MEDIEVAL ENGLISH NUNNERIES
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, Manager
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PLATE I
Larger Image
PAGE FROM LA SAINTE ABBAYE
(At the top of the picture a priest with two acolytes prepares the sacrament; behind them stand the abbess, holding her staff, her chaplain and the sacristan, who rings the bell; behind them a group of four nuns, including the cellaress with her keys. At the bottom is a procession of priest, acolytes and nuns in the quire.)
MEDIEVAL
ENGLISH NUNNERIES
c. 1275 to 1535
BY
EILEEN POWER
SOMETIME FELLOW AND LECTURER
OF GIRTON COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE
MADAME EGLENTYNE
(From the Ellesmere MS.)
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1922
TO
M. G. J.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
GENERAL PREFACE
There is only too much truth in the frequent complaint that history, as compared with the physical sciences, is neglected by the modern public. But historians have the remedy in their own hands; choosing problems of equal importance to those of the scientist, and treating them with equal accuracy, they will command equal attention. Those who insist that the proportion of accurately ascertainable facts is smaller in history, and therefore the room for speculation wider, do not thereby establish any essential distinction between truth-seeking in history and truth-seeking in chemistry. The historian, whatever be his subject, is as definitely bound as the chemist “to proclaim certainties as certain, falsehoods as false, and uncertainties as dubious.” Those are the words, not of a modern scientist, but of the seventeenth century monk, Jean Mabillon; they sum up his literary profession of faith. Men will follow us in history as implicitly as they follow the chemist, if only we will form the chemist’s habit of marking clearly where our facts end and our inferences begin. Then the public, so far from discouraging our speculations, will most heartily encourage them; for the most positive man of science is always grateful to anyone who, by putting forward a working theory, stimulates further discussion.
The present series, therefore, appeals directly to that craving for clearer facts which has been bred in these times of storm and stress. No care can save us altogether from error; but, for our own sake and the public’s, we have elected to adopt a safeguard dictated by ordinary business commonsense. Whatever errors of fact are pointed out by reviewers or correspondents shall be publicly corrected with the least possible delay. After a year of publication, all copies shall be provided with such an erratum-slip without waiting for the chance of a second edition; and each fresh volume in this series shall contain a full list of the errata noted in its immediate predecessor. After the lapse of a year from the first publication of any volume, and at any time during the ensuing twelve months, any possessor of that volume who will send a stamped and addressed envelope to the Cambridge University Press, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, London, E.C. 4, shall receive, in due course, a free copy of the errata in that volume. Thus, with the help of our critics, we may reasonably hope to put forward these monographs as roughly representing the most accurate information obtainable under present conditions. Our facts being thus secured, the reader will judge our inferences on their own merits; and something will have been done to dissipate that cloud of suspicion which hangs over too many important chapters in the social and religious history of the Middle Ages.
G. G. C.
October, 1922.
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 housesNorwich (1514) and Chichester (1478, 1524) dioceses 460 Punishment of offenders 462 General conclusions 471 CHAPTER XII. THE MACHINERY OF REFORM The chapter meeting
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
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 I Page from La Sainte Abbaye FRONTISPIECE (Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 39843. Folio 6vº.) TO FACE PAGE II Abbess receiving the pastoral staff from a bishop 44 (From The Metz Pontifical, 82(b)vº and 90vº, in the FitzwilliamMuseum, Cambridge.) III Page from La Sainte Abbaye 144 (Folio 29.) IV Brass 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.) V Page from La Sainte Abbaye 260 (Folio 1vº.) VI Dominican nuns in quire 286 (From Brit. Mus. Cott. MSS. Dom. A XII f.) VII The nun who loved the world 388 (From Queen Mary’s Psalter, Brit. Mus. Royal MS. 2 B. VII.) VIII Plan 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
CHAPTER I
THE NOVICE
Then, fair virgin, hear my spell,For I must your duty tell.
First a-mornings take your book,
The glass wherein yourself must look;
Your young thoughts so proud and jolly
Must be turn’d to motions holy;
For your busk, attires and toys,
Have your thoughts on heavenly joys:
And for all your follies past,
You must do penance, pray and fast.
You shall ring your sacring bell,
Keep your hours and tell your knell,
Rise at midnight to your matins,
Read your psalter, sing your Latins;
And when your blood shall kindle pleasure,
Scourge yourself in plenteous measure.
You must read the morning mass,
You must creep unto the cross,
Put cold ashes on your head,
Have a hair cloth for your bed,
Bind your beads, and tell your needs,
Your holy Aves and your Creeds;
Holy maid, this must be done,
If you mean to live a nun.
The Merry Devil of Edmonton.
There were in England during the later middle ages (c. 1270-1536) some 138 nunneries, excluding double houses of the Gilbertine order, which contained brothers as well as nuns. Of these over one half belonged to the Benedictine order and about a quarter (localised almost entirely in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire) to the Cistercian order. The rest were distributed as follows: 17 to the order of St Augustine and one (Minchin Buckland), which belonged to the order of St John of Jerusalem and followed the Austin rule, four to the Franciscan order, two to the Cluniac order, two to the Premonstratensian order and one to the Dominican order. There was also founded in the fifteenth century a very famous double house of the Brigittine order, Syon Abbey. Twenty-one of these houses had the status of abbeys; the rest were priories. They were distributed all over the country, Surrey, Lancashire, Westmorland and Cornwall being the only counties without one, but they were more thickly spread over the eastern than over the western half of the island. They were most numerous in the North, East and East Midlands, to wit, in the dioceses of York, Lincoln (which was then very large and included Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Leicestershire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and part of Hertfordshire) and
An analysis of the incomes and numerical size of English nunneries at the dissolution gives interesting and somewhat startling results. Out of 106 houses for which information is available only seven had in 1535 a gross annual income of over £450 a year. The richest were Syon and Shaftesbury with £1943 and £1324 respectively; then came Barking with £862, Wilton with £674, Amesbury with £595, Romsey with £528 and Dartford with £488. Five others (St Helen’s Bishopsgate, Haliwell and the Minories all in London, Elstow and Godstow) had from £300 to £400; nine others (Nuneaton, Clerkenwell, Malling, St Mary’s Winchester, Tarrant Keynes, Canonsleigh, Campsey, Minchin Buckland and Lacock) had from £200 to £300. Twelve had between £100 and £200 and no less than 73 houses had under £100, of which 39 actually had under £50; and it must be remembered that the net annual income, after the deduction of certain annual charges, was less still[1]. An analysis of the numerical size of nunneries presents more difficulties, for the number of nuns given sometimes differs in the reports referring to the same house and it is doubtful whether commissioners or receivers always set down the total number of nuns present at the visitation or dissolution of a house; while lists of pensions paid by the crown to ex-inmates after dissolution are still more incomplete as evidence. A rough analysis, however, leaves very much the same impression as an analysis of incomes[2]. Out of 111 houses, for which some sort of numerical estimate is possible, only four have over thirty inmates, viz. Syon (51), Amesbury (33), Wilton (32) and Barking (30). Eight (Elstow, the Minories, Nuneaton, Denny, Romsey, Wherwell, Dartford and St Mary’s Winchester) have from 20 to 30; thirty-six have from 10 to 20 and sixty-three have under 10. These statistics permit of certain large generalisations. First, that the majority of English nunneries were small and poor. Secondly, that, as has already been pointed out, the largest and richest houses were all in London and south of the Thames; only four houses north of that river had gross incomes of over £200 and only three could boast of more than 20 inmates. Thirdly, the nunneries during this period owned land and rents to the annual value of over £15,500 and contained perhaps between 1500 and 2000 nuns.
To understand the history of the English nunneries during the later middle ages it is necessary not only to understand the smallness and poverty of many of the houses and the high repute of others; it is necessary also to understand what manner of women took the veil in them. From what social classes were the nuns drawn, and for what reason did they enter religion? What function did monasticism, so far as it concerned women, fulfil in the life of medieval society?
It has been shown that the proportion of women who became nuns was very small in comparison with the total female population. It has indeed been insufficiently recognised that the medieval nunneries were recruited almost entirely from among the upper classes. They were essentially aristocratic institutions, the refuge of the gently born. At Romsey Abbey a list of 91 sisters at the election of an abbess in 1333 is full of well-known county names[3]. The names of Bassett, Sackville, Covert, Hussey, Tawke and Farnfold occur at Easebourne[4]; Lewknor, St John, Okehurst, Michelgrove and Sidney at Rusper[5], the two small and poor nunneries in Sussex. The return of the subsidy in 1377 enumerates the sisters of Minchin Barrow and, as their historian points out, “among the family names of these ladies are some of the best that the western counties could produce”[6]. The other Somerset houses were equally aristocratic, and an examination of the roll of prioresses for almost any medieval convent in any part of England will give the same result, even in the smallest and poorest nunneries, the inmates of which were reduced to begging alms[7]. These ladies appear sometimes to have had the spirit of their race, as they often had its manners and its tastes. For 21 years Isabel Stanley, Prioress of King’s Mead, Derby, refused to pay a rent due from her house to the Abbot of Burton; at last the Abbot sent his bailiff to distrain for it and she spoke her mind in good set terms. “Wenes these churles to overlede me,” cried this worthy daughter of a knightly family, “or sue the lawe agayne me? They shall not be so hardy but they shall avye upon their bodies and be nailed with arrows; for I am a gentlewoman, comen of the greatest of Lancashire and Cheshire, and that they shall know right well”[8]. A tacit recognition of the aristocratic character of the convents is to be found in the fact that bishops were often at pains to mention the good birth of the girls whom, in accordance with a general right, they nominated to certain houses on certain occasions. Thus Wykeham wrote to the Abbess of St Mary’s Winchester, bidding her admit Joan Bleden, “quest de bone et honeste condition, come nous sumes enformes”[9]. More frequently still the candidates were described as “domicella” or “damoysele”[10]. At least one instance is extant of a bishop ordering that all the nuns of a house were to be of noble condition
The fact that the greater portion of the female population was unaffected by the existence of the outlet provided by conventual life for women’s energies is a significant one. The reason for it—paradoxical as this may sound—lies in the very narrowness of the sphere to which women of gentle birth were confined. The disadvantage of rank is that so many honest occupations are not, in its eyes, honourable occupations. In the lowest ranks of society the poor labourer upon the land had no need to get rid of his daughter, if he could not find her a husband, nor would it have been to his interest to do so; for, working in the fields among his sons, or spinning and brewing with his wife at home, she could earn a supplementary if not a living wage. The tradesman or artisan in the town was in a similar position. He recognised that the ideal course was to find a husband for his growing girl, but the alternative was in no sense that she should eat out her heart and his income during long years at home; and if he were too poor to provide her with a sufficient dower, he could and often did apprentice her to a trade. The number of industries which were carried on by women in the middle ages shows that for the burgess and lower classes there were other outlets besides marriage; and then, as now, domestic service provided for many. But the case of the well-born lady was different. The knight or the county gentleman could not apprentice his superfluous daughters to a pursemaker or a weaver in the town; not from them were drawn the regrateresses in the market place and the harvest gatherers in the field; nor was it theirs to make the parti-coloured bed and shake the coverlet, worked with grapes and unicorns, in some rich vintner’s house. There remained for him, if he did not wish or could not afford to keep them at home and for them, if they desired some scope for their young energies, only marriage or else a convent, where they might go with a smaller dower than a husband of their own rank would demand.
To say that the convents were the refuge of the gently born is not to say that there was no admixture of classes within them. The term gentleman was becoming more comprehensive in the later middle ages. It included the upper class proper, the families of noble birth; and it included also the country gentry. The convents were probably at first recruited almost entirely from these two ranks of society, and a study of any collection of medieval wills shows how large a proportion of such families took advantage of this opening for women. A phrase will sometimes occur which shows that it was regarded as the natural and obvious alternative to marriage. Sir John Daubriggecourt in 1415 left his daughter Margery 40 marks, “if she be wedded to a worldly husband, and if she be caused to receive the sacred veil of the order of holy nuns” ten pounds and twenty shillings rent[12], and Sir John le Blund in 1312 bequeathed an annuity to his daughter Ann, “till she marry or enter a religious house”[13]. The anxiety of the upper classes to secure a place for their children in nunneries sometimes even led to overcrowding. At Carrow the Prioress was forced to complain that “certain lords of England whom she was unable to resist because of their power” forced their daughters upon the priory as nuns, and in 1273 a papal bull forbade the reception of more inmates than the revenues would support[14]. Archbishop William Wickwane addressed a similar mandate to two Yorkshire houses, Wilberfoss and Nunkeeling, which public rumour had informed him to be overburdened with nuns and with secular boarders “at the instance of nobles”[15]; and in 1327 Bishop Stratford wrote to Romsey Abbey that the house was notoriously burdened with ladies beyond the established number, and that he had heard that the nuns were being forced to receive more “damoyseles” as novices, which he forbade without special licence[16]. A very strong personal connection must in time have been established between a nunnery and certain families from which, in each generation, it received a daughter or a niece and her dower. Such was the connection between Shouldham and the Beauchamps[17] and between Nunmonkton and the Fairfaxes[18]. A close link bound each nunnery to the family of its patron. Thus we find a Clinton at Wroxall and a Darcy at Heynings; nor is it unlikely that these noble ladies sometimes expected privileges and homage more than the strict equality of convent life would allow, if it be permissible to generalise from the behaviour of Isabel Clinton[19] and from the fact that Margaret Darcy received a rather severe penance from Bishop Gynewell in 1351 and a special warning against going beyond the claustral precincts or speaking to strangers[20], while in 1393 there occurs the significant injunction by Bishop Bokyngham that no sister was to have a room to herself except Dame Margaret Darcy (doubtless the same woman now grown elderly and ailing) “on account of the nobility of her race”; an old lady of firm will and (despite his careful mention of extra pittances and of tolerating for a while) a somewhat sycophantic prelate[21].