Woman under Monasticism

In April of the year 1397 a visitation of the nunnery of Nun-Monkton in Yorkshire was conducted by Thomas Dalby, archdeacon of Richmond, who acted for the archbishop of York982. He accused the prioress Margaret Fairfax of allowing various kinds of fur to be worn in her house, especially grey fur. He also objected to the wearing of silk veils and to the prioress herself acting as treasurer (bursaria) of the house, and charged her with having alienated its property to the value of a hundred marks. He censured her for entertaining John Munkton, and inviting him to dinner in her chamber, and for allowing the use of unusual vestments and clothes; for too readily receiving back nuns who had disgraced their profession (lapsae fornicatione); and for allowing nuns to receive gifts from friends to support them. He also complained that John Munkton behaved badly, had dallied (ludit) with the prioress at meals in her chamber, and had been served there with drink.

Injunctions were forwarded in the following July to rectify these matters, and directing the prioress to have no communication with Dominus John Munkton, William Snowe or Thomas Pape, except in the presence of the nuns. The usual vestments were to be worn in church, and the nuns were enjoined not to wear silk garments (paneis), silk veils, precious furs, finger rings, and embroidered or ornamental jupes, in English called gowns, like secular women. They were not to neglect the commemoration of the dead under penalty of being deprived of special clothes (carentiae camisarum?) for two whole weeks.

The general tenor of these injunctions argues a want of management on the part of the lady superior and a tendency to luxury among the nuns. As time wore on complaints about mismanagement of revenues became more frequent, but they were accompanied by evidence of increasing poverty, especially in the smaller houses, which shows that the lady superior was labouring under difficulties for which she was not altogether responsible.

A serious blow was dealt to the monastic system by the Black Death, which began in 1349. It produced a temporary collapse of discipline and indifference to religion983, and resulted in changes in the state of agriculture and the position of the labourer, which affected the poorer and smaller houses in a disastrous manner.

Thus we read about Thetford, a small Benedictine nunnery in Norfolk984, that the nuns’ revenues had much decreased through mortality and inundation since 1349, and that when Henry V levied a tax on religious houses, Thetford, which consisted at the time of a prioress and nine nuns, was excused on the plea of poverty. The increasing poverty of the house is evident from accounts of visitations between 1514 1520985. On one occasion the nuns declared they were short of service books; on another that the prioress received illiterate and deformed persons (indoctae et deformes) into the house; and again that there was great poverty and that the few novices had no teacher.

Again we read of Malling in Kent that it was excused from payments in 1404; in 1349 the bishop of Rochester had found it so decayed as to be hardly capable of restoration986. Two abbesses had died of the pestilence; there were only eight inmates left in the house, four of whom were professed and four non-professed.

Malling recovered itself, but not so Wyrthorp in Northamptonshire, where Emma de Pinchbeck and many of the Austin nuns fell victims to the pestilence987. The archbishop appointed Agnes Bowes as prioress, but the convent was beyond recovery. In 1354 Sir Th. Holland, the patron of the house, petitioned that it should be united to the nunnery at Stamford, to which its prioress and the one remaining nun removed988. In the royal licence which secured this change it is stated ‘that the convent being poorly endowed was by the pestilence which lately prevailed reduced to such poverty that all the nuns but one on account of penury had dispersed.’ In the course of the 14th century other nunneries complained of insufficient revenue and poverty, among them Seton in Cumberland989, St Sepulchre’s at Canterbury in 1359990, and Rusper and Easebourne which were both situated in Sussex.

In a few cases accounts are preserved of successive visitations to the same nunnery extending over a number of years, which afford a valuable record of part of the life-history of the house. The visitations conducted between 1442 and 1527 at Rusper and at Easebourne are most instructive as showing the gradual collapse which many of the smaller houses experienced.

The chief complaint made during the visitation of Rusper in 1442 was that the prioress of the house had failed to render account to the sisterhood during the term she had held office991. She was consequently enjoined by the bishop of Chichester to produce an account year by year and submit it to him and to the sisterhood. Some thirty years later in 1478 upon enquiry it was found that the convent was in debt, and the bishop asked for an inventory of the house, which was drawn up for him. The community at this time consisted of the prioress and five nuns, four of whom are entered as professed, one as non-professed.

Again in 1484 the bishop visited Rusper, and three nuns were consecrated on this occasion. But the house had entered on a downward course of poverty and decay. In 1485 Rusper was exempted from paying subsidy on the plea of poverty. During the visitation of 1521 the nuns referred their pecuniary poverty to the onerous expenses caused by the too frequent visits of friends and relations who came to stay with the prioress, while the prioress herself referred the poverty to other reasons, but agreed that the house was fast going to ruin. No complaints were made at the visitation three years later (1524), except against a certain William Tychen, who sowed discord. Again in 1527 the prioress and nuns deposed that all was well in the house, but that its poverty was extreme and that it was on the brink of ruin.

The accounts of the visitations to Easebourne992 are even more instructive, for there the deteriorating effects of mismanagement and poverty were increased by want of discipline and quarrelsomeness among the nuns. In 1414 the community consisted of the prioress and six or seven nuns. In 1437 and 1439 its poverty was already so great that letters patent were secured on the plea of insufficient revenue, exonerating the prioress and her convent from certain payments called for by the clergy. In 1441 the house was in debt to the amount of £40, and here also the convent cast the blame of mismanagement on the head of the house, referring the debts to ‘costly expenses of the prioress, who frequently rides abroad, and pretends she does so on the common business of the house, though it is not so, with a train of attendants much too large, and tarries long abroad, and she feasts sumptuously both at home and abroad… And while she does so the members of the convent are made to work like hired workwomen, and they receive nothing whatever for their own use from their work, but the prioress takes the whole profit.’

In reply to their complaints the bishop forbade the prioress to compel the sisters to continual work; ‘and if they should wish of their own accord to work, they shall be free to do so, but yet so that they may receive for themselves the half part of what they gain by their hands; the other part shall be converted to the advantage of the house and unburdening its debts.’ But discharging those debts was no easy matter. The prioress was commanded to sell her costly fur trimmings for the advantage of the house, and if she rode abroad to spend only what was needful, and to content herself with four horses. The administration of temporal goods was taken from her altogether and given to ‘Master Thomas Boleyn and John Lylis, Esquire.’ But under their management the debt of £40 had increased in nine years to £66; and in 1475, as again in 1485 and 1489, the house had to be excused from payments. Rumours of an unfavourable character about what went on in the house now reached the bishop, and before the next visitation in 1478, the prioress Agnes Tauke was summoned to Chichester, where she promised on her oath before the bishop and others to resign her office if called upon to do so.

The deposition made by her nuns during the ensuing visitation confirmed the unfavourable rumours; two nuns had left the priory ostensibly for their health and were abroad in apostasy. One nun referred this conduct to neglect on the part of the prioress, another to that of the chaplain, John Smyth, who confessed to having sealed or caused to be sealed a licence to one of the nuns to go out of the priory after having had criminal intercourse with her. Other complaints were made against the prioress, ‘that she had her kinsmen staying with her for weeks at the priory and gave them the best food, while the nuns had the worst’; also that she was herself of bad character. But these recriminations were not accepted by the bishop. The desire of Agnes Tauke to improve matters was accepted as genuine and she was not called upon to resign.

Discontent however remained a standing characteristic of the nuns at Easebourne. At the visitation of 1521 the prioress deposed that the nuns lived honestly and religiously according to the rule of St Augustine (sic) and were sufficiently obedient to her, but the nun sexton blamed the prioress for ‘not making up any account annually as she ought in presence of the sisters concerning her administration of goods,’ and another nun deposed that she neglected to provide for the sisters the sum of thirteen shillings and four pence in money to which they were entitled. Again in 1524 the prioress deposed that all was well, but the sub-prioress complained of disobedience, both among the professed and the non-professed nuns, who on their side complained of harshness of treatment. The bishop believed the complaints of the latter and blamed the behaviour of the sub-prioress, who submitted to correction.

The recriminations of the nuns at Easebourne recall a picture drawn about this time by Langland (c. 1390) in the Vision of Piers the Ploughman, in which Wrath personified as a friar describes how he stirred up quarrels in a nunnery. In its earliest version the poem omits these passages; and Langland, so ready to abuse and ridicule monk and friar, is chary in his references to nuns. In the later versions of his poem (text B and C) ‘Wrath’ is described as acting first as gardener and then as cook in a nunnery, where in the character of ‘the prioress’ potager and of ‘other poor ladies,’ he ‘made them broths of various scandals.’ Among the stories he set going was

… ‘that Dame Johane was a bastardAnd Dame Clarice a knight’s daughter, a cuckold was her sire,And Dame Purnell a priest’s concubine, she will never become prioress,For she had a child in cherry time, all our chapter it wist.’

