APPENDIX IV (continued 5)

[1273] Loc. cit. With this compare Alnwick’s visitation of Ankerwyke in 1441, at which one of Margery Kyrkeby’s charges against the Prioress Clemence Medeforde was: “Also she has ... blocked up the view Thamesward, which was a great diversion to the nuns. She confesses blocking up the view, because she saw that men stood in the narrow space close to the window and talked with the nuns.” Linc. Visit. II, p. 3.

[1274] Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 452-3. Compare Bishop Stapeldon’s injunction to Canonsleigh in 1320: “Et pur ceo que nous avoms oyi et entendu par ascune gent qe par my deus us dedenȝ vostre abbeye ileoqes plusours mals esclandres et deshonestetes sunt avenues avant cest hure, et purront ensement avenir apres, si remedie ne soit mys, ceo est asavoir, un us qe est en lencloistre au celer desouz la Sale la Abbesse devers la court voloms, ordinoms et comaundoms qe meisme ceux deus us soyent bien estupees par mur de pere, entre cy et la Paske procheyn avenir.” Reg. W. de Stapeldon, p. 96.

[1275] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 172. He also said that “No man loge undir the dortir nor oon the baksede, but if hit be such sad persones by whome your house may be holpyne and socured w^tout slaundir or suspicion.”

[1276] Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 366. But at Barking Peckham ordered in 1279: “In officiis, autem, quae per foeminas fieri nequeunt, operariorum cum eisdem cautelis introitus admittatur.” Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, I, p. 84. On the entrance of carpenters, masons and other workmen into convents see Thiers, op. cit. II, ch. xxvi. He insists that the work must be a necessity and something which could not be done by the nuns themselves. “Ainsi les artisans sont coupables du violement de la clôture, lorsqu’ils entrent pour des ouvrages de bienseance ou de commodite, pour des decorations ou des embelissemens; en un mot, pour des ouvrages dont les Religieuses se peuvent passer; et je ne vois pas en quelle seurete de conscience les abbesses, les Prieures et les autres superieures des Religieuses, les y laissent entrer, soit pour polir des grilles, pour tendre et pour detendre des chambres et des lits, pour faire et pour peindre des plat-fonds et des alcoves, pour boiser des chambres, des galleries et des cabinets, pour faire de beaux vitrages, de belle volieres à petits oiseaux et d’autres choses semblables. Car outre que tout cela est directement opposé à la modestie et à la pauvreté, dont elles font profession, quel pretexte peuvent-elles alleguer pour se mettre à couvert de l’excommunication que les Conciles, les Papes et les Eveques ont fulminée contre les Religieuses, qui laissent entrer les personnes étrangeres dans leur clôture sans necessité.” Op. cit. pp. 412-3. He is particularly urgent that nuns should cultivate their own gardens and should have their vegetable gardens outside the precincts: “par ce moyen elles ne seroient point obligées d’ouvrer et fermer si souvent les portes de leur clôture, à des jardiniers qui ne sont pas toûjours exempts de scandale” (ib. p. 414), which recalls a famous story of Boccaccio’s. Decameron, 3rd day, novel I.

[1277] Loc. cit. and compare his injunction to Wherwell, ib. p. 268. Bishop Flemyng’s introduction to Elstow is rather contradictory: “Also that no nun admit secretly to her chamber any seculars or other men of religion and that if they be admitted she do not keep them there too long.” Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Lincoln, I, p. 51. At Godstow (1432) the injunction ran: “Also that the beds in the nuns’ lodgings be altogether removed from their chambers, save those for small children and that no nun receive any secular people for any recreation in the nuns’ chambers under pain of excommunication.” Ib. I, p. 67.

[1278] As at Godstow in 1432, Linc. Visit. I, p. 67, or Romsey in 1523, Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 244.

[1279] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, p. 664. Cf. his injunctions to other nunneries.

[1280] Linc. Visit. II, p. 116. Compare injunctions to Catesby, Langley, Markyate and St Michael’s, Stamford. Ib. pp. 51, 177, and Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 6, 83d. For other examples see Lymbrook (1277), Reg. Thome de Cantilupo, p. 201; Polsloe (1319), Reg. W. de Stapeldon, p. 317; Studley (1530), Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 54.

[1281] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 83d, cf. f. 6, and Linc. Visit. II, p. 177.

[1282] Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 554. Compare Romsey (1387), New Coll. MS. f. 86; Nuncoton (1531), Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 60. St Benedict’s Rule forbids all letters (cap. LIV).

[1283] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 46, 177; Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 39d, 76, 95d.

[1284] Ib. p. 119.

[1285] Linc. Visit. II, p. 185.

[1286] Ib. p. 133.

[1287] Ib. pp. 113, MS. ff. 71d, 72, 77.

[1288] For other examples see Romsey (1311), Liveing, op. cit. p. 104; Clementhorpe (1317), Hampole (1308, 1314), Nunappleton (1346), Rosedale (1315), Arthington (1315, 1318); V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 129, 163-4, 172, 174, 188. Sopwell (1338), Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 366; Heynings (1392), Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 397d; Lymbrook (1437), Hereford Epis. Reg. Spofford, p. 81; Burnham (1432-6), Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Lincoln, I, p. 24; Redlingfield (1514), Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, pp. 139-40; Flamstead (1530), V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 433; Nuncoton (1531), Archaeologia, XLVII, p. 58; Sinningthwaite (1534), Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 440-1. The injunction to St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in 1432 has an odd variation: “withowte specialle graunte hadde in the chapetter house, among yow alle.” Dugdale, Mon. IV, pp. 553-4.

[1289] Reg. of John of Drokensford, p. 81. The Isabel Fychet mentioned in 1336 was probably one of these ladies.

[1290] Wykeham’s Reg. II, pp. 162-3. On this couple, see Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, pp. 364 ff.

[1291] Reg. Ralph of Shrewsbury, pp. 277, 278, 744-5. A few out of many other examples may be quoted: Alice, wife of John D’Aumarle, domicellus, may stay at Cornworthy from January till September (1333), Reg. of J. de Grandisson, pt. II, p. 724; Beatrix Paynell, sister of Sir John Foxley, may stay at Whitney from December to the Feast of St John the Baptist (1367), Wykeham’s Reg. II, p. 7; Avice de Lyncolnia, niece of William de Jafford, may stay for four years in Nunappleton (1309); he was the Archbishop’s receiver. V.C.H. Yorks. III, 171; Alice, wife of Alan of Ayste, may spend two years in Godstow (1363), V.C.H. Oxon. II, p. 73. It will be noted that nearly all these are great folk, who cannot lightly be refused.

[1292] Reg. J. de Grandisson, pt. I, p. 190.

[1293] V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 355.

[1294] Reg. John le Romeyn, I, p. 114.

[1295] See the list in Rye, Carrow Abbey, pp. 48-52, passim. Some of the men also brought servants or chaplains with them, e.g. William Wryght and servants, William Wade and William his chaplain, John Bernard and John his chaplain. The men must have been lodged outside the cloister precincts.

[1296] Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner (1900 ed.), II, p. 390 (no. 633). See also no. 617 and Introd. pp. ccxc-ccxcii.

[1297] Linc. Visit. II, p. 175 (at this house there were also three women boarding with the Prioress and one with the Subprioress). Compare the case of Agnes de Vescy at Watton in 1272. The King wrote to the sheriff of Yorkshire that “Agnes de Vescy has been to the house of Watton with a great number of women and dogs and other things, which have interfered with the devotions of the nuns and sisters.” Graham, St Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines, p. 83. The fact was that no one had any real control over these great ladies, least of all their hostesses.

[1298] Linc. Visit. II, p. 185.

[1299] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 76. Compare a compertum at St Sepulchre, Canterbury, in 1367-8. “Perhendinantes male fame steterunt cum priorissa, ad quas habebatur eciam accessus nimium suspectus,” Lambeth Reg. Langham, f. 76d.

[1300] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 120, 122.

[1301] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 71d, 72. Compare the state of affairs at Hampole in 1411, when the Archbishop ordered the removal of “secular servants and corrodiarii who attracted to themselves other secular persons from the country, by whom the house was burdened.” V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 165. When Bishop Grandisson of Exeter licensed the reception of Alice D’Aumarle at Cornworthy (1333) he added “proviso quod ad vos, per moram hujusmodi, secularium personarum non pateat suspectis horis liberior frequencia vel accessus.” Reg. Grandisson, pt. II, p. 724.

[1302] Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. of Lincoln, I, p. 87.

[1303] Note for instance the Archbishop of York’s injunction when mitigating a severe penance on a nun of St Clement’s, York, which is clearly for immorality: “That twice a year if necessary she might receive friends ... but she was to have nothing to do with Lady de Walleys and if Lady de Walleys was then in their house, she was to be sent away before Pentecost (1310),” V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 129.

[1304] V.C.H. Yorks. II, p. 165.

[1305] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 39d.

[1306] Possibly a priest.

[1307] Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, p. 18.

[1308] Wilkins, Concilia, I, p. 592.

[1309] Visit. of Relig. Houses in Dioc. Lincoln, I, pp. 48-9. Compare Gray’s injunction, laying more stress on married boarders. Ib. p. 53.

[1310] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d.

[1311] Visit. Linc. II, p. 135. For other injunctions against boarders see Godstow, Gracedieu, Harrold, Langley, Nuncoton, Stixwould, ib. pp. 115, 124-5, 131, 177, Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 77d, 75d; Wherwell, Romsey (1284), Sheppey (1286), Reg. Epis. Peckham, II, pp. 653-4, III, p. 924; Wilberfoss, Nunkeeling and Nunappleton (1281-2), Reg. William Wickwane, pp. 112-3, 140-1; Polsloe (1319), Reg. W. de Stapeldon, p. 317; Canonsleigh (1391), Reg. of Brantyngham, pt. II, p. 724; Farwell (1367), Reg. R. de Stretton, p. 119; Polesworth (1352, 1456), V.C.H. Warwick, II, p. 63. These are only a few examples taken at random; the registers of the Archbishops of York and of the Bishops of Lincoln alone record many more. (See the V.C.H. for the counties in these dioceses, passim.)

[1312] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, p. 664; Liveing, op. cit. pp. 102, 165.

[1313] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 100d; Linc. Visit. I, p. 67; II, p. 115.

[1314] Gynewell, f. 139d, V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 355; Linc. Visit. I, pp. 48-9, 53.

[1315] “That ye receyve ne holde no suiournauntes, men, women ne childerne, wyth ynne your place, and thoe that nowe are there, ye voyde thaym wythe yn a quartere of a yere after the receyvyng of thise our lettres, but if ye here yn hafe specyalle licence of hus or our successours, bysshops of Lincolne, except our wele belufede doghters, dame Elizabeth Dymmok and dame Margaret Tylney, by whose abydyng, as we truste, no greve but rathere avayle is procured to your place.” Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 75d.

[1316] Reg. of Brantyngham, pt. II, p. 724.

[1317] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 173.

[1318] See examples above, p. 410.

[1319] See Ch. VI, passim.

[1320] Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich (Camden Soc.), p. 290.

[1321] Cal. of Papal Letters, IV, pp. 37-8.

[1322] Ib. IV, p. 212.

[1323] Ib. IV, p. 167.

[1324] Ib. IV, p. 182.

[1325] Ib. IV, p. 394.

[1326] For example, ib. I, pp. 522, 526; IV, p. 38; VII, pp. 70, 440, 617. Sometimes, too, they were ordered to pay their own expenses, e.g. ib. VI, p. 293.

[1327] Ib. VI, p. 132.

[1328] Ib. VII, p. 220.

[1329] Ib. V, p. 91.

[1330] I.e. Jean de Dormans, bishop of Beauvais 1360-8, cardinal 1368, d. 1373.

[1331] Cal. of Papal Letters, IV, p. 170.

[1332] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 126. Sewardsley was near Grafton Regis, where Jacquetta, then widow of Richard Wydville, earl Rivers, lived. This recalls the more famous case of Eleanor de Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester. It is worth noticing also that on the eve of the Reformation the famous Elizabeth Barton, called “the Holy Maid of Kent,” found refuge for a part of her short career in the nunnery of St Sepulchre’s, Canterbury. Archbishop Warham secured her admission there in 1526, and she became a nun and remained there for seven years, until the fame of her outspoken condemnations of the royal divorce finally brought about her execution in 1533. See Gasquet, Hen. VIII and the English Monasteries (Pop. Edit. 1899), ch. III, passim.

[1333] Le Livere de Engletere (Rolls Series), p. 344.

[1334] Cal. of Close Rolls (1318-23), p. 428.

[1335] Ib. (1323-7), pp. 88-9; cf. Le Livere de Engletere, p. 350.

[1336] V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 184.

[1337] Cal. of Close Rolls (1307-13), p. 114.

[1338] Ib. (1302-7), p. 419.

[1339] Cal. of Close Rolls (1313-18), p. 43. Sometimes the King sent his friends as well as his enemies to board in a convent and occasionally he endeavoured to do so without paying for them. In 1339 he sent first to Wilton and then to Shaftesbury “Sibyl Libaud of Scotland who lately came to England to the king’s faith and besought that he would provide for her maintenance, requesting them to provide her and her son Thomas, who is of tender age, with maintenance from that house, in food and clothing, until Whitsuntide next, knowing that what they do at this request shall not be to the prejudice of their house in the future.” Cal. of Close Rolls (1339-41), pp. 261, 335. John of Gaunt made use of the convent of Nuneaton to provide a home for five Spanish ladies, who had doubtless come to England with his duchess Constance of Castile; early in 1373 he wrote to his receiver at Leicester bidding him pay the prioress for their expenses 13s. 4d. each week; but evidently they found the convent too dull for their tastes, for in August one of them was “demourrant a Leycestre ovesque Johan Elmeshalle,” and in December the Duke wrote to his receiver again to say that he had heard “que noz damoisels d’Espaigne demurrantz a Nouneton ne voullont pas illoeques pluis longement demurrer”; so it was “Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies” at Nuneaton. It is probable that these “damoisels” were quite young girls, and had been placed at the convent to learn “nortelry.” John of Gaunt’s Reg. (R. Hist. Soc.), II, pp. 128, 231, 276-7. See, for more about these ladies, pp. 320-1, 328, 338.

[1340] Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi.

[1341] V.C.H. Norfolk, II, p. 352. This case is particularly interesting, because it would seem to show that “benefit of clergy” was not claimed by nuns. On this point see Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of Engl. Law, 2nd ed. I, p. 445. “There seems no reason for doubting that nuns were entitled to the same privilege, though, to their credit be it said, we have in our period, found no cases which prove this.” Maitland cites Hale, Pleas of the Crown, II, p. 328, as saying: “Nuns had the exemption from temporal jurisdiction but the privilege of clergy was never granted them by our law”; but elsewhere (Pleas of the Crown, II, p. 371): “Anciently nuns professed were admitted to privilege of clergy”; he cites a case from 1348 (Fitzherbert’s Abridgment Corone, pl. 461) which speaks of a woman, not expressly called a nun, being claimed by and delivered to the ordinary. Stephen, Hist. of Crim. Law of England, II, p. 461, thinks that “all women (except, till the Reformation, professed nuns) were for centuries excluded from benefit of clergy, because they were incapable of being ordained.”

[1342] Mr Hamilton Thompson thinks that “Mestowe” is probably the hundred of Meon-Stoke (Hants.), in a distant part of the county; it is difficult to see why the Abbess made a general claim there and in any case Wherwell, where Henry Harold lived, is in Wherwell Hundred.

[1343] V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 135.

[1344] Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 369.

[1345] Gibbons, Ely Epis. Records, p. 406.

[1346] Cal. of Pat. Rolls (1381-5), p. 355.

[1347] On the other hand for a case of spoliation in which Juliana Yong, a nun, was involved as one of the aggressors see Cal. of Pap. Petit. I, pp. 333-4.

[1348] Linc. Reg. Dalderby, f. 16.

[1349] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 108-9. Compare a case in 1375 at Romsey when certain persons broke into the houses of the Abbess within the Abbey and carried off Joan, late the wife of Peter Brugge, and her property, consisting of her gold rings, gold brooches or bracelets with precious stones, linen and woollen clothes and furs; her chaplain aiding. Liveing, op. cit. p. 166.

[1350] Cal. of Pat. Rolls (1340-3), p. 127.

[1351] Ib. (1367-70), p. 10. The Abbess was the worldly Joan Formage. Licences for crenellating monasteries are rather unusual; but cathedral closes were very generally crenellated at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries, e.g. Lincoln, York, Lichfield, Wells and Exeter. There is a good example of a crenellated monastery at the Benedictine Priory of Ewenny near Bridgend, Glamorgan, a cell of Gloucester. This is near the south coast of Wales, where, as along the Welsh border, towers either crenellated or with certain defensive features are common. Cf. the numerous fortified churches in the south of France, e.g. Albi Cathedral (Tarn) and Les Saintes-Maries (Bouches-du-Rhône), the latter close to the shore of the Mediterranean. (For this note I am indebted to Mr A. Hamilton Thompson.)

[1352] Froissart, tr. Berners, I, ch. xxxviii. For the sufferings of other monasteries on the south coast see P. G. Mode, The Influence of the Black Death on the English Monasteries, p. 31.

[1353] See Denifle, La Désolation des Eglises ... pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans (1899). In t. I is a long list of monasteries which had been ruined during the fourteenth century. The following (no. 176) is typical: “Monasterium monialium B. Mariae de Bricourt O.S.B. Trecen. dioec., causantibus a 40 annis guerris desolatum et destructum, libris aliisque destitutum et ab omnibus monialibus derelictum 1442” (pp. 55-6).

[1354] Dugdale, Mon. II, pp. 316, 452, 636.

[1355] Serjeantson, Delapré Abbey (1909), pp. 21-3.

[1356] Graham, Essay on Engl. Monasteries (Hist. Ass. 1913), p. 29. The text of the assessment is given in the notes to the Taxatio Ecclesiastica Pape Nicholai (Record Com. 1802).

[1357] The Chronicle of Lanercost, translated by Sir Herbert Maxwell [1913], p. 136.

[1358] Reg. Palat. Dunelm. I, p. 353. In 1291 the number of nuns was twenty-seven, together with four lay brothers, three chaplains and a master. Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 197.

[1359] Hist. Letters from the Northern Reg. ed. Raine, pp. 319-23.

[1360] V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 175, 240.

[1361] Froissart, tr. Berners, I, ch. cxxxvii. The English army on its way to Neville’s Cross was also a sore burden to the religious houses of the neighbourhood. See the very interesting document about Egglestone Abbey quoted from Archbishop Zouche’s Register (under the date 1348) by A. Hamilton Thompson, The Pestilences of the Fourteenth Century in the Diocese of York (Archaeol. Journ. vol. LXXI, New Series, vol. XXI, p. 120, n. 4). It is probable that this campaign, together with the Black Death, which followed hard upon it, brought about the final ruin of the little nunnery of St Stephen’s near Northallerton, which is not heard of after 1350. See ib. p. 121, n. 12, and V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 116.

[1362] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 160, cp. the case of Armathwaite below. The muniments of Carrow were burnt during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Hoare, C. M., Hist. of an East Anglian Soke (Bedford 1918), p. 112. “The destruction of charters, privileges and muniments was a severe loss; evidence for the holding of each strip of land and in support of every custom was of the utmost importance.” Graham, St Gilb. of Semp. and the Gilbertines, p. 138.

[1363] V.C.H. Cumberland, II, p. 190, and Dugdale, Mon. III, pp. 271-2.

[1364] Aug. Off. Misc. Books, 281, f. 11 [P.R.O.]. For the sufferings of Northern monasteries from the Scots 1330-50 see references collected from the patent rolls in P. G. Mode, op. cit. p. 32.

[1365] Chronicon Angliae, ed. E. M. Thompson (R.S. 1874), pp. 247-53.

[1366] It is extremely difficult to identify the nunnery spoken of in the story. According to Froissart the expedition sailed from Southampton (Froissart, Chron. I, ch. ccclvi); according to another account the port of departure was Plymouth (see J. H. Ramsay, The Genesis of Lancaster, II, p. 131). If Southampton be correct, Romsey Abbey would be the nearest nunnery answering to the description in the text, though it stands some miles from the coast. If Sir John sailed from Plymouth the only nunnery in the vicinity would be the little priory of Cornworthy, which certainly never contained a large number of nuns and boarders (though as to this the chronicler may be exaggerating). It is strange that no record of the crime appears to have survived in episcopal registers or in any official document; but it seems unlikely that the story is pure invention, since we know from other sources that the troops were notorious for general depredations along the coast. A petition presented to the King in Parliament (1379/80) runs: “Item, beseech the commons and the good folk who dwell near the coasts of the sea, to wit, of Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset and Cornwall: That whereas they and their chattels have oftentimes been robbed, and are destroyed and spoiled by men-at-arms, archers and others coming and going by the said ports to the service of our Lord the king at the war and by their long sojourn; and chiefly the people of Hampshire during the last expedition which was ruled and ordered, for by the sojourn and destruction made by men ordered upon the said expedition, the goods and chattels of the good people of Hampshire are destroyed, spoiled and annihilated, to the very great abashment and destruction of all the Commons of those parts, as well folk of Holy Church as others; and they will lodge themselves of their own authority, having no regard to the billets (herbegage) assigned to them by our lord [the king], to the destruction of the common people, if it be not remedied as soon as may be.” (Rot. Parl. III, p. 80.) The other nunneries in Hampshire were St Mary’s Winchester, Wherwell, and Whitney.

[1367] Dugdale, Mon. II, pp. 452, 636.

[1368] To show how a twelfth century baron might speak to a cloistered nun, the mother of one of his knights, his words deserve quotation:

[1369] Raoul de Cambrai, pub. P. Meyer et A. Longnon, Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr. 1882, stanzas LXIII-LXXI, passim (pp. 42-50).

[1370] “Incontynent it was taken by assaut and robbed and an abbey of ladyes vyolated and the town brent.” Froissart, Chronicles, tr. Berners.

[1371] See M. K. Brady, Psycho-Analysis and its Place in Life [1919], p. 117; H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind [2nd ed., 1914], I, ch. XX.

[1372] See above, p. 29. For the effects of this at a later period in Italy see J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy. VI. The Catholic Reaction, pt. I (1886), pp. 339 ff.

[1373] See below, p. 502.

[1374] See above, pp. 422 ff.

[1375] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton, ff. 5d, 32d.

