AUTHOR’S PREFACE

The monastic ideal and the development of the monastic rule and orders have been studied in many admirable books. The purpose of the present work is not to describe and analyse once again that ideal, but to give a general picture of English nunnery life during a definite period, the three centuries before the Dissolution. It is derived entirely from pre-Reformation sources, and the tainted evidence of Henry VIII’s commissioners has not been used; nor has the story of the suppression of the English nunneries been told. The nunneries dealt with are drawn from all the monastic orders, except the Gilbertine order, which has been omitted, both because it differed from others in containing double houses of men and women and because it has already been the subject of an excellent monograph by Miss Rose Graham.

It remains for me to record my deep gratitude to two scholars, in whose debt students of medieval monastic history must always lie, Mr G. G. Coulton and Mr A. Hamilton Thompson. I owe more than I can say to their unfailing interest and readiness to discuss, to help and to criticise. To Mr Hamilton Thompson I am specially indebted for the loan of his transcripts and translations of Alnwick’s Register, now in course of publication, for reading and criticising my manuscript and finally for undertaking the arduous work of reading my proofs. I gratefully acknowledge suggestions received at different times from Mr Hubert Hall, Miss Rose Graham and Canon Foster, and faithful criticism from my friend Miss M. G. Jones. I have also to thank Mr H. S. Bennett for kindly preparing the index, and Mr Sydney Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, for assistance in the choice of illustrations.

EILEEN POWER.

Girton College, Cambridge. September 1922

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I. THE NOVICE

Situation, income and size of the English nunneries 1

Nuns drawn from (1) the nobles and gentry 4

(2) the middle class 9

Nunneries in medieval wills 14

The dowry system 16

Motives for taking the veil:

(1)a career and a vocation for girls 25

(2)a ‘dumping ground’ for political prisoners 29

(3)for illegitimate, deformed or half-witted girls 30

(4)nuns forced unwillingly to profess by their relations 33

(5)a refuge for widows and occasionally for wives 38

CHAPTER II. THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE

Superiors usually women of social standing 42

Elections and election disputes 43

Resignations 56

Special temptations of a superior:

(1)excessive independence and comfort 59

(2)autocratic government 64

(3)favouritism 66

The superior a great lady in the country side 68

Journeys 69

Luxurious clothes and entertainments 73

Picture of heads of houses in Bishop Alnwick’s Lincoln visitations (1436-49) 80

Wicked prioresses 82

Good prioresses 89

General conclusion: Chaucer’s picture borne out by the records 94

CHAPTER III. WORLDLY GOODS

Evidence as to monastic property in

(1)the Valor Ecclesiasticus 96

(2)monastic account rolls 97

Variation of size and income among houses 98

Methods of administration of estates 99

Sources of income:

(1)rents from land and houses 100

(2)manorial perquisites and grants 103

(3)issues of the manor 109

(4)miscellaneous payments 112

(5)spiritualities 113

Expenses 117

(1)internal expenses of the convent 119

(2)divers expenses 123

(3)repairs 123

(4)the home farm 125

(5)the wages sheet 129

CHAPTER IV. MONASTIC HOUSEWIVES

The obedientiaries 131

Allocation of income and obedientiaries’ accounts 134

Chambresses’ accounts (clothes) 137

Cellaresses’ accounts (food) 137

Servants 143

(1)chaplain 144

(2)administrative officials 146

(3)household staff 150

(4)farm labourers 150

Nunnery households 151

Relations between nuns and servants 154

Occasional hired labour 157

Villages occasionally dependent upon nunneries for work 158

CHAPTER V. FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES

Poverty of nunneries 161

(1)prevalence of debt 162

(2)insufficient food and clothing 164

(3)ruinous buildings 168

(4)nuns begging alms 172

Reasons for poverty:

(1)natural disasters 176

(2)ecclesiastical exactions and royal taxes 183

(3)feudal and other services 185

(4)right of patrons to take temporalities during voidance 186

(5)right of bishop and king to nominate nuns on certain occasions 188

(6)pensions, corrodies, grants and liveries 194

(7)hospitality 200

(8)litigation 201

(9)bad management 203

(10)extravagance 211

(11)overcrowding with nuns 212

Methods adopted by bishops to remedy financial distress:

(1)devices to safeguard expenditure by the head of the house 217

(2)episcopal licence required for business transactions 225

(3)appointment of a custos 228

CHAPTER VI. EDUCATION

The education of the nuns:

Learning of Anglo-Saxon nuns, and of German nuns at a later date 237

Little learning in English nunneries during the later middle ages 238

Nunnery libraries and nuns’ books 240

Education of nuns 244

Latin in nunneries 246

Translations for the use of nuns 251

Needlework 255

Simple forms of medicine 258

Nunneries as schools for children:

The education of novices 260

The education of secular children 261

Boys 263

Limitations:

(1)not all nunneries took children 264

(2)only gentlefolk taken 265

(3)disapproval and restriction of nunnery schools by the ecclesiastical authorities 270

What did the nuns teach? 274

Life of school children in nunneries 279

‘Piety and breeding’ 281

CHAPTER VII. ROUTINE AND REACTION

Division of the day by the Benedictine Rule 285

The Benedictine combination of prayer, study and labour breaks down 288

Dead routine 289

The reaction from routine 290

(1)carelessness in singing the services 291

(2)accidia 293

(3)quarrels 297

(4)gay clothes 303

(5)pet animals 305

(6)dancing, minstrels and merry-making 309

CHAPTER VIII. PRIVATE LIFE AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

The monastic obligation to (1) communal life, (2) personal poverty 315

The breakdown of communal life: division into familiae with private rooms 316

The breakdown of personal poverty 322

(1)the annual peculium 323

(2)money pittances 323

(3)gifts in money and kind 324

(4)legacies 325

(5)proceeds of a nun’s own labour 330

Private life and private property in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 331

Attitude of ecclesiastical authorities 336

CHAPTER IX. FISH OUT OF WATER

Enclosure in the Benedictine Rule 341

The movement for the enclosure of nuns 343

The Bull Periculoso 344

Attempts to enforce enclosure in England 346

Attempts to regulate and restrict the emergence of nuns from their houses 353

The usual pretexts for breaking enclosure:

(1)illness 361

(2)to enter a stricter rule 363

(3)convent business 367

(4)ceremonies, processions, funerals 368

(5)pilgrimages 371

(6)visits to friends 376

(7)short walks, field work 381

The nuns wander freely about in the world 385

Conclusion 391

CHAPTER X. THE WORLD IN THE CLOISTER

Visitors in the cloister are another side of the enclosure problem 394

The scholars of Oxford and Cambridge and the neighbouring nunneries 395

Regulations to govern the entrance of seculars into nunneries:

(1)certain persons not to be admitted 401

(2)certain parts of the house and certain hours forbidden 402

(3)unsuccessful attempts to regulate the reception of boarders 409

The nuns and political movements 419

Robbery and violence 422

Border raids in Durham and Yorkshire 425

The strange tale of Sir John Arundel’s outrage on a nunnery 429

The sack of Origny in Raoul de Cambrai 432

CHAPTER XI. THE OLDE DAUNCE

Nuns and the celibate ideal 436

Sources of evidence for the moral state of the English nunneries 439

Apostate nuns 440

Nuns’ lovers 446

Nuns’ children 450

Disorder in two small houses, Cannington (1351) and Easebourne (1478) 452

Disorder in the great abbeys of Amesbury and Godstow 454

Moral state of the nunneries in the diocese of Lincoln at two periods 456

Attempted statistical estimate of cases of immorality in Lincoln (1430-50), Norwich (1514) and Chichester (1478, 1524) dioceses 460

Punishment of offenders 462

General conclusions 471

CHAPTER XII. THE MACHINERY OF REFORM

The chapter meeting 475

Reform by external authorities:

(1)a parent house 478

(2)the chapter general of the order 481

(3)the bishop of the diocese 482

The episcopal visitation and injunctions 483

How far was this control adequate?

(1)concealment of faults 488

(2)visitation too infrequent 490

(3)difficulty of enforcing injunctions 492

Value of visitation documents to the historian 493

CHAPTER XIII. THE NUN IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Value of literary evidence 499

Autobiographies and biographies of nuns 500

Popular poetry (chansons de nonnes) 502

Popular stories (fabliaux, exempla) 515

Didactic works addressed to nuns 523

Satires and moral treatises 533

Secular literature in general 555

APPENDICES

I. Additional Notes to the Text:

A.The daily fare of Barking Abbey 563

B.School children in nunneries 568

C.Nunnery disputes 581

D.Gay clothes 585

E.Convent pets in literature 588

F.The moral state of Littlemore Priory in the sixteenth century 595

G.The moral state of the Yorkshire nunneries in the first half of the fourteenth century 597

H.The disappearance or suppression of eight nunneries prior to 1535 602

I.Chansons de Nonnes 604

J.The theme of the nun in love in medieval popular literature 622

K.Nuns in the Dialogus Miraculorum of Caesarius of Heisterbach 627

II. Visitations of Nunneries in the Diocese of Rouen by Archbishop Eudes Rigaud (1248-1269) 634

III. Fifteenth Century Saxon Visitations by Johann Busch 670

IV. List of English Nunneries, C. 1275-1535 685

BIBLIOGRAPHY 693

INDEX 704

LIST OF PLATES

PLATE

IPage from La Sainte Abbaye FRONTISPIECE

(Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 39843. Folio 6vº.)

TO FACE PAGE

IIAbbess receiving the pastoral staff from a bishop 44

(From The Metz Pontifical, 82(b)vº and 90vº, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.)

IIIPage from La Sainte Abbaye 144

(Folio 29.)

IVBrass of Ela Buttry, the stingy Prioress of Campsey († 1546), in St Stephen’s Church, Norwich 168

(From Norfolk Archaeology, Vol. VI; Norf. and Norwich Archaeol. Soc. 1864.)

VPage from La Sainte Abbaye 260

(Folio 1vº.)

VIDominican nuns in quire 286

(From Brit. Mus. Cott. MSS. Dom. A XII f.)

VIIThe nun who loved the world 388

(From Queen Mary’s Psalter, Brit. Mus. Royal MS. 2 B. VII.)

VIIIPlan of Lacock Abbey 403

(From Archaeologia, LVII, by permission of the Society of Antiquaries and Mr Harold Brakspear.)

MAP

Map showing the English Nunneries in the later middle ages AT END

MEDIEVAL ENGLISH NUNNERIES