Note 364 — USKE CASTLE, Monmouthshire.

We do not read of any nuns having been “stolen from the nunnery” of Uske; but as the reader may be aware, poor Sir Osbert Giffard paid severely for his sacrilegious gallantry in stealing not one but two nuns out of Wilton Abbey. He was ordered never to enter a nunnery more! never to be in the presence of a nun without special leave of his Diocesan. Nor was this enough: he was condemned to go thrice “naked in his shirt and breeches” to the parish church of W., though not, it is said, in presence of the nuns; to be each several time beaten with a rod, much to the comfort of his own soul, and the edification of the by-standers; and so, also, in Salisbury market, and in Shaftesbury church. He was condemned, moreover, to doff the insignia of knighthood, and don a coarse garment of russet, trimmed with lamb or sheep’s wool; to wear calf-skin on his nether extremities, and not to wear any shirt after flagellation. And all this ignominious treatment to be rigorously enforced, until he, the said Osbert, should have been three years in the Holy Land, or recalled by royal authority.—Brit. Monachism, iii. 161. County Hist.