In consequence the nuns fall to quarrelling among themselves and end with attacking one another bodily. The picture, even if overdrawn, proves, in conjunction with the temper of the nuns at Easebourne, that peaceableness no longer formed the invariable concomitant of convent life during the 15th century.

Various particulars in the history of men’s houses corroborate the fact that considerable changes were going on inside the monastic body during the 15th century.

Reference has been made to the fluctuations in the history of alien priories. Some of the foreign houses, aware of the dangers to which their English colonies were exposed, advocated the sale of their property in England. Numerous grammar-schools and colleges profited by the change or owed their foundation directly to it. As early as 1390 William Wykeham bought estates of alien priories for New College, his foundation at Oxford. Waynfleet, bishop of Worcester, who in 1415 founded St Mary Magdalen College at Oxford, annexed to it Sele, an alien priory which had been admitted to denizenship993. It is noteworthy that some religious houses about this time dissolved of their own accord. Thus the master and brethren of St John’s hospital at Oxford obtained leave from Henry VI to convey their house to Waynfleet994. The Austin priory of Selborne, which ‘had become a desert convent without canons or prior,’ was likewise annexed to St Mary Magdalen College, a change which was ratified by a bull from Innocent VIII in 1486995.

It has already been said that a change of attitude towards religious institutions on the part of the public was the direct outcome of the spread of Wyclif’s teaching. In 1410 Sir John Oldcastle, the so-called leader of the Lollards, who was burnt for heresy eight years later, made a proposal in the House of Commons which is curious in various ways. It was to the effect that their temporalities should be taken from bishop, abbot and prior, and the revenues of their possessions employed to pay a standing army, to augment the income of the noblemen and gentry, to endow a hundred hospitals and to make small payments to the clergy996. No notice in this case was taken of the donors or representatives of the settlement, to whom land and tenements upon default, or neglect of those to whom they were granted, otherwise reverted. The proposal was accompanied by a list of monasteries which might be appropriated, but the proposal was summarily quashed.

The Church Council held at Basel (from 1418), at which English prelates also were present, was emphatic in urging the need of monastic reform. It would be interesting to ascertain if this was prompted solely by the feeling that the recognised abuses of convent life lowered religion in general estimation, or if suspicions were entertained that religious houses might be harbouring unorthodox elements. Great efforts at reform were made within the Benedictine order; chapters were held by the abbots at regular intervals and the system of visitations formulated for mutual supervision and control by the various monasteries once more received attention. We shall see this system in full operation on the Continent. In England we have accounts of several chapters of Benedictine abbots held between 1422 and 1426, in which reports of extensive visitations were given997. The chapter of 1473 appointed the abbot of St Albans (Alboin, 1464-1476) to visit at Glastonbury, and the abbot of Eynsham to visit at St Albans998.

Churchmen on all sides were eager to promote monastic reforms and interfere with monastic privileges. In 1418 Pope Martin V sent a bull to the archbishop of Canterbury bidding him hold visitations regularly999. But the story of the gradual encroachment of the Church on monastic privilege and property is less striking in England than abroad, for the independent spirit of individual houses was less strong, and convents generally, especially those of women, seem to have yielded without opposition to the claims made by energetic churchmen. Some monasteries of men, however, resented interference and maintained their rights. An episode in this struggle deserves attention, as it reflects unfavourably on two nunneries which were dependencies of the abbey of St Albans. There was a long-standing jealousy between the lord abbot of St Albans and the lord primate of Canterbury, renewed by a quarrel between Abbot Wallingford and Archbishop Bourchier, which had been decided in favour of the former. The abbey enjoyed exemption from episcopal visitation, not only for itself but for its dependencies or cells, among which were the nunneries of Sopwell and St Mary Prée. In 1489 Archbishop Morton of Canterbury secured a Papal bull1000 which empowered him to visit all the monasteries of his diocese, those subject to his visitation and those exempt from it. And this, as the document says, ‘not only because the former strictness of life is abandoned … but also because life is luxurious and dissolute.’

In consequence of the authority conferred by this bull the primate penned a letter1001 to the abbot of St Albans containing charges of a serious nature. After a few opening sentences it continues in the following strain:

‘… Moreover, among other grave enormities and wicked crimes of which you are accused and for which you are noted and defamed, you admitted a certain married woman named Elena Germyn, who some time ago wrongfully left her husband and lived in adultery with another man, to be sister and nun in the house or priory of Pré, which you hold to be in your jurisdiction; and there you appointed her prioress notwithstanding her husband was living and is alive now. Further, brother Thomas Sudbury, your fellow-monk, publicly and notoriously and without interference or punishment from you, associated and still associates with this woman on terms of intimacy, like others among your brethren and fellow-monks who had access and still have access to her and to others elsewhere as to a brothel or house of ill fame. And not only in the house of Pré but also in the nunnery of Sopwell, which you contend is under your jurisdiction also, you change the prioresses and superiors (praesidentes) again and again at your will and caprice, deposing good and religious women and promoting to the highest dignity the worthless and wicked, so that religion is cast aside, virtue is neglected, and many expenses are incurred by reprehensible practices through your introducing certain of your brethren who are thieves and notorious villains to preside there as guardians to manage the goods of the priories, which more correctly speaking are wasted, and those places which were religious are rendered and reputed profane and impious, and so far impoverished by your doings and the doings of those with you as to be brought to the verge of ruin.

‘Similarly in dealing with other cells of monks which you say are subject to you within the monastery of the glorious protomartyr Alban, you have dilapidated the common property in its possessions and jewels; you have cut down, sold and alienated indiscriminately copses, woods, underwood, oaks and other forest trees to the value of 8000 marks and more; while those of your brethren and fellow-monks, who, as is reported, are given over to all the evils of the world, neglecting the service of God, and openly and continually consorting with harlots and loose women within the precincts and without, you knowingly defend instead of punishing them; others too you protect who are covetous of honour and promotion and bent on ministering to your cupidity, and who steal and make away with chalices and other jewels of the church, going so far as to extract sacrilegiously precious stones from the very shrine of St Alban.’

This letter is dated 1490, and is addressed to William, presumably William Wallingford, as he became abbot in 1476; it is however confidently asserted that he died in 1484. But this date may need revision. For he was succeeded by his prior Thomas Ramryge, who was not elected till 1492; ‘at all events this period of eight years is very obscure,’ says the historian of St Albans1002. Concerning William Wallingford we know that the chapter of Benedictine abbots held at Northampton in 1480 appointed him to visit all the monasteries situated in the diocese of Lincoln, but that he deputed two of his convent to do so1003. His successor Ramryge wrote a book ‘on the doings of the abbots, monks and benefactors of the monastery of St Albans’ in which Wallingford appears of a character very different from that suggested by Morton’s letter. ‘Prudent and wise in the management of his abbey and resolute in the defence of its rights,’ says Dugdale on the authority of Ramryge, ‘he was successful too in resisting the claims of Archbishop Bourchier (Morton’s predecessor) which upon appeal to Rome were decided in his favour.’ He completed the high altar at St Albans and set up a printing-press in his monastery between 1480 and 1486.

In face of this evidence the language used by Morton appears somewhat violent. Unfortunately no additional information is forthcoming from the nunneries of St Mary Prée and Sopwell. We have an account rendered by the prioress Christina Basset of Prée for the year 1485-1486, four years previous to the date of Morton’s letter, entries in which show that Christina Basset had succeeded Alice Wafer, who had been deposed for mismanagement of the revenues, but continued to live in the convent1004. About Sopwell we only know that Wallingford appointed a commission in 1480 to set aside the prioress Joan Chapell on account of old age and infirmity in favour of Elizabeth Webb, one of the nuns1005.

It were idle to deny that the state of discipline in many houses was bad, but the circumstances under which Morton’s letter was penned argue that the charges made in it should be accepted with some reservation.

It remains to cast a glance on the views expressed on the state of monasteries in general literature in the 15th century, from which we gather that the religious settlement was fast sinking in popular estimation. Two poems in this connection deserve especial attention, the ‘Land of Cockayne,’ a spirited satire on monastic life generally, written about 1430, and a poem of somewhat later date preserved in fragments only, which has been published under the title, ‘Why I cannot be a nun.’

The ‘Land of Cockayne’1006 describes in flowing rhyme a country ‘of joy and bliss,’ where flow rivers of oil, milk, honey and wine, and where stands a fair abbey of white and grey monks. Their house in accordance with the popular fancy is a delightful abode constructed out of food and sweetmeats with shingles of ‘flour-cakes’, and the cloister is of crystal with a garden in which spices and flowers grow. The monks dwell here in the greatest comfort; some are old, some are young; at times they are engaged in prayer, at times they seek diversion away from home. Another abbey, ‘a fair nunnery,’ stands at no great distance, the inmates of which live in the like ease and carelessness. Here too there is a river of milk, the nuns wear silken clothing, and when it is hot they take a boat and go to bathe in the river. They here meet the monks and disport themselves together, throwing off all restraint.

