignation, ruling as Prioress of Markyate. An echo of old difficulties remained, however, at this last house and one nun begged the Bishop to speak to the Prioress, “to the end that she take better heed to the nuns who have previously erred, so that they be kept more strictly from erring again than is wont”[1448]; evidently discipline was not strict. At Godstow disorders had not yet ceased. The nuns received visitors and paid visits freely and scholars of Oxford still haunted the house; moreover one of the nuns, Dame Alice Longspey (of whom we have heard before), was of very easy virtue[1449]. In two other houses Alnwick found great disorder prevailing: the rÉgime of Margaret Wavere, Prioress of Catesby, has already been described, her bad language, her temper, her dishonesty and her priestly lover; and her chief accuser Isabel Benet had borne a child to the chaplain of the house[1450]. Similarly we have seen into what a disreputable state St Michael’s, Stamford, fell under an aged and impotent Prioress; how one nun ran away with an Austin friar and then with a wandering harp-player, and how two others had borne children or were notoriously held to be unchaste; this is one of the worst houses which the records of medieval nunneries have brought to light[1451]. Finally there is the doubtful case of Ankerwyke, where the Prioress is said through negligence to have allowed no less than six nuns to go into apostasy, a fact which she freely admitted; but whether they had merely removed themselves through discontent with an unpopular prioress, or whether they had eloped it is impossible to say. At any rate they had not returned[1452].

It is interesting to attempt a statistical estimate of the moral condition of the Lincoln nunneries during the twenty years from 1430 to 1450. It is possible to do so with some accuracy because the nuns giving evidence in each convent are enumerated in Alnwick’s reports. If we omit the general charges against Sewardsley and Flamstead and the ambiguous apostasy of the six nuns of Ankerwyke, we have twelve out of 220 nuns guilty of immoral behaviour, or a little over five per cent.; but this is certainly an understatement, having regard to the loss of the Sewardsley and Flamstead inquiries and of other visitations by the two bishops, to say nothing of possible concealment by the nuns. Between them Gray and Alnwick have left on record visitations or inquiries relating to twenty-four houses and cases of immorality came to light at eight, that is to say at one-third of the number visited. All except two of these, Elstow and Heynings, were very seriously affected, more than one nun having succumbed to sin; and the Prioress was found guilty in two and probably suspected in two others. The situation seems a serious one and Alnwick’s visitations of the houses of monks and canons which were in his diocese show that the men were more lax in their behaviour than the women.

A similar statistical estimate can be made of the condition of convents in the diocese of Norwich during the visitation by Bishop Nykke or his commissary in 1514[1453]. Eight convents, containing between them seventy-two nuns, were visited and only one case of immorality was found, at Crabhouse[1454]. This is a far more favourable picture than that presented by the diocese of Lincoln in the previous century. Again in 1501 Dr Hede visited the nunneries of the diocese of Winchester as commissary of the Prior of Canterbury, during the vacancy of the sees of Canterbury and Winchester[1455]. The diocese contained only four houses, but three of them were important abbeys, St Mary’s, Winchester, with fourteen nuns, Wherwell with twenty-two and Romsey with forty; the fourth was Wintney Priory, with ten nuns. All seem to have been in perfect order except Romsey, which had fallen into decay under the rÉgime of an abbess who had herself been guilty of adultery, and where one of the nuns was charged with incontinence with the vicar of the parish church. Unfortunately the record of the visitation is left incomplete and there are no injunctions; hence it is impossible to say whether the last charge was true, but the abbey had been in a disordered state for some years past[1456]. Another diocese for which an estimate can be made is Chichester, but it contained only two nunneries, Rusper and Easebourne. At Bishop Story’s visitation in 1478 all was well at Rusper, a poor and ruinous little house containing seven nuns; but all was very far from well at Easebourne, where six nuns remained and two had gone into apostasy after conducting themselves in the thoroughly dissolute manner described above[1457]. At Bishop Sherborne’s visitation in 1524 the number of nuns at Rusper had fallen to four, but there was no complaint except that a certain William Tychenor had frequent access to the priory and sowed discord between the Prioress and her three sisters. At Easebourne there were eight nuns, but the house seems not to have recovered its tone after the scandals of 1524. The subprioress deposed that some twelve years before a certain Ralph Pratt had seduced a sister; yet the convent had granted him the proceeds of the church of Easebourne and he still had much access to the priory[1458]. It is a pity that more of these statistical estimates, imperfect as they are, cannot be made.