[1376] The unions were sometimes referred to as “marriages” and a priest unaware of the facts of the case may have been got to celebrate them. For instance Bishop Gynewell recites how Joan Bruys, nun of Nuneaton, was abducted by Nicholas Green of Isham and “postmodum se in nostram diocesim divertentes matrimonium de facto in eadem nostra diocesi scienter inuicem contraxerunt et incestum ibidem commiserunt et in ea cohabitant indies vir et vxor.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 102. Marriage is also referred to in the case of Joyce, an apostate from St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in 1388. Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. IX, App. pt. I, p. 28. At Atwater’s visitation of Ankerwyke in 1519 it was stated “Domina Alicia Hubbart stetit ibidem in habitu per quatuor annos et tunc in apostasiam recessit et cuidam ... Sutton consanguineo Magistri Ricardi Sutton Senescalli de Syon fuit nupta et cum eo in patria ipsius Sutton remanet in adulterio.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Visit. Atwater, f. 42.

[1377] Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, f. 16. Translated in R. M. Serjeantson, Hist. of Delapré Abbey, Northampton, pp. 7-8.

[1378] P.R.O. Chancery Warrants, Series I, File 1759; Cal. of Patent Rolls (1381-5), p. 235. This file of Chancery Warrants contains a large number of petitions for the arrest of vagabond monks and nuns. These petitions usually emanate from the head of the apostate’s house, but occasionally from the Bishop of the diocese, as in another warrant in the same file in which the Bishop of Norwich petitions for the arrest of Katherine Montagu, Benedictine nun of Bungay (1376). Other petitions besides those quoted in the text concern Alice Romayn, Austin nun of Haliwell (1314, ib.), Matilda Hunter, Austin nun of Burnham (1392), (File 1762); Alice de Everyngham, Gilbertine nun of Haverholm (1366), (File 1764); and the following sisters of Hospitals, Agnes Stanley of St Bartholomew’s, Bristol (1389), Johanna atte Watre of St Thomas the Martyr at Southwark (1324) and Elizabeth Holewaye of the same house (File 1769, nos. 1, 15, 18). On receipt of these petitions the writ De apostata capiendo would be issued and the royal commissions for the arrest of the delinquents are sometimes found enrolled on the patent rolls, as in the cases quoted in the text. Alice Everyngham was excommunicated by the master of Sempringham; but on her case being brought to the papal court and committed by the Pope to the dean and two canons of Lincoln, she was absolved by them. The master appealed to the Pope against her absolution, and the case was committed for trial to the Archbishop of York. Cal. of Papal Letters, IV, pp. 69-70. For a royal commission to arrest Mary de Felton of the House of Minoresses at Aldgate, see Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1385-9, p. 86.

[1379] P.R.O. Chancery Warrants, Series I, File 1759; Cal. of Pat. Rolls, 1401-5, pp. 418, 472.

[1380] There are several references to this ceremony: “Dictam igitur commonialem vestram, iniuncta ei penitencia seculari pro suis reatibus atque culpis, ad vos et domum vestram, a qua exiit, remittimus absolutam; deuocionem vestram firmiter in Domino exhortantes quatinus ... dictam penitentem ... si in humilitatis spiritu, reclinato corpore more penitencium, pulset ad portam, misericordiam deuote postulans et implorans, si suum confiteatur reatum, si signa contricionis ac correccionis appareant in eadem, secundum disciplinam vestri ordinis, filiali promptitudine admittatis” (Maud of Terrington at Keldholme, 1321), Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 456-7. Compare ib. XVI, p. 363 (Margaret of Burton at Kirklees, 1337); Wm. Salt Archaeol. Soc. Coll. I, p. 256 (case against Elizabeth la Zouche who, with another nun, had escaped from Brewood in 1326; she was not recovered until 1331).

[1381] V.C.H. Lincs. II, pp. 99-100.

[1382] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 159.

[1383] V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 138. The surname “Suffewyk” should probably read Luffewyk, i.e. Lowick.

[1384] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 171.

[1385] Ib. III, p. 177.

[1386] See for Renaissance Italy, J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy (1886), VI, p. 340; A. Gagnière, Les Confessions d’une Abbesse du xvi^e siècle (Paris, 1888), pp. 128 ff. (Felice Rasponi); G. Marcotti, Donne e Monache (Firenze, 1884); but ecclesiastics were found among these monachini. In France the same pursuit became fashionable under the League. For a later date the Memoirs of Casanova provide the most striking illustrations.

[1387] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 39d.

[1388] Linc. Visit. I, p. 84.

[1389] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 113.

[1390] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 83, 83d.

[1391] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 181.

[1392] “En visitaunt vostre mesun por plusure fiez truuames nus ke Johan de Seuekwurth, clerk, se auoit si mauuesement porte en demurant en la mesun ke il esteit atteint de folie de cors od vne de vos nuneins e vne autre esteit de ly atteinte, par defaute de purgaciun ke ele ne se poeit de li purger. Par quei nus defendimes a vus ke vus no le suffrissez en vostre mesun demurer, e a li ke la euene demurast.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton, f. 129d.

[1393] V.C.H. Somerset, II, p. 157.

[1394] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 240.

[1395] Linc. Visit. II, p. 47.

[1396] See below, p. 545.

[1397] Gascoigne accuses John Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury, of having had sons and daughters by a nun at a time when he was Bishop of Bath and Wells. “In diebus meis, anno Domini 1443, electus fuit, vel verius intrusus, unus archiepiscopus qui fuit genitus ex manifesto adulterio, et existens genuit filios et filias ex una moniali, in episcopali gradu existens antequam fuit archiepiscopus.” Loci e Libro Veritatum, ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers (1881), p. 231. Gascoigne was a learned Doctor of Theology and Chancellor of the University of Oxford. His theological dictionary gives an extraordinarily vivid and gloomy picture of the corruptions of the church in his day. It must be noted however that Stafford’s support of the heretical Bishop Reginald Pecok (author of the Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy) made Gascoigne his implacable enemy, while there is no foundation for his statement that Stafford was of illegitimate birth. His charge is therefore unworthy of belief. The scandal which later connected the name of John Stokesley, Bishop of London, with Anne Colte, Abbess of Wherwell, seems likely to be equally devoid of foundation, though she was several times summoned before the Council in 1534; the King and Cromwell evidently resented her refusal to give a farm to one of their protégés. L. and P. Hen. VIII, VI, 1361, VII, 527-9, 907; V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 136.

[1398] See, besides the references given above, cases in which a priest or chaplain was implicated at St Stephen’s Foukeholm (abduction of Cecilia by William, Chaplain of Yarm, 1293), V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 113; Nunkeeling (Avice de Lelle had confessed to incontinence; ordered not to talk to Robert de Eton, chaplain, or any other person, 1318), ib. p. 121; Keldholme, 1318 (Mary de Holm and Sir William Lely, chaplain, 1318), ib. p. 169; Kirklees (Joan de Heton and Sir Michael, called the Scot, priest, 1315), Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 361; Godstow (Sir Hugh Sadylere of Oxford, chaplain, and Alice Longspee, 1445), Linc. Visit. II, p. 114; Littlemore (Prioress Katherine Wells and Richard Hewes, priest of Kent, 1517), V.C.H. Oxon. II, p. 76; Wintney (Prioress and Thomas Ferring, a secular priest, 1405), Cal. Papal Letters, VI, p. 55; Romsey (charge against Emma Powes and the vicar of the parish church, 1502), V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 130; Easebourne (Sir John Smyth, chaplain, concerned in abduction of two nuns, 1478), Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, p. 17; and various other instances of suspicious behaviour or of chaplains and priests warned off the premises. Some of these cases are described in detail below, passim.

[1399] E.g. “Fatebatur se carnaliter cognitam a D.B. apud S. in domo habitacionis sue ibidem situata,” Linc. Visit. I, p. 71. “Item dicit quod priorissa consueuit sola accedere ad villam de Catesby ad gardinas cum vno solo presbytero.” Ib. II, p. 47.

[1400] E.g. “Domina Agnes Smyth inquisita dicit quod Simon Prentes cognovit eam et suscitavit prolem ex ea infra prioratum, extra tamen claustrum.” Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. Norwich, p. 109. There are many references to and injunctions against suspicious confabulations with men in the nave and other parts of the priory church.

[1401] See above, pp. 386-9, 401.

[1402] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, p. 708.

[1403] Reg. Thome de Cantilupo, Epis. Herefordensis (Canterbury and York Society), p. 265.

[1404] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 181.

[1405] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 83. See above, p. 310.

[1406] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 91, 116.

[1407] R. E. G. Cole, The Priory of Brodholme (Assoc. Architec. Soc. Reports and Papers, XXVIII), p. 66.

[1408] At Markyate in 1336 “an apostate nun was received back again and absolved by Bishop Burghersh and three others sought absolution at the same time for having aided and abetted her in her escape.” V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 360.

[1409] It must be conceded that the Church gave the nuns every inducement to take measures to prevent such disasters; for instance in the Liber Poenitentialis of Theodore the Anglo-Saxon nun guilty of immorality is given eight years of penance and ten if there be a child; a married layman and a nun who are lovers have six years of penance and seven if there be a child. Here, as ever, the Church went on the principle that sin was bad but scandal worse; si non caste tamen caute. Of the practice of abortion I find no record in English pre-Reformation documents, though Henry VIII’s disreputable commissioner, Dr Layton, accused the Yorkshire nuns of taking potations “ad prolem conceptum opprimendum.” Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Soc. 1843), p. 97. There is a proved case of it in Eudes Rigaud’s visitation of St-Aubin (1256), and a suspicion at St Saëns (1264), Reg. Visit. Rigaud, ed. Bonnin, pp. 255, 491. See below, p. 668. One of Caesarius of Heisterbach’s exempla hangs upon it. Caes. Heist. Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange, II, p. 331. In seventeenth and eighteenth century Italy the practice seems to have been common, witness Casanova.

[1410] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 96.

[1411] Wykeham’s Reg. II, pp. 114-5.

[1412] “Et proles obiit immediate post.” Jessopp, op. cit. p. 109.

[1413] See e.g. faculty given “to dispense twenty persons of illegitimate birth of the realms of France and England, whether sons of priests or married persons, or monks, or nuns, to be ordained and to hold two benefices apiece.” Cal. of Papal Letters, IV, p. 170.

[1414] M. E. Lowndes, The Nuns of Port Royal (1909), p. 13. The Abbess in question was Angélique d’Estrées, sister of Gabrielle, Henry IV’s mistress, and famous for her scandalous life and her struggle with her successor, the famous Mère Angélique (Jacqueline Arnauld) of Port Royal.

[1415] Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Soc. 1843), p. 58. But it must be remembered that we cannot believe uncorroborated a single word that Layton says.

[1416] See below, Note F.

[1417] Reg. Ralph of Shrewsbury (Som. Rec. Soc.), pp. 683-4; the charge is not given in full in this edition of the Register and must be eked out from the extract in Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 416 (note).

[1418] Reg. John of Drokensford, pp. 60, 126, 167, 287.

[1419] Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, pp. 17-19.

[1420] Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis, ed. Stubbs, Rolls Ser., I, pp. 135-6.

[1421] Dugdale, Mon. II, p. 334.

[1422] Cal. of Pap. Letters, III, p. 169. She was born 11 March 1278 and took the veil at the age of seven years. Some annalists put the date of her profession at 1285 and some at 1289; in any case the Warenne charge was not made until 1345. See above, p. 381, note 1.

[1423] Cal. of Papal Letters, V, p. 161.

[1424] Ib. VII, p. 373.

[1425] Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, III, p. 851.

[1426] See Note G, p. 597, below.

[1427] In general an apostate may be said to mean a lover, but there must also have been cases of nuns apostatising out of general discontent with the convent or Prioress.

[1428] Two of these, St Mary de Pré (St Albans) and Sopwell ought not, however, to be counted, being entirely under the control of the Abbey of St Albans and exempt from episcopal visitation. It was concerning St Mary de Pré that Archbishop Morton made the charges against St Albans, rendered famous by Froude.

