Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 Part 20

But the most detailed information as to the efforts of a conscientious bishop to enforce Boniface VIII's decree in England is contained in the Register of Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln. Dalderby was a new broom in the diocese and he determined to sweep clean. On June 17th, 1300, he directed a mandate to the archdeacons of his diocese ordering each to a.s.sociate with himself some other mature and honest man and to visit the religious houses in his own archdeaconry, explaining the terms of the new bull intelligibly to the nuns and ordering them to remain within their nunneries and to permit no one to enter the precincts contrary to the tenour of the decree, until the Bishop should be able to visit them in person; the heads of the houses were to be specially warned to carry out the decree and for better security a sealed copy of it was to be deposited in each house by the commissioners[1092].

In the course of the next two months Dalderby visited, either in person or by commissioners, Marlow, Burnham, Flamstead, Markyate, Elstow, Goring, Studley, G.o.dstow, Delapre (Northampton) and Sewardsley[1093]. At each house the bull was carefully explained to the nuns in the vulgar tongue, they were ordered to obey it and a copy was left with them. But this campaign was not unattended with difficulties. The nuns were bitterly opposed to the restriction of a freedom to which they were accustomed and which they heartily enjoyed, and an entry in Dalderby's Register, describing his visitation of Markyate, shows that even in the middle ages a bishop's lot was not a happy one:

On July 3rd, in the first year [of his consecration], the Bishop visited the house of nuns of Markyate and on the following day he caused to be recited before the nuns of the same [house] in chapter the statute put forth by the lord Pope Boniface VIII concerning the enclosure of nuns, explained it in the vulgar tongue and giving them a copy of the same statute under his seal, ordered them in virtue of obedience henceforth to observe it in the matter of enclosure and of all things contained in it, and especially to close all doors by which entrance is had into the inner places of their house and to permit no person, whether dishonest or honest, to enter in to them, without reasonable and manifest cause and licence from the person to whom [the granting of such a licence] pertains. Furthermore he specially enjoined the Prioress to observe the said statute in all its articles and to cause it to be observed by the others. But when the Bishop was going away, certain of the nuns, disobedient to these injunctions, hurled the said statute at his back and over his head, and as well the Prioress as the convent appeared to consent to those who threw it, following the bishop to the outer gate of the house and declaring unanimously that they were not content in any way to observe such a statute. On account of which, the Bishop, who was then directing his steps to Dunstable, returned the next day and having made inquisition as to the matters concerned in the said statute, imposed a penance on four nuns, whom he found guilty and on the whole convent for their consent, as is more fully contained in his letters of correction sent to the aforesaid house.

Afterwards he sent letters to the recalcitrant convent warning them for the third time (they had already been warned once by the Official of the Archdeacon of Bedford and a second time at the visitation which has just been described) to keep the new decree, on pain of the major excommunication, from which only the Pope could absolve them[1094].

There was opposition at other convents, too, though we hear of no more attacks on the episcopal shoulders. On August 19th Dalderby wrote as follows to Master Benedict de Feriby, rector of Broughton, Northants (a church in the presentation of the Abbess and Convent of Delapre):

It has come to our ears, by clamorous rumour, that some of the nuns of our diocese, spurning good obedience, slackening the reins of honesty and shamelessly casting aside the modesty of their s.e.x, despise the papal statute concerning enclosure directed to them, as well as our injunctions made to them upon the subject, and frequent cities and other public places outside their monasteries, and mingle in the haunts of men;

he proceeded to order Feriby to visit nunneries wherever he considered it expedient to do so, and to punish those who were guilty of breaking the statute, signifying to the Bishop, by a certain date, the names of all who had been accused of doing so, whether they had been found guilty or not[1095]. This mandate is no doubt in part explained by two other letters which he dispatched on the same day; one of them was directed to the Archdeacon of Northampton and set forth (in language which often repeats _verbatim_ the phrases of the papal bull) that at the Bishop's recent visitation of Delapre (Northampton) he had found three nuns in apostasy, having cast off their habits after being a long time professed, and left their house to live a secular life in the world[1096]. The other letter contains a sentence of the greater excommunication against a nun of Sewardsley, for similar conduct[1097]. These cases of apostasy were less rare than might be imagined; Dalderby had to deal with two others during his episcopate, one at St Michael's, Stamford[1098], and the other at Goring[1099]; and during the rule of his predecessor Sutton three nuns had escaped from G.o.dstow and one from Wothorpe[1100]. They ill.u.s.trate the undoubted truth that it was only the existence (already in the thirteenth century) of very grave disorders, which led reformers like Ottobon, Peckham and Boniface VIII to "beat the air" with such severe restrictions.

