Note r — Chapter IX · [a]

See Fosbrooke's British Monachism (vol. i. p. 127, and vol. ii. p. 8) for a farrago of evidence against the monks. Clemangis, a French theologian of considerable eminence at the beginning of the fifteenth century, speaks of nunneries in the following terms:—Quid aliud sunt hoc tempore puellarum monasteria, nisi quædam non dico Dei sanctuaria, sed Veneris execranda prostibula, sed lascivorum et impudicorum juvenum ad libidines explendas receptacula? ut idem sit hodie puellam velare, quod et publicè ad scortandum exponere. William Prynne, from whose records (vol. ii. p. 229) I have taken this passage, quotes it on occasion of a charter of king John, banishing thirty nuns of Ambresbury into different convents, propter vitæ suæ turpitudinem.