[1429] Above, p. 440.

[1430] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 101 (note), from Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton, f. 154.

[1431] V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 389.

[1432] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 126.

[1433] V.C.H. Oxon. II, p. 103.

[1434] V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 360.

[1435] V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 179.

[1436] V.C.H. Bucks. I, p. 383.

[1437] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 114.

[1438] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 101.

[1439] See A. H. Thompson, “Registers of John Gynewell, Bishop of Lincoln, for the Years 1347-1350.” Archaeol. Journ. 2nd ser., vol. XVIII, p. 331.

[1440] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 81-2.

[1441] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 82-6.

[1442] Ib. pp. 111-2. It should be noted that the word “incest” is used in its religious sense; it was properly used of intercourse between persons who were both under ecclesiastical vows and thus in the relation of spiritual father and daughter, or brother and sister, but it soon came to be used loosely to denote a breach of chastity in which one party was professed.

[1443] Lambeth, Reg. Courtenay, I, f. 336.

[1444] Linc. Visit. I, p. 50. Flemyng adds “or manifestly suspect.”

[1445] Ib. p. 54.

[1446] Ib. p. 65.

[1447] Ib. pp. 69-71.

[1448] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 6.

[1449] See above, p. 449.

[1450] See above, pp. 82-4, 388.

[1451] See above, pp. 80, 310, 449.

[1452] Linc. Visit. II, p. 3. The form of her admission is curious: “Fatetur totidem moniales recessisse, absque tamen sciencia sua.”

[1453] Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. Norwich (Camden Soc.) gives also Bishop Goldwell’s visitations some ten years before, which brought to light no cases of immorality among nuns.

[1454] Ib. p. 109.

[1455] See V.C.H. Hants. II, pp. 129-31 (Romsey, where the date is wrongly given as 1312 by a slip), 124, 135, 151. Unfortunately all but the Romsey visitation are given in the barest summary.

[1456] V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 130.

[1457] Above, pp. 453-4.

[1458] Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, pp. 25-6.

[1459] Linc. Visit. II, p. 48.

[1460] In Archbishop Walter Giffard’s York Register occurs the following entry of payments for Agatha: “Item A. Giffard xxs. Item Thomae de Habinton ad Expensas versus Elnestowe” (1271), Reg. W. Giffard (Surtees Soc.), p. 115. This seems sufficient reason for identifying the Elstow sister as Agatha, though the editor identifies her with Mabel “afterwards abbess of Shaftesbury,” ib. p. 164.

[1461] Reg. W. Giffard (Surtees Soc.) p. 164 and Hist. Letters and Papers from the Northern Regs. ed. J. Raine (Rolls Ser.), pp. 33-4.

[1462] V.C.H. Dorset, II, p. 78.

[1463] She was in trouble in 1287 for refusing to pay certain moneys left for an obit and had to be threatened with excommunication; see Worc. Reg. Godfrey Giffard, Introd. pp. cxxxvi-vii.

[1464] Worc. Reg. Godfrey Giffard, II, pp. 278-80. It is followed by a letter enjoining the Abbess and convent of Wilton to receive back the two nuns.

[1465] For another version of the penance see Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, III, pp. 916-7. This forbids him to enter any nunnery or speak with any nuns without special licence from their metropolitan.

[1466] V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 389.

[1467] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 39d. Compare the case of Thomas de Raynevill who in 1324 was ordered, as penance for seducing a nun of Hampole, to stand on a Sunday, while high mass was being celebrated, in the conventual church of Hampole, bareheaded, wearing only his tunic and holding a lighted taper of one pound weight of wax in his hand, which he was to offer, after the offertory had been said, to the celebrant, who was to explain to the congregation the cause of the oblation. Also on feast days he was to be beaten round the parish church of Campsall. But two years later the Archbishop was still repeating directions for the performance of the penance. V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 164.

[1468] From Nunkeeling to Yedingham (1444); from Arthington to Yedingham (1310); from St Clement’s, York, to Yedingham (1331); from Basedale to Sinningthwaite (1308); from Hampole to Swine (1313); four disobedient nuns of Keldholme to Handale, Swine, Nunappleton and Wallingwells respectively (1308); and two others to Esholt and Nunkeeling (1309); from Nunappleton to Basedale (1308); from Rosedale to Handale (1321); from Swine to Wykeham (1291); from Wykeham to Nunappleton (1444); from Arthington to Nunkeeling (1219). V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 121, 127, 130, 159, 163-4, 168, 171, 175, 180, 183, 189. Also from Kirklees to Hampole (1323) and from Basedale to Rosedale (1534). Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 362, 431-3.

[1469] V.C.H. Suffolk, II, p. 84.

[1470] See for instance the insistence on costs and charges in Archbishop Lee’s letter transferring Joan Fletcher, ex-Prioress of Basedale, from Rosedale where she was doing (or not doing) her penance, back to Basedale again. Loc. cit. pp. 431-3.

[1471] Joan Trimelet of Cannington was to be shut up for a year, fasting thrice a week on bread and water, suos calores macerans juveniles. Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 416. Margaret de Tang of Arthington was “if need be to be bound by the foot with a shackle, but without hurting her limbs or body.” V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 189. The runaway Agnes de Flixthorpe was similarly to be bound, see above, p. 444; Anne Talke was imprisoned for a month. Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 244. Joan Hutton of Esholt, who had had a child (1535), for two years unless the Archbishop relaxed her penance. Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI. p. 453.

[1472] Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, pp. 456-7. The recorded penances given by Archbishop Melton are all very severe, though it must be admitted that the state of the nunneries in his diocese gave him cause for severity and that the penitents were all hardened sinners. Compare penances given by him in V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 175, 189. There is an extremely severe penance imposed by Archbishop Zouche on a nun who had several times run away from Thicket, ib. p. 124, and another by Archbishop Lee in 1535 cited in the last note.

[1473] Jessopp, Visit. in Dioc. Norwich, p. 110.

[1474] V.C.H. Suffolk, II, p. 84.

[1475] “Expresse inhibentes, ne infuturum aliqua monialis de crimine incontinencie conuicta vel publice diffamata, antequam de innocencia sic diffamate constiterit, ad aliquod officium domus predicte et precipue ad ostiorum custodiam admittatur.” Lambeth, Reg. Courtenay, I, f. 336. Injunction to Elstow in 1390 and repeated by Bishop Flemyng in 1421. See above, p. 396. Compare the charge against Margaret Fairfax, Prioress of Nunmonkton, in 1397: “Item, moniales quae lapsae fuerint in fornicatione faciliter restituit.” Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 194.

[1476] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 239.

[1477] Ib. p. 183.

[1478] Ib. p. 120. For those Yorkshire cases see below, Note G, passim.

[1479] Liveing, op. cit. pp. 213-6.

[1480] See below, Note F.

[1481] Cal. of Papal Letters, X, p. 471. The dispensation mentions that she “has secretly lost her virginity and has not yet been publicly defamed.”

[1482] Ib. V, p. 161 and VII, p. 373.

[1483] The Pope writes to Mitford, Bishop of Salisbury, desiring him to restore Alice Wilton, nun of Shaftesbury, to the position which she had forfeited by the sin of incontinence. The Bishop reinstates the nun and declares her eligible for all offices except that of Abbess. V.C.H. Dorset, II, p. 78, note 93.

[1484] See Chs. IX, X, above.

[1485] See below, p. 491.

[1486] Bede, Eccles. Hist. Book IV, ch. 25.

[1487] Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, ed. Stubbs (Rolls Series, 1867), I, pp. 135-6. Ralph Niger describes the transaction thus: “Juratus se tria monasteria constructurum, duos ordines transvertit, personas de loco ad locum transferens, meretrices alias aliis, cenomannicas Anglicis substituens.” Ib. II, p. XXX.

[1488] “Et quod indignum scribi, ad domos religiosarum veniens, fecit exprimi mammillas earundem, ut sic physice si esset inter eas corruptela experiretur” [1251]. Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora, ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls Series, 1880), V, p. 227. In 1248 he had deposed an abbess of Godstow, Flandrina de Bowes, and Adam Marsh writes to him: “Plurimum credo fore salutiferam visitationem quam in domo Godestowe fieri fecistis. Paternitatis vestrae sollicitudinem largitio divina remuneret.” Monumenta Franciscana, ed. J. S. Brewer (Rolls Series, 1858), p. 117. If Matthew Paris’ account of his procedure be true it would seem almost to rival the behaviour of Layton and Legh, however different the character and motive which inspired it.

[1489] The earliest list of comperta which we possess is the result of Archbishop Walter Giffard’s visitation of Swine in 1268. Though there is no charge of actual immorality the house was in a thoroughly unsatisfactory state. The Archbishop’s two sisters, the one Prioress of Elstow and the other Abbess of Shaftesbury, were both in serious trouble in 1270 and 1298 respectively, their nuns being also involved, and in 1296 there occurred the famous Giffard abduction from Wilton. Peckham’s injunctions to nunneries show widespread breach of enclosure and some suspicious conduct during the ’80s, a nun of Lymbrook is guilty with a monk of Leominster in 1282, and besides Matthew Paris’ account of Grosseteste’s proceedings in the diocese of Lincoln in 1251, we have notice of apostates there in 1295, 1296 and 1298 and in the York diocese in 1286, 1287, 1293 and 1299. See this chapter and notes, passim.

[1490] For the disappearance or suppression of eight small nunneries prior to 1535 see Note H below.

[1491] At Chicksand, for instance, Layton “fownde two of the nunnes not baron,” and at Harrold “one of them hade two faire chyldren, another one and no mo”; but is this so much worse than what Alnwick found at Catesby and St Michael’s, Stamford, in the same diocese a century before? Or take Layton’s description of the Prior of Maiden Bradley, quoted above; is it not much less serious than the description of Alexander Black of Selby in one of Archbishop Giffard’s visitation detecta in 1275? “Alexander Niger, monachus, tenet Cristinam Bouere et Agnetem filiam Stephani, de qua suscitavit prolem, et quamdam mulierem nomine Anekous, de qua suscitavit vivam prolem apud Crol, et aliam apud Sneyth quae vocatur Nalle, et alias infinitas apud Eboracum et Akastre et alibi, et quasi in qualibet villa unam; et fetidissimus est, et recte modo captus fuit cum quadam muliere in campis, sicut audivit.” Reg. Walter Giffard, p. 326. Or than what Alnwick discovered at the New Collegiate Church at Leicester in 1440? Layton’s general charges against the monks and nuns of Yorkshire are pure gossip or invention; but we should not have been deeply surprised to find them in a York archiepiscopal register of the early fourteenth century.

[1492] Of some of the Anglo-Saxon kings it was said, and said with horror, that they most willingly chose their mistresses from convents. See a letter from St Boniface to Ethelbald King of Mercia on this point, instancing the similar habits and evil fates of Ceolred of Mercia and Osred of Northumbria (Bon. Epis. XIX).

[1493] For these ladies, see references in p. 451, note 5, and below, p. 501, note 3.

[1494] Mémoires de J. Casanova de Seingalt (edition Garnier, 1910), tt. II, III, IV.

[1495] Dugdale, Mon. III, pp. 365-6. Compare a detectum at Crabhouse (1514): “Item, the younger nuns are disobedient and when the seniors charge them with their faults the prioress punishes alike the reformers and the sinners.” Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp, p. 109.

[1496] Linc. Visit. I, p. 50. Compare Reg. Walter Giffard, p. 249; Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp (“Item Dna. A. D. et Dna. G. S. ... revelant secreta religionis et correctionis factae in conventu”) Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, ff. 397, 397d (“Et quod nullum decetero capitulum in domo capitulari in presencia secularis seu extranee persone quoquomodo teneatur sub pena iniunccionis nostre infrascripta”).

[1497] V.C.H. Yorks. III, 120, 167-8.

[1498] See below, Note F.

[1499] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 164.

[1500] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 47, 120.

[1501] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 118.

[1502] For an account of the house, see V.C.H. Herts. IV, pp. 428-32. The regulations made by Abbot Richard de Wallingford (1328-36) are given in Gesta Abbat. II, pp. 213-4 and those by Abbot Michael or his successor Thomas de la Mare in Cott. MS. Nero D. i. ff. 173-4d; regulations by Thomas de la Mare (1349-96) occur in Gesta Abbat. II, p. 402. See also W. Page, “Hist. of the Monastery of St Mary de Pré” (St Albans and Herts. Arch. Soc. Trans. (New Series) I).

[1503] For an account of the house, see V.C.H. Herts. IV, pp. 422-6.

[1504] The accounts of the warden of St Mary de Pré for 1341-57 are preserved in the Public Record Office (Mins. Accts., bundle 867, Nos. 21-6) and are described in V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 430 (notes). In the second half of the fifteenth century the accounts seem to have been kept by the Prioress; those for 1461-93 have survived. Ib. p. 431 (note).

[1505] See Gesta Abbat. II, p. 212.

[1506] Quoted from P.R.O. Early Chancery Proceedings, 181/4 in V.C.H. Herts. IV, pp. 424-5.

[1507] Wilkins, Concilia, III, p. 632.

[1508] V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 425.

[1509] Printed in Dugdale, Mon. III, pp. 365-6 and Gesta Abbat. ed. Riley, II, App. D. pp. 511-19.

[1510] Gesta Abbat. III, p. 519.

[1511] See V.C.H. Northants. II, pp. 98-101.

[1512] E.H.R. 1914, p. 38 (note 60).

[1513] The religious houses were also subject to metropolitan visitation by the Archbishop. Among important records of visitations of nunneries by the Archbishop of Canterbury or by his commissioners are Peckham’s visitations (Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, passim) in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, Courtenay’s visitations in the last quarter of the fourteenth century (see Lambeth, Reg. Courtenay, I, f. 335d, for his injunctions to Elstow in 1389, used by Flemyng as a model for his own injunctions in 1421-2, Linc. Visit. I, p. 48) and Archbishop Morton’s visitations in the last quarter of the fifteenth century (see Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, pp. 217-22 for the visitation of Romsey in 1492). The visitations of the Winchester diocese by Dr Hede, commissary of the Prior of Canterbury, during the vacancy of the sees of Canterbury and Winchester in 1501-2 were made in the same right (see V.C.H. Hants. II, pp. 124, 129, 135, 151).

[1514] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 176 (quoting Dugdale, Mon. V, pp. 464-5 and Reg. Giffard (Surtees Soc.), p. 295).

[1515] See Linc. Visit. II, passim, and also the Editor’s admirable introduction to Linc. Visit. I, pp. ix-xiii.

[1516] See above, p. 250.

[1517] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 119. 126-7.

[1518] Sometimes the bishop’s clerk summarises the information given as to the financial state of the house, which would seem to indicate that the prioress gave and the bishop accepted merely a verbal account. See Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 38. In Linc. Epis. Reg. Atwater, f. 42, is a brief account of a visitation of Ankerwyke in 1519, to which is added the status domus as submitted by the nuns, comprising an inventory.

[1519] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 49-50.

[1520] See e.g. the case of Denise Loweliche at Markyate in 1433, Linc. Visit. I, pp. 83-5.

[1521] Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, II, pp. 706-8 (injunctions), 708-9 (mandate to commissary). Compare the proceedings at Ankerwyke six months after Alnwick’s visitation. Linc. Visit. II, p. 7.

[1522] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 82-3.

[1523] G. G. Coulton in Eng. Hist. Review (1914), p. 37. “The locus classicus here is the Evesham Chronicle, in which one of the most admirable abbots of the thirteenth century tells us how solemnly he and his brethren had promised to conceal all their former abbot’s blackest crimes from the visiting bishop; and how they would never have complained even to the legate (whose jurisdiction they did recognize) if only the sinner had kept his pact with them in money matters.”

[1524] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 47, 48, 49, 52. At Heynings (where nothing seriously amiss transpired) one nun said that “the prioress reproaches her sisters, saying that if they say aught to the bishop, she will lay on them such penalties that they shall not easily bear them.” Ib. p. 133. The wicked Prioress of Littlemore was found in 1517 to have ordered her nuns on virtue of their obedience to reveal nothing to the commissioners and in 1518 it was stated that she had punished them for speaking the truth at the visitation. V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 75. At Flixton in 1514 it was said: “The sisters scarce dare to depose the truth on account of the fierceness of the prioress.” Visit. of the Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp (Camden Soc.), p. 143. For episcopal injunctions against revealing or quarrelling over detecta made at the visitation, see Linc. Visit. II, pp. 51, 124, etc., Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 442, Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, II, p. 661.

[1525] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 184-5.

[1526] Ib. p. 4.

[1527] Ib. pp. 120, 122, 123-4.

[1528] V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 76.

[1529] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. ff. 83, 39d, 96. Similarly at Ankerwyke, where there was great discord between Prioress and nuns, he prorogued his visitation for six months and then sent down commissioners to expound his injunctions, inquire how they were followed and deal with further grievances. Linc. Visit. II, pp. 6-8.

[1530] V.C.H. Lincs. II, pp. 76-7.

[1531] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 39d.

[1532] See above, pp. 388-9, 460.

[1533] See above, p. 469.

[1534] Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 220.

[1535] Linc. Visit. II, p. 5.

[1536] As full reports containing detecta or comperta are specially valuable, it may be useful to indicate those concerning nunneries, which have been published: (1) The earliest comperta extant are those of Archbishop Giffard’s visitation of Swine in Yorkshire in 1267-8; the individual detecta are absent, but there is a fine set of injunctions, issued two months later, the earliest English nunnery injunctions which we possess, Reg. Walter Giffard (Surtees Soc.), pp. 147-8, 248-9. (2) The comperta of Archbishop Wittlesey’s metropolitan visitation of St Radegund’s, Cambridge (including only interim injunctions) have been published in Gray, Priory of St Radegund, Cambridge, pp. 35-6. (3) The Sede Vacante visitation of Arden in 1396 includes detecta but no injunctions, Test. Ebor. I, pp. 283-5 (note) and that of Nunmonkton in the same year includes comperta and injunctions, Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 194; both of these are concerned almost entirely with charges against the respective prioresses. (4) The finest collection in existence is Alnwick’s book of Lincoln visitations, which is in the course of publication, Linc. Visit. II and III (in the press). (5) Records of visitations of Rusper and Easebourne from the Chichester registers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries contain detecta and some injunctions, Sussex Arch. Coll. V and IX, passim. (6) Records of the visitations of monastic houses in the diocese of Norwich by Bishops Goldwell (1492-3) and Nykke (1514-32) include detecta and injunctions (sometimes only interim), Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp, passim. (7) Dr Hede’s Sede Vacante visitations of the four houses in the diocese of Winchester in 1501-2, summarised in V.C.H. Hants. II, passim, include detecta, but not injunctions. (8) Archbishop Warham’s visitations of houses in the diocese of Canterbury (Holy Sepulchre, Canterbury, the hospital of St James, Canterbury, Sheppey and Davinton) in 1511 include detecta and sometimes injunctions, Eng. Hist. Review, VI. When more registers are published other detecta and comperta will doubtless appear; there are some valuable sets, still in manuscript in Linc. Epis. Reg. Visit. Atwater and ib. Reg. Visit. Longland.

[1537] Linc. Visit. II, p. xlviii; for an admirable and detailed discussion of the whole question, in the light of Alnwick’s records, Mr Hamilton Thompson’s introduction to this volume (especially pp. xliv-li) should be studied. See also the learned article by Mr Coulton on “The Interpretation of Visitation Documents,” E.H.R. 1914, pp. 16-40.

[1538] Liveing, op. cit., pp. 99, etc.

[1539] Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechthildianae, ed. Oudin (Paris, 1875). See also Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter (1874), I, pp. 70-132; Eckenstein, Woman under Mon. pp. 328-53; Taylor, The Medieval Mind, I, pp. 481-6; A. M. F. Robinson (Mme Darmesteter), The End of the Middle Ages (1889), pp. 45-72 (the Convent of Helfta); A. Kemp-Welch, Of Six Medieval Women (1913), pp. 57-82 (Mechthild of Magdeburg); G. Ledos, Ste Gertrude (Paris, 1901). The name of the Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn, who ruled the house during the greater part of the time that these three mystics lived there, deserves to be added to theirs. For her life see Revelationes, etc., I, pp. 497 ff.

[1540] See her life by Thomas of Chantimpré, Acta SS. Jun., t. III, pp. 234 ff. See also Taylor, op. cit. I, pp. 479-81.

[1541] See E. Gilliat Smith, St Clare of Assisi, her Life and Legislation (1914); Mrs Balfour, Life and Legend of the Lady St Clare, with introd. by Father Cuthbert (1910); Fr. Marianus Fiege, The Princess of Poverty (Evansville, Ind. 1900) which contains a translation of Thomas of Celano’s Life of St Clare (Acta SS. Aug. t. II, pp. 754-67), Paschal Robinson, Life of St Clare (1910), Locatelli, Ste Claire d’Assise (Rome, 1899-1900). Also La Vie et Légende de Madame Sainte Claire par Frère Françoys de Puis, 1563, ed. Arnauld Goffin (Paris, 1907).

[1542] Acta SS. Mar. t. I, pp. 501-31. See also Jentsch, Die Selige Agnes von Böhmen. She is always regarded as a saint but was never officially canonised.

[1543] Pirckheimer, B. Opera, ed. Goldast (1610). See also, T. Binder, Charitas Pirkheimer (1878), and Eckenstein, op. cit. pp. 458-76.

[1544] The Life of St Theresa of Jesus, written by Herself, tr. D. Lewis, ed. Zimmerman (1904). The Letters of St Theresa, tr. J. Dalton (1902). See also G. Cunningham Grahame, Santa Teresa, 2 vols. (1894).

[1545] See A. Gagnière, Les Confessions d’une Abbesse du xvi^e siècle (Paris, 1888), based on a manuscript at Ravenna (“Vita della Madre Donna Felice Rasponi, Badessa di S. Andrea, scritta da una Monaca”) which the author considers to be an autobiography. Some interesting details as to the scandalous condition of Italian convents at the end of the century are to be found in J. A. Symonds’ Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction, pt. I (1886), pp. 341-70, dealing with the careers of Virginia Maria de Leyva, in the convent of S. Margherita at Monza and Lucrezia Buonvisi (sister Umilia) in the convent of S. Chiara at Lucca.

[1546] La Vie de Ste. Douceline, fondatrice des béguines de Marseille, ed. J. H. Albanès (Marseille, 1879). See also A. Macdonell, Saint Douceline (1905).

[1547] Acta SS. Aprilis, t. II, pp. 266-365. See also Huysmans, Ste. Lydwine de Schiedam (3rd ed. Paris, 1901).

[1548] Acta SS. Jun. t. IV, pp. 270 ff. See also Th. Wollersheim, Das Leben der ekstatischen Jungfrau Christina von Stommeln (Cologne, 1859); and Renan, Nouvelles Études d’Histoire Religieuse (1884) (Une Idylle Monacale au xiii^e siècle: Christine de Stommeln), pp. 353-96. Extracts from Christina’s correspondence and life by Peter of Sweden are translated in Coulton, Med. Garn. pp. 402-21.

[1549] On these saintly and learned women see Eckenstein, op. cit. cc. III and IV, and Montalembert, The Monks of the West (introd. Gasquet), vol. IV, Book XV. The great fourteenth century mystic Julian of Norwich (1343-c. 1413) was, it is true, connected with Carrow Priory, but she was an anchoress and never a nun there; see above, p. 366.

[1550] On these songs see A. Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France au moyen âge (2nd ed. 1904), pp. 189-92; and P. S. Allen in Modern Philology, V (1908), pp. 432-5. The songs themselves have to be collected from various sources; see below, Note I.

[1551] Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat. C text, Passus X, 72-5.

[1552] There was (as usual) however, more chance for a man than for a woman of villein status to enter a monastery and even to rise to the highest ecclesiastical dignities. A villein who could save enough to pay a fine to his lord might put his son to school and might buy that son’s enfranchisement, so that he would be eligible for a place in a monastery. And though it was forbidden by canon and by temporal law to ordain a serf, once ordained he was free. Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of Engl. Law (1911), I, p. 429; the lower ranks of the clergy probably contained many men of low or villein birth (see e.g. Chaucer’s Poor Parson, whose brother was a ploughman and the complaint in “Pierce the Plouman’s Crede” that beggars’ brats become bishops). Sometimes, though very rarely, a villein rose high, for once he was a churchman, it was la carrière ouverte aux talents: Bishop Grosseteste was of very humble, probably of servile, origin; and Sancho Panza’s motto will be remembered: “I am a man and I may be Pope.” For a woman, however, the Church offered no such chance of advancement through the religious orders; the nunneries were essentially upper and middle class institutions.

[1553] From a charming round, sung in Saintonge, Aunis and Bas-Poitou.

Bujeaud, J., Chants et chansons populaires des provinces de l’ouest (1866), I, pp. 136-7.

[1554] M. Vattasso, Studi Medievali, I (1904), p. 124. A long poem of seven verses, much mutilated in parts.

[1555] Uhland, Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder (1844-5), t. II, p. 854 (No. 328). A slightly modernised version. Also printed in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, ed. von Arnim and Brentano (Reclam ed.), p. 25, and in Deutsches Leben im Volkslied um 1530, ed. Liliencron (1884), p. 226. Translation by Bithell, The Minnesingers, I (1909), p. 200, except the last two lines, which are by Mr Coulton; there is another in Coulton, Med. Garn. p. 476.

[1556] Ferrari, Canzone per andare in maschera per carnesciale, pp. 31-2. Referred to in Jeanroy, op. cit. I have been unable to consult the book.

[1557] Bartsch, Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen (1870), pp. 28-9 (No. 33).

[1558] Bartsch, op. cit. pp. 29-30 (No. 34).

[1559] Oeuvres Complètes d’Eustache Deschamps (Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr.), IV, pp. 235-6. (Virelay, DCCLII, sur une novice d’Avernay.)

[1560] Bladé, J. F. Poésies populaires de la Gascogne (1882), III, pp. 372-4. Also in Lénac-Moncaut, Littérature populaire de la Gascogne (1868), pp. 291-2.

[1561] Damase Arbaud, Chants Populaires de la Provence (1862-4), II, pp. 118-22.

[1562] See below, p. 611.

[1563] The Court of Love in Chaucer’s Poetical Works, ed. R. Morris (1891), IV, pp. 38-40.

[1564] Lydgate’s Temple of Glas, ed. J. Schick (E.E.T.S. 1891), p. 8.

[1565] The Kingis Quair in Medieval Scottish Poetry, ed. G. Eyre-Todd (1892), p. 47.

[1566] Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, by Sir David Lyndesay, ed. Small, Hall and Murray (E.E.T.S., 2nd ed., 1883), p. 514.

[1567] An Alphabet of Tales, ed. M. M. Banks (E.E.T.S.). No. CCCCLXVIII, pp. 319-20. (In this and the following quotations from this work in this chapter I have modernised the spelling.) This version is translated from Caesarius of Heisterbach. Dial. Mirac., ed. Strange, II, pp. 42-3, which is the original version of all the widespread legends on this theme. From Caesarius it found its way into many other collections of miracles, in prose and in verse, in Latin, French, Spanish, German, Icelandic, Dutch and English. Perhaps the most beautiful is the Dutch poem (c. 1320) published by W. J. A. Jenckbloet, Beatriij (Amsterdam, 1846-59) and re-edited with a grammatical introduction and notes in English by A. J. Barnouw (Pub. of Philol. Soc. III, 1914). An edition with illustrations by Ch. Doudelet accompanied by a translation into French by H. de Marez was published in Antwerp (1901) and was also issued with an English translation by A. W. Sanders vaz Loo. The best English translations are those in prose by L. Simons and L. Housman in The Pageant, ed. C. H. Shannon and J. W. Gleeson White (1896) pp. 95-116 and in verse by H. de Wolf Fuller (Harvard Coop. Soc., Cambridge, U.S.A. 1910). Modern writers have retold the tale almost as often as their medieval forebears; see for example Maeterlinck’s play, Sœur Béatrice, John Davidson’s poem, The Ballad of a Nun, one of Villier de l’Isle-Adam’s Contes Cruels (Sœur Natalia), one of Charles Nodier’s Contes de la Veillée (La Légende de Sœur Béatrice), and one of Gottfried Keller’s Sieben Legenden (Die Jungfrau und die Nonne). For a study of the Beatrice story see Heinrich Watenphul, Die Geschichte der Marienlegende von Beatrix der Küsterin (Neuwied, 1904); also P. Toldo, Die Sakristanin (with bibliography by J. Bolte) in Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde (1905), J. van der Elst, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Legende van Beatrijs in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal- en Letterkunde, XXXII, pp. 51 ff., and Mussafia, Studien zu den Mittelalterlichen Marienlegenden (Vienna, 1887), I, p. 73. See also A. Cotarelo y Valledor, Una Cantiga celebre del Rey Sabio, fuentes y desarollo de la leyenda de sor Beatriz, principalmente en la literatura española (1914). For other variants of the Nonne Enlevée see below, Note J.

[1568] Chambers and Sidgwick, Early English Lyrics (1907), No. XC, p. 163. But perhaps the most beautiful of medieval English poems which moralise on this theme is the Luue Ron which Thomas of Hales wrote in the thirteenth century for a nun:

—they have passed away as a shaft from the bowstring. It is as if they had never lived. All their heat is turned to cold. (An Old English Miscellany, ed. R. Morris (E.E.T.S. 1872), p. 95.) This catalogue of the lovely dead was a favourite device, immortalised later by “ung povre petit escollier, qui fust nommé Francoys Villon” (who certainly was not a moralist) in his Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis.

[1569] For an entertaining and stimulating account of the popular cult of the Virgin see Henry Adams, Mont St Michel and Chartres (1913), especially chs. VI and XIII.

[1570] Modern poets who have written upon the same theme have drawn this moral more overtly than the medieval authors. Maeterlinck’s Virgin in Sœur Béatrice sings:

Davidson’s sacristan (in A Ballad of a Nun) cries:

and the Virgin, welcoming her back on her return, tells her:

[1571] “Cum in hyemis intemperie post cenam noctu familia divitis ad focum, ut potentibus moris est, recensendis antiquis gestis operam daret.” Gesta Romanorum, ed. Oesterley (1872), ch. CLV. Quoted in Jusserand, Lit. Hist. of the Eng. People, I, p. 182.

[1572] One particular kind of story, the fabliau (defined by Bédier as “un conte à rire en vers”) was brought to great perfection by French jongleurs. See Montaiglon and Raynaud, Recueil général et complet des Fabliaux (Paris, 1872-90), 6 vols.; and Bédier, Les Fabliaux (Paris, 1873).

[1573] See Dante, Paradiso, XXIX, 11, for a violent attack on the practice. Compare the decree of the Council of Paris in 1528: “Quodsi secus fecerint, aut si populum more scurrarum vilissimorum, dum ridiculas et aniles fabulas recitant, ad risus cachinnationesque excitaverint, ... nos volumus tales tam ineptos et perniciosos concionatores ab officio praedicationis suspendi,” etc., quoted in Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. T. F. Crane (1890), Introd. p. lxix. The great preacher Jacques de Vitry himself, while advocating the use of exempla, adds “infructuosas enim fabulas et curiosa poetarum carmina a sermonis nostris debemus relegare ... scurrilia tamen aut obscena verba vel turpis sermo ex ore predicatoris non procedant.” Ib. Introd., pp. xlii, xliii.

[1574] For instance exempla were much used by Jacques de Vitry (see op. cit.). Etienne de Bourbon (see Anecdotes Historiques, etc., d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Soc. de l’Hist. de France)), and John Herolt. On the whole subject of exempla see the Introduction to T. F. Crane’s edition of the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, and the references given there.

[1575] The most famous is the Gesta Romanorum. Gesta Romanorum, ed. Oesterley (Berlin, 1872); and see The Early English Version of the Gesta Romanorum, ed. S. J. H. Herrtage (E.E.T.S. 1879). The largest is the Summa Praedicantium of John Bromyard, a fourteenth century English Dominican. See also an interesting fifteenth century English translation of a similar collection, the Alphabetum Narrationum (which used to be attributed to Etienne de Besançon), An Alphabet of Tales, ed. M. M. Banks (E.E.T.S. 1904-5); many of the exempla in this come from Caesarius of Heisterbach. Specimens of exempla from these and other sources are collected in Wright’s Latin Stories (Percy Soc. 1842), and many tales from Caesarius of Heisterbach, Jacques de Vitry, Etienne de Bourbon, Thomas of Chantimpré, etc., are translated in Coulton, Med. Garn.

[1576] For instance Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. Strange (1851); Thomas of Chantimpré (Cantimpratanus), Bonum Universale de Apibus (Douay, 1597); and the knight of la Tour Landry, who wrote a book of deportment for his daughters, copiously illustrated with stories. The Book of the Knight of la Tour Landry, ed. T. Wright (E.E.T.S. revised ed. 1906). For some account of Caesarius of Heisterbach’s stories, other than those quoted in the text, see below Note K.

[1577] Collections of stories, such as those of the Decameron, the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, the Il Pecorone of Ser Giovanni, the Novelle of Bandello, the Heptameron of Margaret of Navarre, became very popular. But individual stories have also given plots to many great writers from the middle ages to the present day; it is only necessary to mention Chaucer, Shakespeare, Molière and La Fontaine, to illustrate the use which has been made of them.

[1578] For examples of medieval mission sermons, with their colloquialisms, interruptions from the audience and strings of stories, the reader cannot do better than turn to the sermons of Berthold of Regensburg (1220-72) and of St Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444). Specimens of these are translated in Coulton, Med. Garn. pp. 348-64, 604-19. See also for Berthold, Coulton, Medieval Studies, 1st series. No. II (“A Revivalist of Six Centuries Ago”) and for St Bernardino, Paul Thureau-Dangin, St Bernardine of Siena, trans. Baroness von Hügel (1906), and A. G. Ferrers Howell, St Bernardino of Siena (1913).

[1579] Chaucer, Cant. Tales, Wife of Bath’s Prol. ll. 556-8.