These three doc.u.ments, the Const.i.tutions of Ottobon and of Peckham and the Bull _Periculoso_, were the standard decrees on the subject of the claustration of nuns in England and were used as a model by visitors in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. William of Wykeham, for example, in the exceptionally full and formal injunctions which he sent to Romsey and to Wherwell in 1387 continually refers by name to Ottobon and to Peckham, and the wording of the Bull _Periculoso_ is followed _verbatim_ in the mandate directed by Bishop Grandisson of Exeter to Canonsleigh in 1329 and in the commission sent by his successor Bishop Brantyngham to two canons of Exeter in 1376, concerning the wanderings of the nuns of Polsloe. But a study of the visitation doc.u.ments of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries makes it clear that the nuns never really made any attempt to obey the regulations which imposed a strict enclosure upon them; and that the bishops upon whom fell the brunt of administering _Periculoso_ themselves allowed a considerable lat.i.tude, directing their efforts towards regulating the conditions under which nuns left their convents, rather than to keeping them within the precincts. _Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien_ and the steady opposition of the nuns forced a compromise upon their visitors. The canonist John of Ayton, reciting the decrees of Ottobon and of Boniface, with their injunction that bishops shall "cause them to be observed," exclaims

Cause to be observed! But surely there is scarce any mortal man who could do this: we must therefore here understand "so far as lieth in the prelate's power." For the nuns answer roundly to these statutes or to any others promulgated against their wantonness, saying "In truth the men who made these laws sat well at their ease, while they laid such burdens upon us by these hard and intolerable restrictions!"

Wherefore we see in fact that these statutes are a dead letter or are ill-kept at the best. Why, then, did the holy fathers thus labour to beat the air? Yet indeed their toil is none the less to their own merit; for we look not to that which is but to that which of justice should be[1101].

Dalderby's experience at Markyate shows that John of Ayton's picture was not too highly coloured, and since it was impossible to enforce "hard and intolerable restrictions" without at least a measure of co-operation from the nuns themselves, the bishops took the only course open to them in trying to minimise the evil. Their expedients deserve some study, and as a typical set of episcopal injunctions dealing with journeys by nuns outside their cloisters it will suffice to quote those sent by Walter Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, to the nunneries of Polsloe and Canonsleigh. These rules were drawn up in 1319, only twenty years after the publication of the Bull _Periculoso_, but they are already far removed from the strict ideal of Boniface VIII. Stapeldon was a practical statesman and he evidently realised that the enforcement of strict enclosure was impossible in a diocese where the nuns had been used to considerable freedom and where all the counties of the West saw them upon their holidays.

The clauses dealing with the subject run as follows:

_De visitacione amicorum._ No lady of religion is to go and visit her friends outside the priory, but if it be once a year at the most and then for reasonable cause and by permission; and then let her have a companion professed in the same religion, not of her own choice, but whomsoever the Prioress will a.s.sign to her and she who is once a.s.signed to her for companion shall not be a.s.signed the next time, so that each time a lady goes to visit her friends her companion is changed; and if she have permission to go to certain places to visit her friends, let her not go to other places without new permission.

_De absencia Dominarum et regressu earum._ Item, when any lady of religion eats at Exeter, or in another place near by, for reasonable cause and by permission, whenever she can she ought to return the same or the following day and each time let her have a companion and a chaplain, clerk or serving-man of good repute a.s.signed by the prioress, who shall go, remain and return with them and otherwise they shall not go; and then let them return speedily to the house, as they be commanded, and let them not go again to Exeter, wandering from house to house, as they have oftentimes done, to the dishonour of their state and of religion. _De Dominabus "Wakerauntes"_ [i.e.

_vagantibus_]. Item, a lady who goes a long distance to visit her friends, in the aforesaid form, should return to the house within a month at the latest, or within a shorter s.p.a.ce if it be a.s.signed her by the Prioress, having regard to the distance or proximity of the place, where dwell the friends whom she is going to visit, but a longer term ought the Prioress never to give her, save in the case of death, or of the known illness of herself or of her near friends.

