Even close to the city of York itself, the Benedictine house of St Clement’s or Clementhorpe did not escape the prevalent decay of morals. In 1300 the Archbishop rehearses unsympathetically a romantic tale of how “late one evening certain men came to the priory gate, leading a saddled horse; here Cecily a nun, met them and, throwing off her nun’s habit, put on another robe and rode off with them to Darlington, where Gregory de Thornton was waiting for her; and with him she lived for three years and more.” In 1310 Greenfield mitigated a penance, of the kind usually imposed for immorality, upon another nun Joan de Saxton. In 1318 there is mention of Joan of Leeds, another apostate, and in 1324 the Prioress resigned after serious trouble in the house, details of which have not been preserved. In 1331 Isabella de Studley (who had been made a nun there by express permission of the primate in 1315) was found guilty of apostasy and fleshly sin, besides blasphemy and other misdeeds; she had apparently been sent to Yedingham for a penance some time before and was now allowed to return, with the warning that if she disobeyed, quarrelled or blasphemed any more she would be transferred permanently to another house[1722].
These houses were all clearly extremely immoral, but there is evidence of less extreme trouble in other houses in the same diocese. At Arden Joan de Punchardon had become a mother in 1306 and Clarice de Speton confessed herself guilty with the bailiff of Bulmershire in 1311[1723]. At Thicket Alice Darel of Wheldrake was an apostate in 1303 and in 1334 Joan de Crackenholme was said to have left her house several times[1724]. At Wilberfoss Agnes de Lutton was in trouble in 1312[1725]. At Esholt Beatrice de Haukesward left the house pregnant in 1303[1726]. At Hampole Isabella Folifayt was guilty in 1324, and Alice de Reygate in 1358[1727]. At Nunappleton Maud of Ripon apostatised in 1309 and in 1346 Katherine de Hugate, a nun, went away pregnant and a lay sister was said to have been several times in the same condition[1728]. At St Stephen’s, Foukeholm, a nun Cecilia, who had run away with a chaplain, returned of her own accord in 1293 and another apostate, Elena de Angrom, returned in 1349[1729]. Agnes de Bedale, an apostate, was sent back in 1286; and in 1343 Margaret de Fenton, who left the house pregnant, had her penance mitigated “because she had only done so once,” a startling commentary on the state of the Yorkshire houses[1730]. At Rosedale an apostate Isabella Dayvill was sent back to do penance in 1321[1731]. Of Nunmonkton there is little record during the first half of the century, but it was in a bad state at the end[1732]; at Wykeham also there seems to have been no case of apostasy in the fourteenth century, but in the fifteenth century the Prioress Isabella Wykeham was removed for serious immorality in 1444 and in 1450 two nuns had gone on an unlicensed pilgrimage to Rome, which had led to one of them living with a married man in London[1733].
NOTE H.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OR SUPPRESSION OF EIGHT NUNNERIES PRIOR TO 1535.
It seems clear that even before the Dissolution proper decay was manifest in some of the smaller nunneries; numbers were dwindling and morals were not always beyond suspicion. At all events in the forty years before Henry VIII’s first act of dissolution, no less than eight nunneries[1734], all of which had at one time been reasonably flourishing, faded away or were dissolved. Something may, and indeed must, be allowed for the ulterior motives of those who desired the revenue of these houses; but it is impossible to suspect men like John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, even Cardinal Wolsey, of being willing without any excuse to suppress helpless nunneries in order to endow their new collegiate foundations with the spoils. Some truth there must be in the allegations of ill behaviour brought against certain of these houses; and the reduction in numbers seems to point to a decay, more spontaneous than forced.
The first of the houses thus to be dissolved was St Radegund’s, Cambridge, the accounts of which we have so often quoted. In 1496 John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, visited the house and found but two sisters left there; and he thereupon obtained letters patent from Henry VII to convert the nunnery into a college, founded (like the nunnery) in honour of the Virgin, St John the Evangelist and St Radegund, but called henceforward Jesus College. Some light is thrown by these letters patent on the condition of the convent in 1496. It is therein stated that the king,
as well by the report of the Bishop as by public fame, that the priory ... together with all its lands, tenements, rents, possessions and buildings, and moreover the properties, goods, jewels and other ecclesiastical ornaments anciently of piety and charity given and granted to the same house or priory, by the neglect, improvidence, extravagance and incontinence of the prioresses and women of the said house, by reason of their proximity to the university of Cambridge, have been dilapidated, destroyed, wasted, alienated, diminished, and subtracted; in consequence of which the nuns are reduced to such want and poverty that they are unable to maintain and support divine services, hospitality and other such works of mercy and piety, as by the primary foundation and ordinance of their founders are required; that they are reduced in number to two only, of whom one is elsewhere professed, the other is of ill-fame, and that they can in no way provide for their own sustenance and relief, insomuch as they are fain to abandon their house and leave it in a manner desolate[1735].
The next nunneries to disappear were Bromhale in Windsor Forest and Lillechurch or Higham in Kent. Their dissolution was begun in 1521 and completed in 1524, when their possessions were granted to St John’s College, Cambridge, the foundation of which was then being carried out by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, as executor of the Lady Margaret. Only three nuns were left in Bromhale and Wolsey directed the Bishop of Salisbury to “proceed against enormities, misgovernance and slanderous living, long time heretofore had, used and continued by the prioress and nuns”[1736]; but there is no further evidence as to the moral condition of the convent. The moral as well as the financial decay of Lillechurch is more certain, for the resignations of the three nuns who remained, together with the depositions of those who accused them of want of discipline, have survived. Their revenues were stated to be in great decay and divine service, hospitality and almsgiving had almost ceased. Moreover it was said that “the same priory was situated in a corner out of sight of the public and was much frequented by lewd persons, especially clerks, whereby the nuns there were notorious for the incontinence of their life,” two of them having borne children to one Edward Sterope, vicar of Higham. Some witnesses were heard as to one of them, including a nurse who had taken charge of her baby and a former servant of the nunnery, who had been sent by the bishop to investigate the matter. “He entered the cloister of the aforesaid priory, where he saw the lady sitting and weeping and said to her ‘Alas madam, howe happened this with you?’ and she answered him, ‘And [if] I had been happey [i.e. lucky] I myght a caused this thinge to have ben unknowen and hydden’”[1737].
The next nunneries to be suppressed were a group which went to enrich Cardinal Wolsey’s foundations. The Cardinal’s policy of dissolving small decayed houses in order to devote their revenues to collegiate foundations, especially to his new college at Oxford, was by no means generally approved and a passage in Skelton’s bitterly hostile Colin Clout refers particularly to the case of the nunneries: