The bishop having dealt with individual offenders, the whole convent was summoned once more to the chapter house. The detecta and comperta were read aloud to the nuns and the bishop made verbal injunctions upon points which stood in special need of reform. He then dissolved the visitation; or, if any further business remained to be dealt with, prorogued it until a later date. Then he rode away again, and the fluttered convent settled down again to gossip and to await further injunctions. For the admonitions of the bishop at the visitation were only interim injunctions; his business was not finished until he had sent to the nunnery a set of written injunctions, embodying the reforms shown to be necessary by the comperta. These written injunctions were sent to the convent shortly after the visitation. Sometimes the clerk who brought them was ordered to expound them, or some reverend commissioner was sent to complete at the same time any special business arising out of the visitation. For instance, when Peckham sent a set of injunctions on April 20th, 1284, to the Priory of the Holy Sepulchre, Canterbury, which had been visited by commissioners on his behalf, he also addressed a letter to his commissary Martin, bidding him go in person to the house and expound the injunctions to the nuns. At the same time he was ordered (1) to appoint two coadjutresses to the prioress, who had been wasting the goods of the house; one of these was named and Martin was particularly warned against appointing another nun, who was said to be contumelious; (2) to beseech the Vicar of Wickham on behalf of the Archbishop to undertake the office of master of the house, so as to order its temporal affairs; (3) to receive the compurgation of Isabella de Scorue, who was defamed with the cellarer of the cathedral church and to forbid all the nuns access to the cathedral and the cellarer access to the priory[1521]. These pieces of specific and administrative business were not mentioned in Peckham’s more general injunctions. The injunctions were left in the hands of the convent and from that moment became as canonically binding upon the nuns, as was their original rule; any breach of them was liable to punishment by excommunication. The prioress was usually ordered to display them in a place where they could be easily read by the sisters, or to have them solemnly read aloud in chapter a certain number of times each year.
It was by this machinery of visitation and injunction that the diocesans endeavoured to control and reform the nunneries. But how far was the control adequate and the reform successful? It is obvious that the efficacy of the visitation system depended on three things: (1) the success of the cross-examination in drawing the real state of the convent from the nuns, (2) the regularity with which visitation was repeated, (3) the ability of the bishop to enforce his injunctions. As to the first of these conditions, the extent to which breaches of discipline came to light depended on the skill of the bishop in cross-examination on the one hand, and on the other the honesty of the nun’s desire to assist him. If a convent were seriously discontented the chances were that charges would be freely made: thus Alnwick experienced no difficulty in extracting an almost unanimous testimony against the Prioress of Catesby. But this did not always happen; as is shown by Gray’s letter bidding his commissary visit Markyate in 1433:
When we some time ago made actual visitation ... of the priory of the Holy Trinity of the Wood by Markyate ..., we, making anxious inquiry touching the state of the same priory and the concerns of religion in the same, found that in such our visitation certain crimes, transgressions and offences worthy of reformation were discovered to us, by occasion whereof ... we enjoined upon the prioress and convent of the same place certain injunctions.... But ... it has lately come to our hearing, as loud whispering abounds and the notoriousness of the fact has made public, that more grievous offences than were discovered to us in the same our visitation were before the beginning of the same unhappily brought to pass and done in the same priory, the which the said prioress and her sisters of their design aforethought concealed from us undiscovered at the time of such our visitation[1522].
One of the matters thus concealed was the immorality of the prioress with the steward of the house, a fact which seems to have been notorious throughout the neighbourhood.