_Pena Dominarum Vagancium._ And if a lady remain without for a long time or in any other manner than in the form aforesaid, let her never set foot outside the outer gate of the Priory for the next two years; and nevertheless let her be punished otherwise for disobedience, in such manner as is laid down by the rule and observances of the order of St Benet for the fault; and leave procured by the prayer of her friends ought not to excuse her from this penance[1102]. No lady of your religion, professed or unprofessed, shall come to the external offices outside the door of the cloister to be bled or for any other feigned excuse, save it be by leave of the Prioress or of the Subprioress, and then for a fit reason and let her have with her another professed lady of your religion, to the end that each of them may see and hear that which the other shall say and do[1103].

The main lines along which the bishops attempted to regulate the movements of the nuns outside their houses appear clearly in these injunctions. It was their invariable practice to forbid unlicensed visits, in accordance with the Benedictine rule; no nun might leave her house without a licence from her superior and such licences were not to be granted too easily[1104] or with any show of favouritism[1105]; sometimes the licence of the Bishop was required as well[1106]. Such licences were not to be granted often (once a year is usually the specified rule)[1107] and the bishops sometimes tried to confine the visits of nuns to parents or to near relatives[1108]. An attempt was also made to regulate the length of the visits. A maximum number of days was fixed and the nun was to be punished if she outstayed her leave[1109], except when she was detained by illness. This maximum differed from time to time and from place to place.

Bishop Stapeldon, it will be recalled, allowed the nuns in his diocese to remain away for a month and longer; how he reconciled such laxity with his conscience and the Bull _Periculoso_ is not plain. Archbishop Greenfield, at the same date, permitted his Yorks.h.i.+re nuns a maximum visit of fifteen days[1110], and in 1358 Bishop Gynewell of Lincoln forbade the nuns of G.o.dstow to remain away for longer than three weeks[1111]. When Alnwick visited the diocese of Lincoln in 1440-5, he made careful inquiry into the length of the visits paid by the nuns and at Goring, Gracedieu, Markyate, Nuncoton and St Michael's, Stamford, he found that the superior usually gave the nuns licence to remain away a week, though the Prioress of Studley gave exeats for three or four days only[1112]. A week does not seem a very lengthy absence, but Alnwick would have lifted horrified eyebrows at the action of his predecessor Gynewell, for he ordered the superiors "that ye gyfe no sustere of yowres leue to byde wythe thaire frendes whan thai visite thaym, overe thre dayes in helthe, and if thai falle seke, that he do fecche thaym home wythe yn s.e.x dayes"[1113]. He shared the views of an even stricter reformer, Peckham[1114]. It was often stipulated that the nuns, whether they went on long or on short journeys, were to go only to the place which they had received permission to visit[1115]; and sometimes they were specially told that if they were obliged to spend the night away from their friends they were to do so, whenever possible, in another nunnery[1116]. But they were strictly forbidden to harbour in the houses of monks, friars, or canons[1117]. On short journeys, or on errands which could be speedily accomplished, they were forbidden to eat or drink out of their monasteries or to make unnecessary delay, but were to return at once and in no case to be out after nightfall[1118]. Moreover it was invariably ordered that a nun was on no account to leave her house, without another nun of mature age and good reputation who would be a constant witness to her behaviour[1119]; and both were to wear monastic dress[1120].

The chief aim of the ecclesiastical authorities was, however, to secure that leave of absence should be granted only for a reasonable cause. All conciliar and other injunctions for enclosure added a saving clause of "manifest necessity" and this gave an opening for an infinite variety of interpretation. The nuns, indeed, could fall back upon a threefold line of defence against the intolerable restrictions. They could appeal to the undoubted fact that strict and perpetual enclosure went beyond the requirements of their rule. They could adduce the custom by which, as long as their memory ran, nuns had been allowed to leave their convents under conditions. Finally they could with a little skill, stretch the "manifest necessity" clause to cover almost all their wanderings. Thus it happened that in enforcing the Bull _Periculoso_ the visitors of the later middle ages found themselves obliged to define, more or less widely according to local conditions, what was and what was not a reasonable cause, and to combat one after another certain specific excuses put forward by the nuns.

