Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535

by Eileen Power

The worst cases found by Alnwick when he visited the religious houses of the diocese ten years later have already been described and the evidence of his register can be summarised briefly. All was well at Elstow, Heynings and Markyate; Dame Pernell [Gauthorpe], Dame Ellen Cotton and Dame Katherine Tyttesbury were all dwelling peaceably among their sisters; even the disreputable Denise Loweliche was still, in spite of her resignation, ruling as Prioress of Markyate. An echo of old difficulties remained, however, at this last house and one nun begged the Bishop to speak to the Prioress, “to the end that she take better heed to the nuns who have previously erred, so that they be kept more strictly from erring again than is wont”[1448]; evidently discipline was not strict. At Godstow disorders had not yet ceased. The nuns received visitors and paid visits freely and scholars of Oxford still haunted the house; moreover one of the nuns, Dame Alice Longspey (of whom we have heard before), was of very easy virtue[1449]. In two other houses Alnwick found great disorder prevailing: the régime of Margaret Wavere, Prioress of Catesby, has already been described, her bad language, her temper, her dishonesty and her priestly lover; and her chief accuser Isabel Benet had borne a child to the chaplain of the house[1450]. Similarly we have seen into what a disreputable state St Michael’s, Stamford, fell under an aged and impotent Prioress; how one nun ran away with an Austin friar and then with a wandering harp-player, and how two others had borne children or were notoriously held to be unchaste; this is one of the worst houses which the records of medieval nunneries have brought to light[1451]. Finally there is the doubtful case of Ankerwyke, where the Prioress is said through negligence to have allowed no less than six nuns to go into apostasy, a fact which she freely admitted; but whether they had merely removed themselves through discontent with an unpopular prioress, or whether they had eloped it is impossible to say. At any rate they had not returned[1452].

It is interesting to attempt a statistical estimate of the moral condition of the Lincoln nunneries during the twenty years from 1430 to 1450. It is possible to do so with some accuracy because the nuns giving evidence in each convent are enumerated in Alnwick’s reports. If we omit the general charges against Sewardsley and Flamstead and the ambiguous apostasy of the six nuns of Ankerwyke, we have twelve out of 220 nuns guilty of immoral behaviour, or a little over five per cent.; but this is certainly an understatement, having regard to the loss of the Sewardsley and Flamstead inquiries and of other visitations by the two bishops, to say nothing of possible concealment by the nuns. Between them Gray and Alnwick have left on record visitations or inquiries relating to twenty-four houses and cases of immorality came to light at eight, that is to say at one-third of the number visited. All except two of these, Elstow and Heynings, were very seriously affected, more than one nun having succumbed to sin; and the Prioress was found guilty in two and probably suspected in two others. The situation seems a serious one and Alnwick’s visitations of the houses of monks and canons which were in his diocese show that the men were more lax in their behaviour than the women.

A similar statistical estimate can be made of the condition of convents in the diocese of Norwich during the visitation by Bishop Nykke or his commissary in 1514[1453]. Eight convents, containing between them seventy-two nuns, were visited and only one case of immorality was found, at Crabhouse[1454]. This is a far more favourable picture than that presented by the diocese of Lincoln in the previous century. Again in 1501 Dr Hede visited the nunneries of the diocese of Winchester as commissary of the Prior of Canterbury, during the vacancy of the sees of Canterbury and Winchester[1455]. The diocese contained only four houses, but three of them were important abbeys, St Mary’s, Winchester, with fourteen nuns, Wherwell with twenty-two and Romsey with forty; the fourth was Wintney Priory, with ten nuns. All seem to have been in perfect order except Romsey, which had fallen into decay under the régime of an abbess who had herself been guilty of adultery, and where one of the nuns was charged with incontinence with the vicar of the parish church. Unfortunately the record of the visitation is left incomplete and there are no injunctions; hence it is impossible to say whether the last charge was true, but the abbey had been in a disordered state for some years past[1456]. Another diocese for which an estimate can be made is Chichester, but it contained only two nunneries, Rusper and Easebourne. At Bishop Story’s visitation in 1478 all was well at Rusper, a poor and ruinous little house containing seven nuns; but all was very far from well at Easebourne, where six nuns remained and two had gone into apostasy after conducting themselves in the thoroughly dissolute manner described above[1457]. At Bishop Sherborne’s visitation in 1524 the number of nuns at Rusper had fallen to four, but there was no complaint except that a certain William Tychenor had frequent access to the priory and sowed discord between the Prioress and her three sisters. At Easebourne there were eight nuns, but the house seems not to have recovered its tone after the scandals of 1524. The subprioress deposed that some twelve years before a certain Ralph Pratt had seduced a sister; yet the convent had granted him the proceeds of the church of Easebourne and he still had much access to the priory[1458]. It is a pity that more of these statistical estimates, imperfect as they are, cannot be made.

It remains to consider what steps were taken to punish offenders and to reform evils. The crime of seducing a nun was always considered an extremely serious one; she was Sponsa Dei, inviolable, sacrosanct. Anglo-Saxon law fined the ravisher heavily, and a law of Edward I declared him liable to three years imprisonment, besides satisfaction made to the convent. There is, however, no evidence that the State imprisoned or otherwise punished persons guilty of this crime, though it was always ready to issue the writ De apostata capiendo, for the recovery of a monk or nun who had fled. Whenever the lover of a nun is found undergoing punishment, it is always a punishment inflicted by the Church. If a man had abducted a nun, or were accused of seducing her, he was summoned before the Bishop or Archdeacon and required to purge himself of the charge. If he pleaded “Not guilty” a day was appointed, on which he had to clear himself by the oath of a number of compurgators. Thus the Prioress of Catesby’s lover, the priest William Taylour, was summoned before Bishop Alnwick in the church of Brampton; there he denied the crime and was told to bring five chaplains, of good report, who had knowledge of his behaviour, in a few days’ time to the parish church of Rothwell[1459]. The result of his attempt to find compurgators is not known, but the Prioress had already failed to get four of her nuns to support her and had been pronounced guilty. One wonders what happened when the man produced compurgators and the lady failed to do so: for these misdemeanours à deux the compurgatorial system would seem a little uncertain.

If a man’s guilt were proven by his failure to provide compurgators or to come before the Bishop, it remained to decree his punishment. The obdurate were excommunicated until such time as they submitted. The penitent were adjudged a penance. There is abundant evidence that the penance given by the Church was always a severe one. The classical instance is that of Sir Osbert Giffard in 1286. The Giffards were a large and influential West country family and in the last quarter of the thirteenth century several of the children of Hugh Giffard of Boyton rose to high positions in the Church. His eldest son, Walter, became in turn Bishop of Bath and Wells and Archbishop of York, dying in 1279, and his second son Godfrey became Bishop of Worcester. Of his daughters one, Juliana, is found as Abbess of Wilton in 1275, another, Mabel, as Abbess of Shaftesbury in 1291, and a third, Agatha, would seem to have held a position of some importance at Elstow, though she was never Abbess there[1460]. These great ladies do not seem to have had a very good influence in their nunneries, in spite of the exalted position of their brothers. In 1270 the Bishop of Lincoln writes apologetically to Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York, concerning scandals which have arisen in Elstow, “whence more frequently than in any other house beneath our rule scandals of wicked deeds arise,” and it is clear from his letter that the Abbess and the Bishop’s sister were implicated[1461]. In 1298 also the Abbess and nuns of Shaftesbury had incurred excommunication “for their offences against God and by the creation of scandal”[1462]. But the most serious mishap occurred at Wilton in 1286. Here Juliana Giffard[1463] had under her rule a young relative named Alice Giffard, and in this year Sir Osbert Giffard, knight (whose exact relationship to the Abbess and the Bishop and to Alice is not clear), “with sacrilegious hand ravished and abducted in the silence of the night sisters Alice Russel and Alice Gyffard, professed according to the rule of St Benedict in the monastery of Wylton.” Archbishop Peckham and the Bishop of Salisbury forthwith excommunicated Sir Osbert, who eventually made his submission. It was indeed an unfortunate scandal to occur in a Bishop’s family and created a great stir in the country round. Godfrey’s concern is shown by the appearance in his Worcester Register of the Bishop of Salisbury’s letter to the Sub-dean of Salisbury and others announcing the penance to be imposed upon the abductor[1464].

This penance was as follows:

The bishop enjoined upon him that he should restore the aforesaid sisters and all goods of the monastery withdrawn and should make all the satisfaction that he possibly could to the abbess and convent. And that on Ash Wednesday in the church of Salisbury, the said crime being solemnly published before the clergy and people, he should humbly permit himself to be taken to the door of the church, with bare feet, in mourning raiment and uncovered head, with other penitents and should be beaten with sticks about the church on three holy days and on three Tuesdays through the market of Salisbury and so often and in like manner about the church of Wylton and through the market there and he should be likewise beaten about the church of Amesbury and the market there and about the church of Shaftesbury and the market there. In his clothing from henceforth there shall not appear any cloaks of lamb’s wool, gilt spurs or horse trappings, or girdle of a knight, unless in the meantime he should obtain special grace of the king, but he shall take journey to the Holy Land and there serve for three years[1465].

The penance was thus severe; but it is another matter to say that it was always duly performed. A man who had already risked his immortal soul once, by the seduction of a nun, might well choose to undergo excommunication and risk it a second time, by refusing to do penance. The lover of a nun of Harrold in 1298 was thus excommunicated for refusing to be beaten through the market-place[1466]. Moreover there were endless ways of delaying the humiliating ceremony. Take the case of Richard Gray, the married boarder to whom Elizabeth Willoughby bore a child at St Michael’s, Stamford. On July 3rd, 1442, in the parish church of Wellingborough, the Bishop caused him to swear upon the Holy Book that he would abjure the priory and all communication with Elizabeth. He then sentenced him to four floggings round one of the churches of Stamford on four Sundays or feast days,

carrying in his hand before the procession of the same church a taper of one pound’s worth of wax, being clothed in his doublet and linen garments only, and on the last of the said four days, after the procession is finished, he has to offer the said taper to the high altar of the said Church.

Moreover he was to perform a like penance on four Fridays, going round the market-place of Stamford, and within a month he was also to make pilgrimage on horseback to Lincoln Cathedral and when he came within five miles of Lincoln, to dismount and go barefoot to the cathedral and there offer to the high altar a taper of one pound’s weight. The very evening, however, that this severe penance was imposed, Richard Gray came before the Bishop again and made lowly supplication that he would deign to temper the penance; whereupon Alnwick, “moved with compassion on him,” commuted the penance round the market-place to a payment of twenty shillings to the nuns of St Michael’s, to be paid within a month, and another twenty shillings to the fabric of the cathedral church, to be paid within six weeks. Gray was to bring the Bishop letters testimonial as to the payment of the forty shillings and the performance of the penance at Lincoln, also within six weeks. But Richard had no intention of buying expensive wax candles, paying forty shilling fines, catching cold in his shirt at Stamford or humiliating himself at Lincoln. When summoned to do his penance he appealed to the court of Canterbury. The Bishop then got licence from the commissary of the official in that court to proceed against the delinquent and summoned him to show cause why he had not done penance. On November 15th, 1442, the slippery Richard appeared by proxy before the Bishop’s commissioner and said that he was “withheld by so many and so sore infirmities of fevers and other kinds, lying in his bed every other day, that he could not without grievous bodily harm appear in person in or on the same day and place.” The commissioner postponed his appearance until December 11th and eventually he appeared on that day, but showing no cause why he had not performed his penance, and was excommunicated again by the Bishop, at which point he drops out of history, with his penance still unperformed[1467].