Clever and much to the point as this poem appeared to the laymen who had come to look upon convent life as a life of idleness and self-indulgence, its historical importance is exceeded by the poem, ‘Why I cannot be a nun1007.’ It is generally spoken of as the production of a woman on the ground of its reflecting a woman’s experiences, but there is no direct evidence on the point; its author writes as one unattached to a nunnery, and by the remark that he knows more than he chooses to tell is perhaps concealing his ignorance.

It consists of an adaptation to a different purpose of the story of the ‘Ghostly Abbey,’ which was peopled with personified Virtues1008, and to which reference has been made in previous chapters of this work. Here personified Vices are described as having taken possession of the abbey. The poem is divided into two parts, of which it seems doubtful through the state of the manuscript which ought to come first. As it stands printed it begins abruptly with a description of how commissioners received the charge to ride all over England to seek out nunneries and enquire into their state. They visited the houses of Kent and are represented as returning to the father of the writer, who asks them how they have sped and how the nuns fared (l. 28). When he has heard their report he tells his daughter, who wishes to become a nun, that he will have none of it. The girl is sore aggrieved; she deplores her ill-luck and continues in this strain:

‘Then it befell on a morn of MayIn the same year as I said before,My pensiveness would not awayBut ever waxed more and more.I walked alone and wept full soreWith sighings and with mourning.I said but little and thought the moreBut what I thought no man need hear.And in a garden I disported meEvery day at divers hoursTo behold and for to seeThe sweet effect of April flowers.The fair herbs and gentle flowersAnd birds singing on every spray;But my longing and sadnessFor all this sport would not away.’

She kneels to Jesus, the king of heavenly bliss, and tells Him how she is destitute of good counsel and would commit her cause to Him. She then falls asleep and a fair lady appears to her, who calls her by name (Kateryne, l. 122), and who on being asked says her name is Experience, and that she has come with the help of Christ Jesus, adding ‘such things as I shall show thee I trust shall set thy heart at rest.’ She takes the girl by the hand and leads her through a meadow fair and green to a house of ‘women regular,’ a cloister, ‘a house of nuns in truth of divers orders old and young, but not well governed,’ for here self-will reigns instead of discipline. ‘Perhaps you would like to know who was dwelling here; of some I will tell you, of others keep counsel; so I was taught when I was young,’ says the writer. The first lady they encounter in the house is Dame Pride, who is held in great repute, while poor Dame Meekness sits alone and forsaken. Dame Hypocrite sits there with her book, while Dame Devout and her few companions have been put outside by Dame Sloth and Dame Vainglory. In the convent remain Dame Envy ‘who can sow strife in every state,’ Dame Love-Inordinate, Dame Lust, Dame Wanton and Dame Nice, all of whom take scant heed of God’s service. ‘Dame Chastity, I dare well say, in that convent had little cheer, she was often on the point of going her way, she was so little beloved there; some loved her in their hearts full dear, but others did not and set nothing by her, but gave her good leave to go.’ Walking about under the guidance of Experience the writer also comes upon Dame Envy who bore the keys and seldom went from home. In vain she sought for Dame Patience and Dame Charity; they were not in the convent but dwelt outside ‘without strife’ in a chamber where good women sought their company. Meanwhile Dame Disobedient set the prioress at nought; a fact especially distressing to the writer, ‘for subjects should ever be diligent in word, in will, in deed, to please their sovereign’ (l. 273). Indeed she declared, when she saw no reverence, she would stay in the house no longer. She and Experience left and sat down on the grass outside the gates to discuss what they had seen. Experience explained that for the most part nuns are such as they have seen (l. 310); not all, she adds; ‘some are devout, holy and blessed, and hold the right way to bliss, but some are weak, lewd, and forward; God amend what is amiss.’ She passed away and the writer awakes, convinced that she certainly does not care to go and live in a nunnery. ‘Peradventure,’ the writer adds, ‘some man will say and so it really seems to him that I soon forsook the perfect way for a fantasy or a dream, but dream it was not, nor a fantasy, but unto me welcome information (gratius mene).’