The ancient house of Amesbury fell into evil ways in the twelfth century. In 1177 its abbess was said to have borne three children and its nuns were notorious for their evil lives, whereupon the convent was dissolved, most of the nuns being placed in other houses, and Amesbury was then reconstituted as a cell of Fontevrault and peopled with a prioress and twenty-four nuns, brought over from that house[1420]. Queen Eleanor, widow of Henry III, took the veil there and by her influence Edward I allowed his daughter Mary to become a nun there, together with twelve noble maidens[1421]. But the sin of Guinevere haunted it. About Mary herself there is an ancient unexplained scandal, for in a papal mandate she is declared to have been seduced by John de Warenne, the rather disreputable Earl of Surrey[1422]; and she seems to have been as much out of her house as in it, for she constantly visited court and went on pilgrimages. Later still the papal benevolence was exerted on behalf of Margaret Greenfield, nun of Amesbury, who had borne a child after her profession (1398)[1423], and Cecily Marmyll, who “after having lived laudably for some time in the said monastery, allowed herself to be carnally known by two secular priests and had offspring by each of them” (1424)[1424]. These ladies were doubtless well born, with wealthy friends, who could afford to petition the Pope and buy restoration to the monastic dignities and offices, which they had lost by their fault. The story of Godstow is very similar. There seems to have been some scandal about the morals of the subprioress in 1284, but Peckham announced that he did not believe a word of it[1425]. In 1290, however, a nun of noble birth was (as we saw) carried off from her carriage; and she and two others were apostate in the following year. Another apostate repented and was absolved in 1339. In 1432 a nun was found by the bishop with child and in 1445 Dame Alice Longspey indulged in the escapades already described with an Oxford priest and a monk of Eynsham. All through the career of the convent, it was continually being warned against the recourse of scholars from Oxford. Both Amesbury and Godstow enjoyed fame and good repute and at the latter children were received for education. Their history shows that even the most aristocratic and popular houses fell sometimes on evil days and sometimes sheltered unworthy inmates.
It is of considerable interest to study the condition of all the nunneries in a particular part of the country at a particular date. An analysis of the references to the Yorkshire houses has been made elsewhere[1426]; here we may study a diocese in which the conditions of daily life were less abnormal than they were on the Scottish border. A rather imperfect view of the state of the diocese of Lincoln between the years 1290 and 1360 may be gleaned from the registers of Bishops Sutton, Dalderby, Burghersh and Gynewell; it is imperfect because there are not many visitation records, and information has chiefly to be derived from episcopal mandates for the return of apostates[1427], which leave us with little knowledge of the internal discipline of houses from which nuns did not happen to run away. The names of eleven out of the four and thirty[1428] nunneries of the diocese occur in connection with apostates during these years, six Benedictine, four Augustinian and one Cluniac. The apostasy of three Godstow nuns in 1290 has already been described[1429]. There was an apostate at Wothorpe in 1296[1430] and two years later a nun of Harrold was found guilty of unchastity[1431]. Apostates are also mentioned from Sewardsley in 1300[1432], from Goring in 1309 and again in 1358[1433], from Markyate in 1336[1434] and from St Leonard’s, Grimsby, in 1337[1435]. At Burnham there is the case of Margery Hedsor, who was excommunicated at intervals for apostasy between 1311 and 1317[1436]. St Mary in the Meadows (Delapré), Northampton, seems to have been in a bad state, for in 1300 three nuns, said to have been professed for some years, were excommunicated for leaving their convent and living in carnal sin in the world, and in 1311 there was another apostate from the house[1437]. St Michael’s, Stamford, provides the curious story of Agnes de Flixthorpe, and the almost equally tragic case of Agnes Bowes, ex-Prioress of Wothorpe, all of whose fellows had died in the Black Death and whose house had therefore been annexed to St Michael’s, Stamford, in 1354. She was evidently unable to settle down in her new home and she ran away from it five years later[1438]. In the plague year 1349, Ella de Mounceaux, a nun of Nuncoton, who had obtained leave of absence and instead of returning had become the mistress of John Haunsard, appeared with tears before the Bishop and begged to be sent back to her house[1439].
This list of apostates is, as has been said, necessarily incomplete and gives no details as to the state of the nunneries absolved. A much more exact impression can be gained of the diocese a century later, during the twenty years between 1430 and 1450, when Bishops Gray and Alnwick were visiting the religious houses under their control; Alnwick’s Register is particularly valuable, since the verbal evidence of the nuns is preserved. If we take Gray’s Register first, we find serious charges of general misconduct made against three houses, Markyate and Flamstead in 1431 and Sewardsley in 1432. The Bishop wrote to a canon of Lincoln that
abundant rumour and loud whisperings have brought to our hearing that in the priories of the Holy Trinity of the Wood by Markyate and of St Giles by Flamstead ... certain things forbidden, hateful, guilty and contrary to holy religion and regular discipline are daily done and brought to pass in damnable wise by the said prioresses, nuns and other, servingmen and agents of the said places; by reason whereof the good report of the same places is set in jeopardy, the brightness and comeliness of religion in the same persons are grievously spotted, inasmuch as the whole neighbourhood is in commotion herefrom.
The canon is accordingly told to inquire into the scandals and punish delinquents[1440]. Unfortunately the result of the inquiry has not been preserved; three years later the Bishop deputed another commissioner to inquire into the condition of Markyate and from his letters of commission it is plain that he had himself visited the house, but that the Prioress and sisters had managed to conceal their misdeeds from him. Since then he had learnt that one of the nuns, Katherine Tyttesbury, had been guilty of immorality and apostasy and that the Prioress herself had failed to obey his injunctions. The commissioner was therefore ordered to go to Markyate, absolve the apostate if she made submission and, if necessary, depose the Prioress. The result of the inquiry was that the Prioress, Denise Loweliche, was charged with having consorted with Richard, the steward of the Priory, for five years and more, up to the time of his death, so that “public talk and rumour during the said time were busy touching the premises in the town of Markyate and other places, neighbouring and distant, in the diocese of Lincoln and elsewhere.” The Prioress denied the charge and begged to be allowed to clear herself, so the commissioner ordered her, in addition to her own oath, to find five out of her ten nuns as compurgatresses, i.e. to swear to her innocence. She sought in vain for help among her sisters; at the appointed hour she begged for an extension of time and the commissioner granted her this boon, “so that she might be able meanwhile to communicate and take counsel with her sisters,” and also “of a more liberal grace,” declared himself ready to take the word of four nuns on her behalf. The picture of the wretched Prioress going from nun to nun, imploring each to forswear herself, with heaven knows what threats and entreaties, is a melancholy one. Not even four nuns could be found to swear to her innocence, so clear and notorious was her guilt, and she laid her formal resignation in the hands of the bishop[1441].
The other nunnery against which a general charge of immorality was made by the Bishop in 1434 was the Cistercian house of Sewardsley, of which he said that the Prioress and nuns,
following the enticements of the flesh and abandoning the path of religion and casting aside the restraint of all modesty and chastity, are giving their minds to debauchery, committing in damnable wise in public and as it were, in the sight of all the people, acts of adultery, incest, sacrilege and fornication[1442].
The report of the inquiry held has not been preserved, but there was obviously something seriously amiss. Gray had also to deal with individual cases of immorality at three other houses. Already at Elstow in 1390 Archbishop Courtenay on his metropolitan visitation had made a general injunction that
no nun convicted or publicly defamed of the crime of incontinency, be deputed to any office within the monastery and especially to that of gatekeeper, until it be sufficiently established that she has made purgation of her innocence[1443],
an injunction repeated verbatim by Bishop Flemyng of Lincoln in 1421[1444]. Now in 1432 Gray found that a nun named Pernell had been “several times guilty of fleshly lapse” and was leading an apostate life in secular dress outside the house; which speaks but ill for the moral state of an important abbey[1445]. In the same year he found one of the nuns of Godstow enceinte[1446], and in 1433 inquiry showed that Ellen Cotton, nun of Heynings, had recently had a child[1447].