The sternest reformers were agreed that enclosure might be broken, when the lives of the nuns were endangered. Fire, flood, famine, war and the ruin of their buildings were universally accepted as reasonable excuses[1121]. A nun could leave her house to be superior of another nunnery (a not infrequent practice), or to found new houses or to establish reform elsewhere.[1122] Moreover when a culprit stood in need of condign punishment, she might be and often was sent to another house to do penance among strangers, who would neither sympathise with her nor run the risk of being contaminated by her[1123].

At this point, however, agreement ceased. The question of illness was beset with difficulties. It was agreed that a nun might leave her house, if she suffered from some contagious disease which threatened the health of her sisters[1124], but opinions differed as to whether any relaxation was to be allowed in less severe cases, when only her own health was in question. The visitors sometimes issued licences for nuns to leave their houses in order to recruit their health; thus in 1303 Josiana de Anelaby, Prioress of Swine, had licence to absent herself from her house on account of ill-health[1125], in 1314 Archbishop Greenfield licenced a nun of Yedingham, who was suffering from dropsy, to visit friends and relatives with honest company, for the sake of improving her health[1126] and in 1368 Joan Furmage, Abbess of Shaftesbury, actually received a dispensation to leave the abbey for a year, and reside in her manors, for the sake of air and recreation[1127]. It is significant that the _Novellae Definitiones_ of the Cistercian Order in 1350 strictly forbade nuns to go to the public baths outside their houses, which shows that they had been in the habit of doing so[1128]. But strict reformers were always opposed to such licences, and the specific prohibition of exeats for purposes of cures and convalescences was common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the practice had become almost universal in France[1129].

Again there was some difference of opinion as to whether a nun might leave her house, in order to enter one professing a stricter rule. Such a desire was in theory laudable and by Innocent III's decretal _Licet_ the principle was laid down that a bishop was bound _de jure_ to grant leave for migration "sub praetextu majoris religionis et ut vitam ducant arctiorem," as long as the motive of the pet.i.tioner was love of G.o.d and not merely _temeritas_[1130]. But _temeritas_ was often to be suspected; women, as St Francis de Sales complained, were full of whimsies[1131]; ennui, fancy, a craving for change, a friend in another house, might masquerade as a desire to lead a stricter life elsewhere. Moreover a nun who desired to remove herself was not unlikely to encounter opposition from her own convent. An interesting case of such opposition occurred at Gracedieu in 1447-8. Margaret Crosse, a nun of that house, desired to be transferred to the Benedictine Priory of Ivinghoe "of a straiter order of religion and observance, not for a frivolous or empty reason, but that she may lead a life altogether and entirely harder." She obtained letters of admission from the Prioress of Ivinghoe, but when she came to ask for leave to migrate, the Prioress and Convent of Gracedieu refused to release her from her obedience and confiscated the letters. Bishop Alnwick then wrote to Gracedieu, requiring the Prioress either to let her go, or to furnish him with a reason for their refusal. The Prioress and Convent replied with some acerbity. Margaret, they said, desired to lead a life of less and not of more restraint and her real object was to join her sister, who was at that time Prioress of Ivinghoe, if indeed her request were not a mere pretext for apostasy; for

the said Margaret Crosse has caused and commanded certain goods, property and jewels belonging to our priory to be stealthily conveyed by certain of the said Margaret's friends in the flesh from our priory to foreign and privy places, and to such conveyance done in her name has lent her authority, with the purpose, as is strongly suspected, of taking advantage of the darkness one night ... and transferring herself utterly and entirely of her own motion to places wholly strange, without having or asking and against our will[1132].

Moreover had the holy father considered the merits of their house and the loss to it, if Margaret seceded?

Inasmuch as in our priory according to the observances of the rule G.o.d is served and quire is ruled both in reading and singing and chanting the psalms and toiling in the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth at the canonical hours by day and night, while we also patiently endure grievous cares, fastings and watchings and further are instant together in contemplation, even as the holy Spirit designs to give us His inspiration. And the said Margaret Crosse, who is sufficiently trained in such regular observances and is very needful for the service of G.o.d in our priory aforesaid, wherein such regular observances and contemplations are not so fully kept as in our aforesaid priory ... would give herself to secular business in all matters, rather than to such contemplation or observance of the rule; and thereout shall arise to us and our priory not only grievous ill repute, but also no small loss, especially in that such chantings and regular observances would in likelihood suffer damage by reason of the said Margaret's absence[1133].

There is an air of verisimilitude about the injured convent's argument, though the visitation report of 1440-1 does not show them as the strict and pious community which they claim to be; but what came of the affair we do not know.

One plea to lead a stricter life was, however, less open to suspicion; that was the request to be enclosed as an anch.o.r.ess. Sometimes an anch.o.r.ess had a companion, sometimes a servant[1134], but in any case her life was stricter than that of a nun, for she devoted herself to constant prayer and was bound to remain always in her little cell, which was usually attached to a church. There are several instances of nuns who left their communities to lead a solitary life in some anchorage. On one occasion when the nuns of Coldingham had been dispersed by the Scots, Beatrice de Hodesak left her convent and with the permission of the Archbishop and of her Prioress retired to an anchorage at St Edmund's Chapel, near the bridge of Doncaster; another anch.o.r.ess Sibil de Lisle was already living there (c. 1300)[1135]. Twenty years later Archbishop Melton gave Margaret de Punchardon, nun of Arden, permission to be enclosed, as an anch.o.r.ess, in the cell attached to St Nicholas' Hospital at Beverley, in company with Agnes Migregose [? Mucegrose, i.e. Musgrave] already a recluse there[1136]. The register of Bishop Gray of Lincoln contains an interesting commission (1435-6) addressed to the Abbot of Thornton, bidding him enclose Beatrice Franke, a nun of Stainfield, in the parish church of Winterton, together with the Abbot's certificate that he has examined her and found her steadfast in her purpose and therefore

shutting up the aforesaid sister Beatrice in a building and enclosure constructed on the north side of the church and making fast the door thereof with bolts, bars and keys, we left her in peace and calm of spirit, as it is believed by the more part, in the joy of her Saviour[1137].

Some nunneries themselves had anchorages attached, for instance Davington[1138], Polesworth[1139] and Carrow; and Julian of Norwich, anch.o.r.ess at the parish church of Carrow in the fourteenth century, was one of the most famous mystical writers of the middle ages[1140].

Anch.o.r.esses do not seem always to have been content with their life and the strict preliminary examination of Beatrice Franke "concerning her withdrawal from the life of a community to the solitary life, concerning the length of time wherein she had continued in this purpose, concerning the perils of them that choose such a life and afterwards repent thereof"

was probably a necessary precaution. The register of Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln contains a mandate to the nuns of Marlow, to readmit one such faint-heart, Agnes de Littlemore, a lay sister of the house, who had left it to become an anch.o.r.ess and had repented of her decision[1141].

Illness and the desire to embrace a stricter rule were exceptional causes for a temporary breach of enclosure. The great difficulty in administering _Periculoso_ arose over more usual pretexts. The least objectionable occasion for leaving cloistral precincts was when convent business demanded it and this happened frequently to the superior and the treasuress or cellaress. The journeys which were frequently taken by the head of a house have already been considered[1142]; but the obedientiaries also found much scope for wandering in the duties of their offices. The treasuress and cellaress might be obliged day by day to visit, in the course of their duties, offices and buildings which lay outside the walls, and if they were not sober minded women there were ample opportunities for lingering and gossiping with secular persons and with servants. The Const.i.tutions of the Legate Ottobon in 1268 attempted to minimise this danger by enacting that no nun was to go into the different _officinae_, except those whose offices rendered it necessary to do so, and they were never to go unaccompanied[1143]. The complaints brought by the nuns of Gracedieu in 1440-1 against their self-confident cellaress Margaret Belers show that some such regulation was necessary; it was said that she was accustomed to visit all the offices by herself, even the granges and other places where menfolk were working, and that she went there (good zealous housewife!) "over early in the morning before daybreak"; whereupon Bishop Alnwick ordered the Prioress to "suffre none of thaym, officiere ne other, to go to any house of office wythe owte the cloystere, but if ther be an other nunne approveded in religyone a.s.signed to go wythe hire, eyther to be wytnesse of others conversatyon"[1144]. Convent business, however, frequently took the officials further afield than outlying granges and they undertook journeys hardly less often than did the head of the house.

The Cistercian statutes of 1256-7, in forbidding nuns to leave their convents, make exception "for the Abbess with two or at most three nuns and for the cellaress with one, who are permitted to go forth to look after the business of the house or for other inevitable causes"[1145]. The evidence of account rolls is invaluable in this connection and shows us the nuns going marketing or seeking t.i.thes from recalcitrant farmers, or interviewing tenants about rent. The Chambress of Syon went to London three times in 1536, doubtless to buy the russets, white cloth, kerseys, friezes and hollands which figure so largely in her account and to take the spectacles to be mended; she was a thrifty lady and her expenses were only 6_d._, 2_d._ and 20_d._ respectively. Her sister the cellaress also went to London that year and spent 6_d._ on the jaunt[1146]. The nuns of St Michael's, Stamford, sometimes took long journeys on convent business; in 1372-3 Dame Katherine Fitzaleyn went "to London and other places about our t.i.thes," at the heavy cost of 15_s._ 8_d._[1147] From Stamford to London was a considerable journey, but the convent could not afford to lose its t.i.thes. The same business took Dame Katherine to the capital another year; she hired three horses for six days and a serving man to go with them and she took with her Dame Ida, in accordance with the regulations; the whole cost of the expedition was 2. 11_s._, a very large sum, and we will hope that the t.i.thes brought in more than enough to cover it[1148].

Sometimes, again, nuns left their houses to take part in ecclesiastical ceremonies, such as processions. There does not seem much harm in the whole convent sallying forth on these solemn occasions and indeed bishops sometimes gave orders that they were to do so. In 1321 Rigaud de a.s.serio, Bishop of Winchester, sent a letter to the Prior of St Swithun's monastery "to pray for peace, with solemn processions"; he was to cause the Abbot and Convent of Hyde, the Abbess and Convent of St Mary's, Winchester, and all the other religious houses and parish priests of Winchester to come together in the Cathedral and then to proceed in solemn procession through the town[1149]. The strictest disciplinarians, however, looked with suspicion even upon religious processions and sought to keep nuns within the precincts of their cloister. Ottobon's Const.i.tutions contain a proviso that nuns are not to go out for public processions, but are to hold their processions within the bounds of their own house[1150] and the prohibition was repeated by Thomas of Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, writing to Lymbrook in 1277[1151], and by William of Wykeham (who specifically based his words upon Ottobon), writing to Romsey in 1387[1152]. A century later the custom was forbidden in France at the provincial Council of Sens, in 1460 and again in 1485, where it was referred to as "a dangerous and evil abuse"[1153]. Some explanation of this severity, which seems excessive, may perhaps be gleaned from an injunction sent by Bishop Longland to Elstow in 1531:

Moreover forasmoche as the ladye abbesse and covent of that house be all oon religious bodye unite by the profession and rules of holy sainct benedicte, and is nott conuenyent ne religious to be disseuerd or separate, we will and Inioyne that frome hensforth noon of the said abbesse seruauntes nor no ther secular person or persones, whatsoeuer he or they be, goo in eny procession before the said abbesse betwene hir and hir said covent, undre payne of exccommunycacon, and that the ladye abbesse ne noon of hir successours hereafter be ladde by the arme or otherwise in eny procession ther as in tymes paste hath been used, undre the same payne[1154].

Other religious ceremonies of a less formal nature occasionally called nuns, in a body or individually, out of their cloister. For instance some of the greater abbeys were accustomed to receive into their fraternity benefactors and persons of distinction, both men and women, whom they wished to honour, nor were kings too proud to call themselves the _confratres_ of Bury St Edmunds or St Albans and to receive from the monks the kiss of peace[1155]. The ceremony took place with great solemnity in the chapter-house and it is recorded that on one occasion (in 1428), when the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Gloucester and their households were received into the Fraternity of St Albans, Cecilia Paynel and Margaret Ewer, nuns of Sopwell, were also admitted. At another time the Prioress of Sopwell, together with a certain John Crofton and his wife, were received and gave the abbey a pittance and wine and a sum of money; while on another occasion still the Prioress and another nun of St Mary de Pre were similarly made _consorores_ of the abbey, and marked their appreciation by the gift of a frontal for the high altar in the lady chapel[1156]. Sopwell and St Mary de Pre were dependents of St Albans and it is not improbable that their superiors and seniors often visited it on great occasions such as this; certainly the great magnates of the realm often called at Sopwell on their way from St Albans, and nuns of the house figure in its book of benefactors as donors of embroidery to the church[1157], while in matters of government the Abbot always kept a tight hand upon both houses. Again nuns sometimes attended the funerals of great folk; not only priors and prioresses, but also canons and nuns were expected to be present at Sir Thomas c.u.mberworth's funeral and "month's-mind"[1158] and in an account roll of St Michael's, Stamford, there is an entry "paye a nos compaygnounes alaunt a Leycestre al enterment la d.u.c.h.esse ij s"[1159].

Attendance at religious processions and ceremonies might be, and attendance at funerals undoubtedly was, regarded by the more moderate and reasonable visitors as a legitimate reason for going outside the precincts of the cloister. One other excuse of the same nature, however, sometimes took a nun away from her convent for a considerable length of time and was never looked upon with any favour by the authorities of the church. Yet it is an excuse which we have the best of reasons for recognising, which is, indeed, bound up with all that most people know of the medieval nun--for Chaucer has taught us that nuns were wont to go upon pilgrimages. All pilgrimages did not, indeed, involve as long a journey as that taken by Madame Eglentyne. The ladies of Nuncoton could make a pilgrimage to St Hugh of Lincoln, without being away for more than a night and the ladies of Blackborough would not have to follow for a long distance the milky way to Walsingham[1160]. Nevertheless it is unnecessary to go further than Chaucer to understand why it was that medieval bishops offered a strenuous opposition to the practice; one has only to remember some of the folk in whose company the Prioress travelled and some of the tales they told. If one could be certain that she rode with her nun and her priests, or at least between the Knight and the poor Parson! But there were also the Miller and the Summoner and, worst of all, that cheerful and engaging sinner the Wife of Bath. If one could be certain that she listened only to the tale of Griselda, or of Palamon and Arcite, or yawned over Melibeus, and that she fell discreetly to the rear when the company laughed over the "nyce cas of Absalon and hende Nicholas"! If one could be certain that it was to the Wife of Bath alone that the Merchant made his apology

Ladies, I prey yow that ye be nat wrooth; I can nat glose, I am a rude man.

Certainly the Wife of Bath was a host in herself, but the plural is ominous and the two nuns were the only other ladies in the company. The sterner moralists of the middle ages bear out Chaucer's picture of a typical pilgrimage with most unchaucerian denunciation[1161]. Pilgrims got drunk at times, as drunk as the Miller, "so that vnnethe up-on his hors he sat," on the very first day of the journey, as drunk as the "sory palled gost" of a cook, when the cavalcade reached that

litel toun Which that y-cleped is Bob-up-&-doun Under the Blee in Canterbury weye.

Again, there are pilgrims, says Etienne de Bourbon, "who when they visit holy places sing lecherous lays, whereby they inflame the hearts of such as hear them and kindle the fire of lechery"; and like an echo rise the well-known words:

Ful loude he song "Come hider, love, to me,"

This somnour bar to him a stif burdoun Was never trompe of half so greet a soun,

and shrill and clear sound the miller's bagpipes, bringing the pilgrims out of town[1162]. No place for a cloistered nun was the inn though one feels that mine host's wife, "big in arme," would have kept the Tabard respectable, whatever might be said of the Chequer-on-the-Hoop. No place for her the road to Canterbury, nor yet Canterbury itself, where the monk with the holy-water sprinkler was so anxious for a peep at her face and where she hobn.o.bbed over wine in the parlour, with the hostess and the Wife of Bath[1163].

Madame Eglentyne, for all her simplicity, must have circ.u.mvented her Bishop before she got there. For the Bishops were quite clear in their minds that pilgrimages for nuns were to be discouraged. They were of Langland's way of thinking:

Right so, if thow be religious, renne thow neuere ferther, To Rome ne to Rochemadore, but as thi reule techeth, And holde the vnder obedyence, that heigh wey is to heuene[1164].

As early as 791 the Council of Frejus had forbidden the practice[1165] and in 1195 the Council of York decreed "In order that the opportunity of wandering about may be taken from them [the nuns], we forbid them to take the road of pilgrimage"[1166]. In 1318 Archbishop Melton strictly forbade the nuns of Nunappleton to leave their house "by reason of any vow of pilgrimage, which they might have taken; if any had taken such vows she was to say as many psalters as it would have taken days to perform the pilgrimage so rashly vowed"[1167]. One has a melancholy vision of Madame Eglentyne saying psalters interminably through her "tretys" nose, instead of jogging along so gaily with her motley companions and telling so prettily her tale of little St Hugh. But the nuns of Nunappleton retained their taste for pilgrimages and nearly two centuries later (in 1489) we find Archbishop Rotherham admonis.h.i.+ng their successors:

yat ye prioresse lycence none of your susters to goe pilgremage or visit yer frendes w{t}oute a grete cause, and yen such a sister lycencyate by you to have w{t} her oon of ye most sadd and well disposid sistirs to she come home agayne[1168].

