Above all it was reiterated at visitation after visitation that no nun was to receive a man in her private chamber or to hold conversations with any stranger there and that certain conditions were to be observed in all conversations between the nuns and their visitors. Archbishop Rotherham’s injunction to Nunappleton in 1489 is typical:
Item yat none of your sustirs bring in, receyve or take any laie man, religiose or secular into yer chambre or any secret place, daye or knyght, not wt yaim in such private places to commyne ete or drynke wtout lycence of you, Prioresse[1275].
At Sopwell in 1338 an interesting addition was made to the ordinary rule:
And because it is seemly that ladies of religion in the presence of seculars should bear themselves according to rule in dress and in deportment, we will and ordain that none of you henceforward come to the parlour to talk with seculars if she have not her cowl and her headdress of kerchiefs and veil, according to the rule (son cool et son covert de cuverchiefs et de veil ordine), as beseemeth your religion. And none save honest persons shall be suffered to enter, and if such person wish to remain for a meal, let him eat in the parlour, by permission of the confessor, and on no account in the chambers without our express permission, or that of our own prior, if we be absent. Concerning the workmen, whom you need for your necessities, to wit tailors and furriers, we will for that such workmen a place be ordained near the cloister, where such workmen may do their works, and that they be by no means called into the chambers, nor into any private place. And let the workmen be such that no suspicion of evil may be roused by them[1276].
At Barking Peckham ordered in 1279 that no secular man or woman was to enter the nuns’ chambers, unless a nun were so ill that it was necessary to speak to her there, in which case a confessor, doctor, father or brother might have access to her[1277].
The rules laid down for the holding of conversations between nuns and visitors required that the permission of the head of the house should first be obtained, and that the meeting should take place in the locutorium or parlour, or occasionally in the abbess’s hall[1278], and in the hearing of “at least one other nun of sound character,” or more frequently two other nuns. Sometimes it was added that conversations were not to be too lengthy:
“Let it not be permitted to any nun,” wrote Peckham to Romsey, “to hold converse with any man save either in the parlour or in the side of the church next the cloister. And in order that all suspicion may henceforth be removed, we order that any nun about to speak with any man, save in the matter of confession, have with her two companions to hear her conversation, in order that they may either be edified by useful words, if these are forthcoming, or hinder evil words, lest evil communications corrupt good manners”[1279].
Alnwick’s injunction to Godstow in 1445 was couched in very similar terms:
That ye suffre none of your susters to speke wythe any seculere persone ne religiouse, but all onely in your halle in your presence and audience, or, by your specyalle licence asked and had, in the presence of two auncyent nunnes approuved in the religyon so that ye or the said two nunnes here and see what that say and do, and so that thaire spekyng to gedre be not longe but in shorte and few wordes[1280].
It was also attempted to exercise control over communication between the nuns and the world by means of messages and letters. Alnwick sent injunctions on this point to Langley, Markyate and St Michael’s, Stamford (“ne that ye suffre none of youre sustres to receyve ne sende owte noyre gyfte ne lettre, but ye see the gyftes and wyte what is contyened in the lettres”)[1281], and in 1432 Dean Kentwode wrote to St Helen’s, Bishopsgate: