whiche (clothes) in nowyse schal be ouer curyous, but playne and homly, witheoute weuynge of any straunge colours of silke, golde or syluer, hauynge al thynge of honeste and profyte, and nothyng of vanyte, after the rewle; ther knyves unpoynted and purses beyng double of lynnen clothe and not of sylke[1685].
The unsuccessful efforts of monastic Visitors to enforce these rules have been described; a few instances may be added here to show the directions in which the nuns erred. Peckham wrote to Godstow:
Concerning the garments of the nuns let the rule of St Benedict be carefully observed. For which reason we forbid them ever in future to wear cloth of burnet, nor gathered tunics nor to make themselves garments of an immoderate width with excessive pleats (nec etiam birrorum immoderantia vestes sibi faciant latitudine fluctuantes); with this nevertheless carefully observing what was aforetime ordained in such matters by the Council of Oxford[1686].
Buckingham’s injunction to Elstow in 1387 gives some interesting details; he forbade the nuns to wear any other veil than that of profession, or to “adorn their countenances” by arranging it in a becoming fashion, spreading out the white veil, which was meant to be worn underneath:
(Ainsi qu’il est pour le monde et les cours
Un art, un goût de modes et d’atours,
Il est aussi des modes pour le voile;
Il est un art de donner d’heureux tours[1687]
À l’étamine, à la plus simple toile.)[1688]
They were not to wear gowns of black wide at the bottom, or turned back with fur at the wrists[1689], and they were in no wise to use “wide girdles or belts plaited (spiratis) or adorned with silver, nor wear these above their tunics open to the gaze of man”[1690]. Curious details are also given by Bishop Spofford, writing to the nuns of Lymbrook in 1437; their habit was to “be formed after relygyon in sydnesse and wydnesse, forbedyng long traynes in mantellys and kyrtellys and almaner of spaires and open semes in the same kyrtellys”[1691]. “Large collars, barred girdles and laced shoes” were forbidden at Swine in 1298[1692], red dresses and long supertunics “like secular women” at Wilberfoss in 1308[1693]; at Nunmonkton in 1397 (after Margaret Fairfax’s fashionable clothes had been discovered) a general injunction was made to the nuns “not to use henceforth silken clothes, and especially silken veils, nor precious furs, nor rings on their fingers, nor tunics laced-up or fastened with brooches nor any robes, called in English ‘gownes,’ after the fashion of secular women”[1694]. These Northern houses were continually in need of admonition, sometimes their slashed tunics, sometimes their barred girdles, sometimes their shoes being condemned[1695]. Bishop Alnwick found silken veils at Langley, Studley and Rothwell[1696]; Bishop Fitzjames forbade silver and gilt pins and kirtles of fustian or worsted at Wix in 1509[1697]; and at Carrow in 1532 the subprioress complained that some of the nuns not only wore silk girdles, but had the impudence to commend the use thereof[1698].
Nor could nuns always resist the temptation to let their shorn hair grow again, e.g. at the visitation of Romsey by the commissary of the Prior of Canterbury in 1502, the cellaress deposed “that Mary Tystede and Agnes Harvey wore their hair long”[1699]. Eudes Rigaud had some difficulty in this matter with the frivolous nuns of his diocese of Rouen; at Villarceaux in 1249 he recorded: “They all wear their hair long to their chins,” and at Montivilliers he had to condemn ringlets[1700]. One is reminded of the scene in Jane Eyre, where Mr Brocklehurst visits Lowood:
Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if he had met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil; turning, he said in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used: “Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what—what is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma’am, curled—curled all over?” and extending his cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so. “It is Julia Severn,” replied Miss Temple, very quietly. “Julia Severn, ma’am! And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly—here in an evangelical, charitable establishment—as to wear her hair a mass of curls?... Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall.”... He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes, then pronounced sentence. These words fell like the knell of doom: “All those top-knots must be cut off.”
Or, as Eudes Rigaud expressed it some seven centuries earlier: “Quod comam non nutriatis ultra aures.”