that Felmersham’s wife with her whole household, and other women of mature age be utterly removed from the monastery within one year next to come, seeing that they are a cause of disturbance to the nuns and an occasion of bad example by reason of their attire and those who come to visit them[1302].
It is indeed easy to understand why bishops objected so much to the reception of these worldly women as boarders. If instead of Felmersham’s wife we read “the wife of Bath” all is explained. That lady was not a person whom a Prioress would lightly refuse; the list of her pilgrimages alone would give her the entrée into any nunnery. Smiling her gat-toothed smile and riding easily upon her ambler, she would enter the gates and alight in the court, and what a month of excitement would pass before she rode away again. It is hard not to suspect that it was she who introduced “caps of estate” (were they “as broad as is a buckler or a targe”?) to the Prioress of Ankerwyke and crested shoes to the nuns of Elstow; and it may have been she (alas) who taught some of them to step “the olde daunce”[1303]. Bad enough for their peace of mind to meet her at a pilgrimage, but much worse to have her settled in their midst, gossiping as endlessly as she gossiped in her prologue, and amplifying her reminiscences for a less sophisticated audience. This was one reason why the bishops made a special injunction against the reception of married women. The presence of men was open to even more serious objections. At Hampole in 1411 the Archbishop of York made the significant injunction that the Prioress was not to allow any corrodiarii or others to retain suspected women with them in the house[1304]. At St Michael’s, Stamford, in 1442 Alnwick discovered
that Richard Gray lately boarding in the priory together with his legitimate wife, procreavit prolem de domina Elizabetha Wylugby moniali ibidem, and boarded there until last Easter against the injunction of the lord (bishop)[1305].
So also at Easebourne in 1478 it was deposed that “a certain Sir John Senoke[1306] much frequented the priory or house, so that during some weeks he passed the night and lay within the priory or monastery every night, and was the cause ... of the ruin” of two nuns who had gone into apostasy at the instigation of various men[1307].
The reception of secular women as boarders without the consent of the diocesan was forbidden as early as 1222 by the Council of Oxford[1308] and the bishops henceforth pursued a steady policy of ejection:
“Since,” wrote Bishop Flemyng to Elstow, “from the manifest conjectures and assurances of our eyes we have learned that by reason of the stay of lodgers, especially of married persons, in the said monastery, the purity of religion (and) pleasantness of honest conversation and character, (which) in their fragrance in our judgment far surpass temporal goods, and the destruction of which far exceeds the waste of temporal wealth, have suffered grave shipwreck, and may suffer, as is likely, more heavily in future, we ordain, enjoin and charge you who are now abbess and the other several persons who shall be abbesses in the said monastery, under pain of deprivation, beside the other penalties written beneath, which likewise, if you do contrary to that which we command, it is our will that you incur thereupon, that henceforward you admit or allow to be admitted or received to lodge or stay within the limits of the cloister, no persons male or female, how honest soever they be, who are beyond the twelfth year of their age, nor any other persons soever, and married persons in special, without the site of the same monastery, unless you have procured express and special licence in the cases premised from ourselves or from our successors, who for the time being shall be bishops of Lincoln”[1309].
Always the reason given is that these boarders are a disturbance to conventual discipline:
“Item because religion has been much disturbed among you by reason of secular women lodging in your house,” wrote Bishop Gynewell to Heynings in 1351, “we forbid on pain of excommunication that after the feast of St Michael next to come any secular woman be allowed to remain in your Priory, save your servants who be necessary for your service”[1310].
“Also for as myche as we fynde detecte,” Alnwick wrote nearly a century later to the same house, “that for the multitude of sujournauntes wythe [yow] as wele wedded as other ofte tymes the qwyere and the rest of yowe in your obseruances is troubled, we charge [yow] pryoresse vnder payne of the sentence of cursyng that fro this day forthe ye receyve no sodeiyourauntes that pas[se a man] x yere, a woman xiii yere of age, wytheowten specyalle leve of hus or our successours bushops of Lincolne asked [and had]”[1311].
But the attempt to clear the convents of secular boarders was entirely unsuccessful. The bishops had two powerful forces against them, the desire of the impoverished nuns to make money and the desire of seculars for a quiet and inexpensive hostel; and the nuns continued to take boarders, in spite of a series of prohibitions. At Romsey, for instance, Peckham forbids boarders, c. 1284; in 1311 Bishop Woodlock has to repeat the prohibition “because of the continual sojourn of seculars we find the tranquillity of the nuns to be much disturbed and scandals to arise in your monastery”; in 1346 Edynton orders the removal of all secular persons within a month; in 1363 he has to write again, complaining that he has heard by public report that they have not obeyed his former letter and ordering them to remove all perhendinatrices within fifteen days[1312]. At Godstow injunctions to this effect are made in succession by Gynewell (1358), Gray (1432-4) and Alnwick (1445)[1313]; at Elstow by Gynewell (1359), Bokyngham (1387), Flemyng (1421-2) and Gray (c. 1432)[1314]. Moreover the bishops themselves were sometimes obliged to leave the nuns a loophole of escape, by excepting certain women from the general prohibition; thus Alnwick excepted the two widows Elizabeth Dymmok and Margaret Tylney at Stixwould[1315]; Brantyngham excepted “the noble woman Lady Elizabeth Courtenay, wife of the noble man Sir Hugh de Courtenay, Knight” at Canonsleigh (1391)[1316]; and Archbishop Rotherham at Nunappleton (1489) excepted children “or ellis old persones, by which availe biliklyhood may growe to your place”[1317]. Often too they were persuaded to grant licences to boarders, at the prayer of influential persons who must not be offended[1318]. The largest loophole which they were obliged by the pressure of circumstances to leave open was, however, the permission to receive small children for education[1319].