It remains to consider what steps were taken to punish offenders and to reform evils. The crime of seducing a nun was always considered an extremely serious one; she was Sponsa Dei, inviolable, sacrosanct. Anglo-Saxon law fined the ravisher heavily, and a law of Edward I declared him liable to three years imprisonment, besides satisfaction made to the convent. There is, however, no evidence that the State imprisoned or otherwise punished persons guilty of this crime, though it was always ready to issue the writ De apostata capiendo, for the recovery of a monk or nun who had fled. Whenever the lover of a nun is found undergoing punishment, it is always a punishment inflicted by the Church. If a man had abducted a nun, or were accused of seducing her, he was summoned before the Bishop or Archdeacon and required to purge himself of the charge. If he pleaded “Not guilty” a day was appointed, on which he had to clear himself by the oath of a number of compurgators. Thus the Prioress of Catesby’s lover, the priest William Taylour, was summoned before Bishop Alnwick in the church of Brampton; there he denied the crime and was told to bring five chaplains, of good report, who had knowledge of his behaviour, in a few days’ time to the parish church of Rothwell[1459]. The result of his attempt to find compurgators is not known, but the Prioress had already failed to get four of her nuns to support her and had been pronounced guilty. One wonders what happened when the man produced compurgators and the lady failed to do so: for these misdemeanours À deux the compurgatorial system would seem a little uncertain.

If a man’s guilt were proven by his failure to provide compurgators or to come before the Bishop, it remained to decree his punishment. The obdurate were excommunicated until such time as they submitted. The penitent were adjudged a penance. There is abundant evidence that the penance given by the Church was always a severe one. The classical instance is that of Sir Osbert Giffard in 1286. The Giffards were a large and influential West country family and in the last quarter of the thirteenth century several of the children of Hugh Giffard of Boyton rose to high positions in the Church. His eldest son, Walter, became in turn Bishop of Bath and Wells and Archbishop of York, dying in 1279, and his second son Godfrey became Bishop of Worcester. Of his daughters one, Juliana, is found as Abbess of Wilton in 1275, another, Mabel, as Abbess of Shaftesbury in 1291, and a third, Agatha, would seem to have held a position of some importance at Elstow, though she was never Abbess there[1460]. These great ladies do not seem to have had a very good influence in their nunneries, in spite of the exalted position of their brothers. In 1270 the Bishop of Lincoln writes apologetically to Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York, concerning scandals which have arisen in Elstow, “whence more frequently than in any other house beneath our rule scandals of wicked deeds arise,” and it is clear from his letter that the Abbess and the Bishop’s sister were implicated[1461]. In 1298 also the Abbess and nuns of Shaftesbury had incurred excommunication “for their offences against God and by the creation of scandal”[1462]. But the most serious mishap occurred at Wilton in 1286. Here Juliana Giffard[1463] had under her rule a young relative named Alice Giffard, and in this year Sir Osbert Giffard, knight (whose exact relationship to the Abbess and the Bishop and to Alice is not clear), “with sacrilegious hand ravished and abducted in the silence of the night sisters Alice Russel and Alice Gyffard, professed according to the rule of St Benedict in the monastery of Wylton.” Archbishop Peckham and the Bishop of Salisbury forthwith excommunicated Sir Osbert, who eventually made his submission. It was indeed an unfortunate scandal to occur in a Bishop’s family and created a great stir in the country round. Godfrey’s concern is shown by the appearance in his Worcester Register of the Bishop of Salisbury’s letter to the Sub-dean of Salisbury and others announcing the penance to be imposed upon the abductor[1464].