When such a grave defect could be successfully hidden from the bishop at his visitation, it is obvious that he could do little against a unanimous determination on the part of a convent to keep him in the dark. He was really dependent upon disagreement within the house; a conscientious nun or a nun with a grudge served him equally well. But it seems likely that concealment was not seldom practised, for, as Mr Coulton points out, “among the earliest and most frequently-repeated general chapter statutes are those providing against (a) conspiracy of the Religious against reformation, or (b) vengeance wreaked afterwards upon brethren who have dared to reveal the truth”[1523]. Some of the detecta at Alnwick’s visitation throw light on the efforts made (usually by the prioress) by conspiracy and by vengeance to prevent the nuns from testifying. At Catesby the evil prioress, Margaret Wavere, had excellent reasons for fearing a disclosure of her way of life. Sister Juliane Wolfe deposed “that the prioress did threaten that, if the nuns disclosed aught in the visitation, they should pay for it in prison.” Dame Isabel Benet (by no means a paragon of virtue herself) deposed that “in the last visitation which was made by the Lord William Graye, the prioress said that for a purse and certain moneys a clerk of the said bishop made known what every nun disclosed in that visitation.” Sister Alice Kempe said that “because the nuns at the last visitation disclosed what should be disclosed, the prioress whipped some of them.” All of these articles the prioress denied, but she was undoubtedly guilty and was unable to find compurgators[1524]. At Legbourne the prioress took a course with which one cannot avoid a certain sympathy. Dame Joan Gyney deposed that
the prioress, after she received my lord’s mandate for the visitation, called together the chapter and said, if there were aught in need of correction among them, they should tell it her; because she said it was more suitable that they should correct themselves than that others should correct them[1525].
At Ankerwyke Prioress Clemence Medforde, conscious of many misdeeds and of the cordial dislike of her nuns, “did invite several outside folk from the neighbourhood to this visitation at great cost to the house, saying to them, ‘Stand on my side in this time of visitation, for I do not want to resign.’” She admitted the entertainment of her friends, “but it was not to this end”[1526]. Recriminations after the visitation are even commoner than preliminary attempts to circumvent it. At Gracedieu the ill-tempered old prioress confessed, on being confronted with the detectum of one of her nuns to that effect, that she
since and after the visitation last held therein by his [Alnwick’s] predecessor, did reproach her sisters, because of the disclosures at the same visitation and did blame them therefore and has held and holds them in hatred, by reason whereof charity and loving-kindness were utterly banished and strivings, hatreds, back-bitings and quarrellings have ever flourished[1527].
The second condition for the efficacy of episcopal visitation as a method of reform is the regularity of such visitation. Obviously if visitations are very rare the hold of the diocesan on a house will be weak; for much water may flow under the bridge between one visitation and the next. The general rule in vogue in the middle ages was that each house should be visited once in every three years, which was in theory a very adequate arrangement. It seems clear, however, that it was not always carried out. The work was done by one overworked bishop in person or by commissioners specially appointed by him for the visitation of each house. In a big diocese, such as Lincoln or York, which abounded in monastic houses, the work of visitation was a really considerable labour, for it was only one part of the bishop’s multifarious duties; and it is impossible not to conclude that the regularity of visitation differed very much from diocese to diocese and from time to time. The bishops themselves varied very much in energy and conscientiousness, but on the whole it is evident that they took their duties seriously and honestly endeavoured to keep up the standard of life in their dioceses. No one can put down the record of Rigaud’s visitations of the diocese of Rouen, Greenfield’s visitations of the diocese of York, and Alnwick’s visitations of the diocese of Lincoln, without a profound respect for those prelates. But though they did much, they could not do enough.
There is a good deal of incidental evidence in the visitation reports, which shows that visitations were held too seldom to be really effectual. Gracedieu, for instance, had not been visited between 1433, when Gray came, and 1440-1; and by this last date it had fallen into such laxity that reform must have been difficult. Markyate was unvisited between 1433 and 1442, in spite of the deprivation of the prioress for immorality and the apostasy of one of the nuns in 1433. There are few houses in the annals of English nunneries in so bad a state as Littlemore was in 1517; yet the Prioress, forced at last to confess her misdeeds, which comprised not only habitual incontinence but the persecution of her nuns, stated that though these things had been going on for eight years, yet no inquiry had been made and, as it seems, no visitation of the house had been held; only on one occasion certain injunctions of a general kind had been sent her[1528]. On the other hand the registers show that a real attempt was often made to grapple with a really serious case. St Michael’s, Stamford, for instance, was visited by Alnwick in 1440 and found to be in a disorderly state; he gave careful interim injunctions on the spot and sent written injunctions afterwards. The house, however, was ruled by a thoroughly incompetent prioress, and the bishop seems to have made inquiries and found that his reforms had not been carried out, for in 1442 he came again,