At Wix, twenty years later, the nuns were forbidden to undertake pilgrimages without the consent of the diocesan[1169], and in 1531 Bishop Longland wrote to the Prioress of Nuncoton:

Forasmoche as by your negligent sufferaunce dyuers of your susters hath wandred a brode in the world, some under the pretence of pylgrymage, some to see ther frends, and otherwise whereby hath growen many Inconuenyences insolent behauiours and moche slaunder, as well to your house as to those susters, as by the texts of my said visitation doth euydently appere, I chardge you lady priores that from hensforthe ye neyther licence ne suffre eny your susters to goo out of your monastery,

without good cause and company of a "wise sobre and discrete suster," and an injunction not to "tary out of the monastery in the nighte tyme"[1170].

But most significant of all is a case which occurred at the little Cistercian priory of Wykeham in Yorks.h.i.+re in the fifteenth century. In 1450 Archbishop Kemp wrote to the Prioress, bidding her readmit an apostate nun Katherine Th.o.r.n.yf:

who, seduced by the Angel of Darkness, under the colour of a pilgrimage in the time of the Jubilee, without leave of the archbishop, or officials or even of the prioress, set out on a journey to the court of Rome, in the company of another nun of the house, who, as it was reported, had gone the way of all flesh and on whose soul the Archbishop prayed for mercy. After the death of this nun, Katherine Th.o.r.n.yf had lived in sin with a married man in London.

Then she had been moved to penitence, after who knows what agony of soul, and had gone to the Archbishop seeking absolution; and so the prodigal, weary of her husks, came back to the nunnery she had left[1171]. The melancholy tale is borne out by all we know about medieval pilgrimages.

Centuries before--in 774--an Archbishop of Milan had written to an Archbishop of Canterbury, advising that the Synod should prohibit women and nuns from travelling to Rome, on account of the dangers and temptations of the journey, "for very few are the cities in Lombardy ...

France ... Gaul, wherein there is not to be found a prost.i.tute of English race"[1172]; and the trouvere Rutebeuf, in the thirteenth century, spoke with less pity and a more biting satire of the pilgrimages of French nuns to Paris and Montmartre[1173].

Excursions on convent business or for attendance at ecclesiastical ceremonies (other than pilgrimages) were regarded as legitimate, though strict disciplinarians sought to restrict them to occasions of real urgency. But for the most part we hear about journeys undertaken for pleasure and not for business, or at any rate the elastic term business is stretched to cover some very pleasant wandering in the world and much hobn.o.bbing with friends. In spite of the Bull _Periculoso_[1174] bishops were never able to prevent nuns from going to stay with their friends, and sometimes the ladies made very long journeys for this purpose. Bishop Stapeldon, for instance, ordained that when the nuns of Canonsleigh in Devon went to visit their friends "in Somerset, Dorset, Devons.h.i.+re or in Cornwall" they might not stay for longer than a month; but if they went outside these four counties the Abbess might allow them to stay longer still, having regard to the distance of their destination and to the time which would be spent in travelling[1175]. The bishops indeed were forced to regard such visits as "reasonable occasions" for a breach of enclosure, and their efforts, as has already been shown, were confined to regulating rather than to stopping the practice; for the relatives of the nuns, as well as the ladies themselves, would have been the first to resent any interference with their visits. Whatever might be the theory of the Church on the subject, blood was thicker than holy water; family affections and family interests persisted in the cloister and the nun was welcomed at many a hospitable board for her family's sake as well as for her own. All this seems natural and obvious today and few would think the worse of the nuns for their opposition to the stricter form of enclosure. Nevertheless the authorities of the Church had reason for their distrust of these absences from the convent. Once away from the cloister and staying in a private house there was nothing to keep a nun from joining in the secular revelries of friends, and though her behaviour might be exemplary the convent rule aimed at keeping her unspotted even by temptation. An anecdote related by Erasmus in his dialogue "Ichthyophagia" shows that the danger of allowing nuns to visit their friends might be a real one. Two nuns had gone to stay with their kinsfolk, and at supper