This penance was as follows:

The penance was thus severe; but it is another matter to say that it was always duly performed. A man who had already risked his immortal soul once, by the seduction of a nun, might well choose to undergo excommunication and risk it a second time, by refusing to do penance. The lover of a nun of Harrold in 1298 was thus excommunicated for refusing to be beaten through the market-place[1466]. Moreover there were endless ways of delaying the humiliating ceremony. Take the case of Richard Gray, the married boarder to whom Elizabeth Willoughby bore a child at St Michael’s, Stamford. On July 3rd, 1442, in the parish church of Wellingborough, the Bishop caused him to swear upon the Holy Book that he would abjure the priory and all communication with Elizabeth. He then sentenced him to four floggings round one of the churches of Stamford on four Sundays or feast days,

Moreover he was to perform a like penance on four Fridays, going round the market-place of Stamford, and within a month he was also to make pilgrimage on horseback to Lincoln Cathedral and when he came within five miles of Lincoln, to dismount and go barefoot to the cathedral and there offer to the high altar a taper of one pound’s weight. The very evening, however, that this severe penance was imposed, Richard Gray came before the Bishop again and made lowly supplication that he would deign to temper the penance; whereupon Alnwick, “moved with compassion on him,” commuted the penance round the market-place to a payment of twenty shillings to the nuns of St Michael’s, to be paid within a month, and another twenty shillings to the fabric of the cathedral church, to be paid within six weeks. Gray was to bring the Bishop letters testimonial as to the payment of the forty shillings and the performance of the penance at Lincoln, also within six weeks. But Richard had no intention of buying expensive wax candles, paying forty shilling fines, catching cold in his shirt at Stamford or humiliating himself at Lincoln. When summoned to do his penance he appealed to the court of Canterbury. The Bishop then got licence from the commissary of the official in that court to proceed against the delinquent and summoned him to show cause why he had not done penance. On November 15th, 1442, the slippery Richard appeared by proxy before the Bishop’s commissioner and said that he was “withheld by so many and so sore infirmities of fevers and other kinds, lying in his bed every other day, that he could not without grievous bodily harm appear in person in or on the same day and place.” The commissioner postponed his appearance until December 11th and eventually he appeared on that day, but showing no cause why he had not performed his penance, and was excommunicated again by the Bishop, at which point he drops out of history, with his penance still unperformed[1467].

It was no doubt an easier matter to exact penance from a nun. The apostate was excommunicated until she made submission and returned to her convent. Sometimes a very obdurate sinner was transferred to do penance at another nunnery; the punishment was a common one in the diocese of York[1468] and a wicked Prioress of Redlingfield was sent to Wix in 1427[1469]; but nunneries not unnaturally sometimes objected to having to support at their cost an evilly disposed woman from another house[1470]. More commonly the sinner did penance in her own house. If particularly obdurate, she was imprisoned for a time and even, if need be, shackled, in some secure place in the convent[1471]. A severe penance was imposed in 1321 by Archbishop Melton upon Maud of Terrington, an apostate nun of Keldholme, who had for long lived in sin in the world. She was to be last in choir at all the canonical hours, and when not in choir to be confined in solitude. She was never to go out of the precincts of the cloister and was to be forever debarred from speaking with lay folk and from sending or receiving letters. She was not to be allowed to wear the black Benedictine veil, which marked her as a nun, until such time as the Archbishop should mitigate her penance, and should fast with bread and vegetables on Wednesdays and bread and water on Fridays. For the rest of her life she was never to wear a shift next her skin. On Wednesdays and Fridays she was to go barefoot in the presence of the convent round the cloister, all secular persons having been excluded, and there receive two beatings by the hand of the Prioress and on each other day of the week she was to receive one such discipline. Every week she was to say two psalters, besides Placebo and Dirige and the commendation for the dead, which she was to say each day for the remission of her sins. She was never to be present at the daily consultations of the chapter, or at any other convent business, but “let her lie prone before the convent at the entrance of the choir, to be spurned by their feet, if they will”[1472].