[1580] Translated from Jacques de Vitry (Exempla ..., ed. T. F. Crane, p. 22) in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 95 (No. CXXXVI). The story is a very old one, first found in the Vitae Patrum, X, cap. 60. It is sometimes attributed to St Bridget of Ireland, but Etienne de Bourbon, who repeats the story twice, tells it of Richard King of England and “a certain nun” (Anec. Hist., etc., d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, Nos. 248 and 500); and other medieval versions make the persecuting lover “a king of England.” (See T. F. Crane, op. cit. p. 158.)

[1581] Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, No. LVIII, pp. 22-3. For other versions of this story, see ib. p. 159.

[1582] Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange, I, p. 389. I have used the translation by Mr Coulton, Med. Garn. p. 124. The story is a variant of the theme of “the novice and the geese,” one of the most popular of medieval stories (see Coulton, ib. p. 426); for analogues, see A. C. Lee, The Decameron, its Sources and Analogues, pp. 110-16.

[1583] Robert of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall (Roxburghe Club, 1862), pp. 50-52. (This is an amplified translation of William of Wadington’s Le Manuel des Pechiez.) See also Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, No. CCLXXII, p. 113, which is translated in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 303.

[1584] Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, No. CXXX, p. 59. For other versions, see ib. p. 189. There is an English version in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 78 (No. CVIII).

[1585] Caesarius of Heisterbach, II. pp. 160-1. Compare the tale of Abbess Sophia whose small beer was miraculously turned into wine. Ib. p. 229.

[1586] Boccaccio, Decameron, 9th day, novel 2. But the story is older than Boccaccio, who constantly uses old tales. There is a French version by Jean de Condé: “Le Dit de la Nonnete” (Montaiglon et Raynaud, op. cit. t. VI, pp. 263-9). It was often afterwards copied in various forms in French, German and Italian jest- and story-books and there is an extremely gross dramatic version entitled “Farce Nouvelle a cinq personnages, c’est a sçavoir l’Abesse, sœur de Bon Cœur, seur Esplourée, seur Safrete et seur Fesne” in a collection of sixteenth century French farces (Rec. de farces, moralités et sermons joyeux, ed. Le Roux de Lincy et Francisque Michel, Paris, 1837, vol. II). It is also referred to in Albion’s England:

For these and references to other analogues see A. C. Lee, The Decameron, its Sources and Analogues (1909), pp. 274-7. See also a curious folk-song version, below, p. 611. La Fontaine founded his fable of Le Psautier on Boccaccio’s version.

[1587] Boccaccio, Decameron (3rd day, novel 1). For analogues and imitations, see A. C. Lee, op. cit. pp. 59-62. The story is the source of La Fontaine’s Mazet de Lamporechio. For other ribald stories about nuns see Note J, below, p. 624.

[1588] I have made no attempt to describe the many treatises in praise of virginity composed by the fathers of the church. These include works by Evagrius Ponticus, St Athanasius, Sulpicius Severus, St Jerome, St Augustine, St Caesarius of Arles and others. Among the most interesting is one of English origin, the De Laudibus Virginitatis of Aldhelm († 709). For short analyses of these works, see A. A. Hentsch, De la Littérature Didactique du Moyen Age, s’adressant spécialement aux Femmes (Cahors, 1903), passim. From the eleventh century onwards several imitations of these treatises occur. A few of the more interesting will be noted later.

[1589] Uhland, Alte hoch und niederdeutsche Volkslieder (1845), II, pp. 857-62 (No. 331). The first verse may be quoted to give the style:

[1590] Uhland, op. cit. II, p. 852 (No. 326). See also Nos. 332 and 334.

[1591] An Old English Miscellany, ed. R. Morris [E.E.T.S. 1872], pp. 93-99.

[1592] Printed in The Stacions of Rome, etc., ed. F. J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. 1867), and again in Minor Poems of the Vernon MS., Part II, ed. F. J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. 1901), No. XLII, pp. 464-8.

[1593] Hali Meidenhad, ed. O. Cockayne (E.E.T.S. 1866).

[1594] See on this point Taylor, The Medieval Mind (2nd ed. 1914), I, pp. 475 ff.

[1595] Hali Meidenhad, ed. O. Cockayne (E.E.T.S. 1866), p. 20.

[1596] Hali Meidenhad, ed. O. Cockayne (E.E.T.S. 1866), p. 22.

[1597] Ib. pp. 8, 30.

[1598] Ib. p. 36.

[1599] See e.g. p. 28. “Under a man’s protection thou shalt be sore vexed for his and the world’s love, which are both deceptive and must lie awake in many a care not only for thyself as God’s spouse must, but for many others and often as well for the detested as the dear; and be more worried than any drudge in the house, or any hired hind and take thine own share often with misery and bitterly purchase it. Little do blessed spouses of God know of thee here, that in so sweet ease without such trouble in spiritual grace and in rest of heart love the true love and in his only service lead their life.”

[1600] The Ancren Riwle was translated and edited by J. Morton for the Camden Soc. (1853). I quote from the cheap and convenient reprint of the translation, with introduction by Gasquet, in The King’s Classics, 1907. For the most recent research as to the different versions, authorship, etc., see article by G. C. Macaulay, “The Ancren Riwle” in Modern Language Review, IX (1914), pp. 63-78, 145-60, 324-31, 464-74, Father MacNabb’s article ib. XI (1916), and Miss Hope Emily Allen’s thesis, The Origin of the Ancren Riwle (Publications of the Mod. Lang. Assoc. of Amer. XXXIII, 3, Sept. 1918); see also her note in Mod. Lang. Review (April 1919), XIV, pp. 209-10, and Mr Coulton’s review of her thesis, ib. (Jan. 1920), XV, p. 99; also Father MacNabb’s attack on her theory, ib. (Oct. 1920) XV and her reply, ib. Research is gradually pushing the date of the first English translation (if indeed it be not after all the original) further and further back.

[1601] Ancren Riwle (King’s Classics), p. 12.

[1602] Ancren Riwle, p. 259.

[1603] Pp. 164-5.

[1604] Pp. 294-6.

[1605] Pp. 313-4.

[1606] Pp. 317-8.

[1607] P. 68.

[1608] Pp. 319-20.

[1609] Pp. 316-19, passim.

[1610] P. 325-6.

[1611] The Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. J. H. Blunt (E.E.T.S. 1873, 1898).

[1612] Op. cit. pp. 65-9, passim.

[1613] As for instance the various other books written or translated for the nuns of Syon (on which see Eckenstein, op. cit. pp. 394-5) and the mystical treatise “Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat,” which was written by Richard Rolle of Hampole for a nun of Yedingham. Rolle was kindly cherished by the nuns of Hampole, where he settled; they often sought his advice during his lifetime and after his death they tried to obtain his canonisation; an office for his festival was composed and a collection of his miracles made. (See Cambridge Hist. of Engl. Lit. II, pp. 45, 48.) For similar treatises of foreign origin, see the Opusculum of Hermann der Lahme (1013-54), Francesco da Barbarino’s Del Reggimento e Costumi di Donne (which contains a section dealing with nuns), (c. 1307-15), Francisco Ximenes’ Libre de les dones († 1409) and John Gerson’s († 1429) letter to his sister. See Hentsch, op. cit. pp. 39, 114, 151, 152.

[1614] Printed from the Thornton MS. in Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse, ed. G. G. Perry (E.E.T.S. 1867, 1914), No. III, pp. 51-62. Compare Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 39843 (La Sainte Abbaye), some pictures from which are reproduced in this book.

[1615] Mechthild von Magdeburg, Offenbarungen, oder Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit, ed. Gall Morel (1869), pp. 249 ff.; see Eckenstein, op. cit. p. 339. The same idea is found in a little German Volkslied:

—Uhland, Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder, II, pp. 864-5.

[1616] English text in Furnivall, Early English Poems (Berlin, 1862), printed in Trans. of Philological Soc. 1858, pt. II, pp. 156-61; and in Goldbeck and Mätzner, Altenglische Sprachproben (Berlin, 1867). pt. I, p. 147; W. Heuser, Die Kildare-Gedichte (Bonn, 1904), p. 145; and in a slightly modernised form in Ellis, Specimens of Early English Poets, 1801, I, pp. 83 ff., who took it from Hickes’ Thesaurus, pt. I, p. 231. I have here used the modernised version for the sake of convenience. An attempt has been made to identify the religious houses mentioned in the poem with real monasteries in Kildare; the poem is certainly of Anglo-Irish origin and occurs in the famous “Kildare Manuscript” (MS. Harl. 913). See W. Heuser, op. cit. pp. 141-5. There is a French version in Barbazon et Méon, Fabliaux III, p. 175.

[1617] “It is not until French wit flashes across English seriousness that we travel to the Land of Cokaygne,” G. Hadow, Chaucer and His Times, p. 35. Stories of a food country are, however, common in medieval literature, being sometimes legends of a vanished golden age, as in the Irish “Vision of MacConglinne” (late twelfth century), and sometimes ideal pictures of a life of lazy luxury, as in the French and English Lands of Cokaygne and the German Schlaraffenland. On the whole subject, see Fr. Joh. Poeschel, Das Märchen von Schlaraffenland (Halle, 1878), and the introduction by W. Wollner to The Vision of MacConglinne, ed. Kuno Meyer (1892).

[1618] Polit. Songs of England, ed. T. Wright (Camden Soc. 1839), pp. 137-48.

[1619] The idea of the Ordre de Bel-Eyse is probably taken from the twelfth century Anglo-Latin poem by Nigel Wireker entitled Speculum Stultorum, which tells the story of the ass Burnellus, who goes out into the world to seek his fortune. At one point Burnellus decides to retire to a convent and passes the different orders under review, to see which will suit him. This gives the author an opportunity for some pointed satire, including a reference to nuns; “they never quarrel save for due cause, in due place, nor do they come to blows save for grave reasons”; their morals are very questionable, “Harum sunt quaedam steriles et quaedam parturientes, virgineoque tamen nomine cuncta tegunt. Quae pastoralis baculi dotatur honore, illa quidem melius fertiliusque parit. Vix etiam quaevis sterilis reperitur in illis, donec eis aetas talia posse negat.” Finally Burnellus decides to found a new order; from the Templars he will borrow their smoothly pacing horses, from the Cluniacs and the black Canons their custom of eating meat, from the order of Grandmont their gossip, from the Carthusians the habit of saying mass only once a month, from the Premonstratensians their warm and comfortable clothes, from the nuns their custom of going ungirdled; and in this order every brother shall have a female companion, as in the first order which was instituted in Paradise. Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, ed. T. Wright (Rolls Series, 1872), I, pp. 94-6.

[1620] With these two highly successful jeux d’esprit at the expense of monastic luxury may be compared a passage in the curious thirteenth century poem entitled “A Disputison bytwene a cristene mon and a Jew,” in which an incidental shaft is perhaps aimed at nunneries, which affected the habits of Cokaygne and Fair Ease. The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS., pt. II, ed. F. J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. 1901), No. XLVI, p. 490.

[1621] See e.g. Rabelais, Gargantua, cap. LII (Comment Gargantua fit bastir pour le moine l’abbaye de Theleme).

[1622] Text in Dits et Contes de Badouin de Condé et de son fils Jean de Condé, pub. par Aug. Scheler, Ac. Roy. de Belgique, Brussels, 1866-7, III, No. XXXVII, pp. 1-48. The portion of the poem containing the lawsuit is translated in part into modern French by Le Grand d’Aussy, in Fabliaux et Contes, ed. Le Grand d’Aussy et Renouard, 1829, I, pp. 326-36.