This was a particularly severe, not to say inhuman, penance and it is unlikely that such was the rule even in the case of obdurate offenders. A guilty nun at Crabhouse in 1514 is told to sit last among her sisters for a month and to say seven psalters during that period[1473] and a novice at Redlingfield in 1427 is to go in front of the solemn procession of the convent on Sunday, wearing no veil and clad in white flannel[1474]. The former was not an apostate, though she had had a child, and the latter was not yet professed and had been led away by the bad example of her Prioress; nevertheless these penances seem sufficiently mild, in comparison with the orthodox view of their offence. Fasting and penitential psalms and some outward mark of degradation, such as the loss of the veil and of the place in choir and chapter, to which the nun’s standing in the convent entitled her, were common penances. A guilty nun was also debarred from holding any conventual office; but it must be admitted that this salutary precaution was not always strictly carried out. Occasionally a visitor is obliged to make a general injunction against the holding of office by nuns convicted or suspected of incontinence; Archbishop Courtenay mentions specifically the office of portress[1475], a necessary precaution when one remembers how often the French and Italian touriÈre of a later date was little better than a procuress. Frequently notorious evil-doers retained their position, and it is surprising to notice how often persons who were obviously unsuitable and immoral were elected to the headship of a house, or continued to hold that position after conviction. Sabina de Apelgarth, who had been in apostasy when a simple nun of Moxby in 1310, is found holding office in 1318, for Archbishop Melton orders her to be removed from all offices and not to go outside the convent and couples his injunction with a general prohibition against any office being held by a nun convicted de lapsu carnis. Yet she apparently became Prioress of the house, for her removal on account of further misconduct is noted in 1328[1476]. Isabel de Berghby, Prioress of Arthington, apostatised in 1312, but returned eighteen months later and was re-elected Prioress in 1349[1477]. In 1310 Isabella de St Quintin was ordered to be removed from the office of cellaress in the presence of the whole convent of Nunkeeling, and the nuns were ordered not to appoint her to any other office nor allow her to leave the house; but in 1316 Isabella de St Quintin was elected Prioress[1478]. Denise Loweliche, the Prioress of Markyate, who had been so ready to add perjury to incontinence in 1433 and had resigned only because she could not find four nuns to swear to her innocence, was still, despite her resignation, Prioress when Alnwick visited the house in 1442. Abbess Elizabeth Broke of Romsey was similarly re-elected, after having been found guilty of perjury and adultery[1479]. Even the wicked Prioress of Littlemore (1517) was deprived but “allowed to perform the functions of her office for the present, provided she did nothing without the advice of the Bishop’s commissary” and she was still acting-Prioress and behaving as badly as ever when the house was visited again some nine months later[1480]. Moreover it was possible for an influential sinner to obtain a dispensation reinstating her to her position and allowing her to hold office. Some curious papal mandates to this effect are extant. Joan Goldesburgh, a nun of Nunmonkton, is so dispensed in 1450 “to receive and hold any dignities, even of Abbess and Prioress, even conventual, of her order, even if they be elective and have cure of souls”[1481], and two nuns of Amesbury were restored to their voice and place in stall and chapter, and rendered eligible for all offices even that of Abbess in 1398 and 1424[1482]. On the other hand such a dispensation shows that the penance had been rigorously enforced; one of the nuns (a serious offender who had had children by two priests) is said to have lived laudably in the nunnery for six years since her condemnation. Occasionally, moreover, the office of head of the house is specifically excepted in the dispensation[1483].

Besides punishing offenders, the Bishops took steps to effect a general reform of convents which they found in an unsatisfactory moral state, by removing as far as possible the conditions which facilitated immorality. Such steps usually consisted in forbidding the nuns to wander about freely outside their houses and in prohibiting the visits of men, except under safeguards. Sometimes a careful Bishop issues a special injunction against a particular visitor, sometimes he enumerates painfully a list of chaplains and others whose access to the precincts of a nunnery is forbidden. These attempts to enforce enclosure have been dealt with elsewhere[1484], and a study of convent morals shows how necessary a principle of monastic life it was and how closely the breach of it was connected with moral decay. The attempt at reform by stricter enclosure was, as we know, not a success. The Bishops “beat the air” in vain with their restrictions. In the nature of the case the control exercised by any Bishop over the monastic houses of his diocese varied according to his own energy or leisure. If visitation were made only at rare intervals, abuses persisted and became public scandals before they were reformed, and even after visitation it by no means followed that abuses would be corrected[1485]. The fact is that the medieval bishops were too badly overworked to be able to keep any systematic control over the monastic houses in their dioceses, in spite of the energy which some of them gave to the task and in spite of a liberal use of commissioners.