[1623] A convenient collection of these is summarised in an excellent little book by Ch.-V. Langlois, entitled La Vie en France au Moyen Age d’après quelques Moralistes du Temps (2me éd. 1911).

[1624] The text of both La Bible Guiot and La Bible au Seigneur de Berzé is printed in Fabliaux et Contes, ed. Barbazon-Méon, t. II (Paris, 1808), and both are fully analysed, with extracts in Langlois, op. cit. pp. 30-88. The text of La Bible Guiot is also printed in San Marte, Parcival Studien (Halle, 1861), with a translation into German verse.

[1625] Les Lamentations de Matheolus, pub. A. G. Van Hamel (Bib. de l’Ecole des Chartes, 1892, t. I, pp. 89-90). See also the analysis in Langlois, op. cit. pp. 223-75, especially p. 248.

[1626] Langlois, op. cit. pp. 248-9, Note 2.

[1627] Poésies de Gilles li Muisis, pub. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Louvain, 1882), t. I, pp. 209-36. The whole register is analysed in Langlois, op. cit. pp. 305-53.

[1628] See above, p. 298.

[1629] See Vox Clamantis, Lib. IV, ll. 578-676 in The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay, Latin Works (1902), pp. 181-5. The same subject is treated more shortly by Gower in his Mirour de l’Omne, ll. 9157-68. (Ib. French Works, p. 106.)

[1630] Compare the priestly logic of Alvar Pelayo who enumerates the abuse of the confessional among the habitual sins of women! De Planctu Ecclesiae, Lib. II, Art. 45, n. 84. (See Lea, Hist. of Sacerdotal Celibacy, I, 435-6 for this and other medieval complaints of the corruption of nuns by their confessors.)

[1631] Text in Furnivall, Early Engl. Poems (Berlin, 1862), printed in Trans. of Philological Soc. 1858, pt. II, pp. 138-48 (from Cotton MS. Vesp. D. IX, f. 179).

[1632] All the Familiar Colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, trans. N. Bailey (2nd ed. 1733), pp. 147-55.

[1633] “Nec omnes virgines sunt, mihi crede, quae velum habent.... Nisi fortasse elogium, quod nos hactenus judicavimus esse Virgini matri proprium, ad plures transiit, ut dicantur et a partu virgines ... quin insuper, nec alioqui inter illas virgines sunt omnia virginea ... quia plures inveniuntur, quae mores aemulentur Sapphus, quam quae referant ingenium.” Erasmus, Colloquia, accur. Corn. Schrevelio (Amsterdam, 1693), p. 196.

[1634] Op. cit. pp. 155-7.

[1635] This account of Katherine’s experiences, whether they were due (as the translator suggests) to “the crafty tricks of the monks, who terrify and frighten unexperienced minds into their cloysters by feigned apparitions and visions,” or (as was more probably Erasmus’ meaning) to the mere power of suggestion upon a hysterical girl, should be compared with the numerous accounts of such apparitions seen by novices or intending novices, which are to be found in lives of saints and in edifying exempla. See the examples quoted from Caesarius of Heisterbach, below, pp. 628 sqq.

[1636] For the expenses incidental to taking the veil, see above, pp. 19-20.

[1637] Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, in Sir David Lyndesay’s Poems, ed. Small, Hall and Murray (E.E.T.S. 2nd ed., 1883), pp. 421-3.

[1638] Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, in Sir David Lyndesay’s Poems, ed. Small, Hall and Murray (E.E.T.S. 2nd ed., 1883), p. 506.

[1639] Ib. p. 514.

[1640] Ib. p. 521.

[1641] Quoted from the ballad by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (“The Murder of Caerlaverock”) in McDowall, W., Chronicles of Lincluden, p. 28.

[1642] Constans, Chrestomathie de l’Ancien Français (1890), pp. 178-9.

[1643] Malory, Morte Darthur, ed. Strachey (Globe ed., 1893), pp. 481-5.

[1644] See above, p. 529.

[1645] See Le Livre du Dit de Poissy, ll. 220-698, passim, in Oeuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan, ed. Maurice Roy (Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr. 1891), t. II, pp. 160-80. With this may be compared another, but much slighter “courtly” description of a nunnery, contained in the roman d’aventure, L’Escoufle, written at the close of the twelfth century. At the beginning of the poem the author describes the service of the mass in the Abbey of Montivilliers (see below, p. 637), on the occasion of the departure of the Count of Montivilliers on a crusade; the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Lisieux took part in the service and a large concourse of lords and ladies was present. The author describes the singing of the service,

He describes the rich offerings made at the altar by the Count and the rest of the congregation; and the stately visit of farewell paid by them afterwards to the nuns in the chapter house, when the Count asked for their prayers and in return gave them an annual rent of 20 or 30 silver marks. L’Escoufle, ed. H. Michelant and P. Meyer (Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr. 1894), pp. 7-9, passim. The other notable twelfth century description of a nunnery (in Raoul de Cambrai) is very different. See above. pp. 433-5.

[1646] Chaucer, Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, ed. Skeat. ll. 118-64.

[1647] See Dugdale, Mon. I, pp. 442-5.

[1648] ‘Pudding’ was a sausage.

[1649] Tyre was a favourite sweet wine in the middle ages; “if not of Syrian growth [it] was probably a Calabrian or Sicilian wine, manufactured from the species of grape called tirio.” Early Eng. Meals and Manners, ed. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. 1868), p. 90.

[1650] Sowce (Lat. salsagium, verjuice) was a sort of pickle for hog’s flesh. Promptorium Parvulorum, ed. A. L. Mayhew (E.E.T.S. 1908), notes, p. 701. See the rather ominous verse in Tusser:

Tusser, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (Eng. Dialect Soc. 1878), p. 52. The word is still in use in the north of England for a concoction of mincemeat, vegetables, cloves and vinegar and in ‘soused herrings’ i.e. herrings cooked in vinegar.

[1651] I.e. St Ethelburga, for whom the Abbey was founded by her brother Erconwald, Bishop of London, in 666.

[1652] Probably gris, i.e. a little pig. Compare Piers Plowman, Prol. l. 226:

[1653] “White worts,” was a kind of potage (“potage is not so moche used in all Chrystendome as it is used in Englande. Potage is made of the licour in the whiche flesshe is sod in, with puttynge to, chopped herbes and Otmell and salte,” Early Eng. Meals and Manners, p. 97). This is a recipe for White Worts, written down, c. 1420: “Take of the erbys as thou dede for jouutes and sethe hem in water tyl they ben neyshe; thanne take hem up, an bryse hem fayre on a potte an ley hem with flowre of Rys; take mylke of almaundys and cast therto and hony, nowt to moche, that it be nowt to swete, an safron and salt; an serve it forth ynne, rygth for a good potage.” The herbs used for jouutes are “borage, violet, mallows, parsley, young worts, beet, avens, buglos and orach”; and it is recommended to use two or three marrow bones in making the broth. Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, ed. T. Austen (E.E.T.S. 1888), pp. 5, 6.

[1654] Frumenty or Furmety (Lat. frumentum, wheat) is wheat husked and boiled soft in water, then boiled in milk, sweetened and spiced. Here is a recipe for it from the same book as that for white worts: “Take whete and pyke it clene and do it in a morter, an caste a lytel water theron; an stampe with a pestel tyl it hole [hull, lose husks]; than fan owt the holys [hulls, husks], an put it in a potte, an let sethe tyl it breke; than set yt douun, an sone after set it ouer the fyre an stere it wyl; an whan thow hast sothyn it wyl, put therinne swete mylke, an sethe it yfere, an stere it wyl; and whan it is ynow, coloure it wyth safron, an salt it euene, and dresse it forth.” Op. cit. pp. 6-7. See the rhymed recipe in the Liber cure cocorum (c. 1460), ed. Morris (Phil. Soc. 1862), p. 7.

[1655] Crisps (Mod. Fr. crêpe) were fritters. Here is a recipe for them in a cookery book written c. 1450: “Take white of eyren [eggs], Milke, and fyne flowre, and bete hit togidre and drawe hit thorgh a streynour, so that hit be rennyng, and noght to stiff; and caste thereto sugar and salt. And then take a chaffur ful of fressh grece boyling; and then put thi honde in the batur and lete the bater ren thorgh thi fingers into the chaffur; And whan it is ren togidre in the chaffre, and is ynowe, take a skymour and take hit oute of the chaffur, and putte oute al the grece, And lete ren; and putte hit in a faire dissh and cast sugur thereon ynow and serue it forth.” Op. cit. p. 93.

[1656] Buns. Compare the instructions to the cellaress of Syon: “On water days [i.e. days when the sisters drank water instead of beer] sche schal ordeyne for bonnes or newe brede.” Aungier, Hist. and Antiq. of Syon Mon. p. 393.

[1657] Here is a recipe: “Risshewes. Take figges and grinde hem all rawe in a morter and cast a litull fraied oyle there-to; and then take hem vppe yn a versell, and caste thereto pynes, reysyns of corance, myced dates, sugur, Saffron, pouder ginger, and salt: And then make Cakes of floure, Sugur, salt and rolle the stuff in thi honde and couche it in the cakes, and folde hem togidur as risshewes, and fry hem in oyle, and serue hem forth.” Op. cit. p. 93. There are other recipes, ib. pp. 43, 45, 97. The word survives in rissole.

[1658] Reg. Epis. Peckham, II, p. 706.

[1659] Worc. Sede Vac. Reg. p. 276.

[1660] Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 366.

[1661] Linc. MS. Reg. Bokyngham Mem. f. 397d.

[1662] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 120-1.

[1663] Ib. I, p. 51.

[1664] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 101.

[1665] See above, p. 397.

[1666] Linc. Visit. II, p. 115.

[1667] Ib. p. 115.

[1668] Sussex Arch. Soc. Coll. IX, pp. 25-7.

[1669] Sussex Arch. Soc. Coll. V, p. 257.

[1670] Reg. J. de Pontissara, I, p. 125.

[1671] Linc. Visit. II, p. 51.

[1672] Linc. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 343. Compare Buckingham’s similar injunction to Heynings, ib. f. 397, Gynewell’s injunction to Elstow in 1359, ib. Reg. Gynewell, ff. 139d-140, Pontoise’s injunction to Wherwell in 1302, Reg. J. de Pontissara, I, p. 125, and Peckham’s injunction to the Holy Sepulchre, Canterbury, in 1284, Reg. Ep. Peckham. II, p. 706.

[1673] Liveing, op. cit. p. 104.

[1674] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 174.

[1675] V.C.H. Northants. II, p. 99.

[1676] Liveing, op. cit. p. 168.

[1677] V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 434.

[1678] Translated from his Bonum Universale de Apibus, Lib. II, c. 30, written about 1260, in Coulton, Med. Garn. pp. 372-3.

[1679] Aungier, Hist. and Antiq. of Syon Mon. pp. 256, 257, 259, 261-2. For further instances of quarrels in the province of Rouen, see below, pp. 664-6.

[1680] Wilkins, Conc. I, p. 508.

[1681] Ib. pp. 590-1. Compare a decree of the contemporary Council of Trier (1227) for German nuns, Harzheim, Conc. Germ. III, p. 534.

[1682]

[1683] Wilkins, Conc. I, p. 660.

[1684] New Coll. MS. f. 86.

[1685] Aungier, op. cit. p. 392.

[1686] Reg. Ep. Peckham, III, p. 849.

[1687] Ful semely hir wimpel pinched was!

[1688] Gresset, Vert Vert, ll. 142-6. See below, p. 593.