To pass a final judgment on the moral state of English nunneries, as revealed by the bishops’ registers during the later middle ages, is, as has already been suggested, a difficult task. From the monastic standard it cannot be said to have been high, but from the human standard it is not difficult to excuse these women, professed so young and with so little regard for vocation, suos calores macerantes juveniles. The nun was not a saint; she was “a child of our grandmother Eve, a female, or for thy more sweet understanding, a woman”; and only a habit of making allowances for human nature can give a right understanding of her. The explanation of the matter seems to be that monasticism as a career is not for l’homme moyen sensuel, or even for la femme moyenne sensuelle; and in the later middle ages many folk of average, or more than average, passions entered it. Indeed its whole career is from the beginning a magnificent series of recoveries from a melancholy series of relapses. Even in the Anglo-Saxon period, the golden age of the English nunneries, the scandal of Coldingham has to be set against the glory of Whitby[1486]. In the height of the twelfth century the misdeeds of Amesbury provoke episcopal, royal, and papal interference and nuns from the new order of Fontevrault are brought in to reform the house[1487]. In the middle of the splendid thirteenth century that hammer of the monks, Bishop Grosseteste, who in religiosos terribiliter et in religiosas terribilius consuevit fulgurare, conceived himself justified in employing measures of incredible brutality for assuring himself of the virtue of his nuns[1488]; and the evidence of bishops’ registers for the second half of the century does not give an impression of much greater strictness of life than is found in the nunneries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when monasticism had, by the admission of its apologists, passed its prime[1489].

Nevertheless there was a steady movement downhill in the history of the monasteries during the last two centuries and a half before the dissolution[1490]. They shared in the growing degradation of the Church in its head and members. The “mighty lord who broke the bonds of Rome” may have been actuated merely by a desire to break the bonds of matrimony, but there was some need for reform among the monastic houses. It is true that the so-called scandalous comperta of Henry VIII’s visitors cannot be taken at their face value; these men had been sent to make a black case and they made it, nor was their own character such as to encourage the slightest belief in their words. Yet in those comperta themselves there is nothing which is unfamiliar to the student of episcopal registers for two centuries before, and charges which a Layton made with levity, an Alnwick was forced sometimes to make with despair[1491]. Yet this may be said for the nunneries of the age, over and above the allowance for human frailty: not all, nor even the majority, were tainted with serious sin, though all were worldly. We think a house particularly disordered, only because we have record of its failings; of its virtues we have no record in inquisitions which were directed towards the discovery of abuses. It is true that this cuts both ways, and that in dioceses where few or no registers and reports remain the fair fame of the nuns remains unblemished, whatever their lives may have been. Happy the nunnery that has no history. Nevertheless in this as in so many other tales of human endeavour

The evil that men do lives after them—
The good is oft interred with their bones,

and it will never be known what lives of self-sacrifice and devotion may be hidden behind the Omnia bene of an obscure visitation record. The words of the sixteenth century poem are the wisest judgment on medieval nuns:

For sum bene devowte, holy and towarde,
And holden the right way to blysse;
And sum bene feble, lewde and frowarde,
Now god amend that ys amys.

The dissolution of the monasteries amputated in England a limb of the Church, which though diseased was yet far from putrid. We have no means of guessing what the later history of the nunneries might have been. The English nunneries compare on the whole favourably with contemporary French and German houses, as revealed by the visitations of Rigaud and Busch, and they certainly never reached such a laxity of morals and such a complete absence of any spirituality as was reached by the convents of the Latin countries at a later date. It was never, in the middle ages, the mode to be a monachino as it was later in France and Italy[1492]. The life of a nun had not yet lost all of its original purpose and meaning and the careers of a Virginia Maria de Leyva, of a Lucrezia Buonvisi, of an AngÉlique d’EstrÉes, even of such a virtuous flirt as Felice Rasponi, would not have been possible then[1493]. No Casanova could have found in medieval England opportunity for those astounding intrigues with the M.M. of Venice and the M.M. of ChambÉry, which fill so large a place in his Memoirs and are so significant a commentary upon monastic life in the eighteenth century[1494]. The reason lies perhaps in the less inflammable temperament of the North, but still more in the different standards of the time. The middle ages expressed and satisfied their passions freely, but debauchery was then less all-pervading and less elegant. Passion was not yet degraded to fashion and the lover had not yet become the gallant. The sins of these fifteenth century nuns are a matter of rude nature and not of “all the adulteries of art.” That which was expelled with a pitchfork had not yet returned with a fan. The distinction is a relevant one. A vow broken for love may yet have force and reality; a vow broken for amusement has none. The medieval nunneries never sank to the moral degradation of a more refined and artificial age.

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