They owe £212. The king gave them Esquequeville with its appurtenances, which is worth £230 and 4 carucates of land worth £40, and thus they have in all rents to the value of £290 (sic). To the house of nuns of St Saëns there belong 245 acres of land in all and 7 acres of meadow, of which 115 acres in all are sown with wheat (frumento), corn (blado, probably rye), barley and other vegetables (leguminibus). They have in money rents £170. 2s. 8d.; in corn rents 8 modii; in rents of oats 66 minae[1856]; in rents of capons 220; item in egg rents 1100 eggs[1857]; item they have in money rents, paid with the capons and the eggs, 27s. 6d. Item they have a mill at Esquequeville and a wood of which they do not know the size[1858] and the priest of the same place takes a tithe in the said mill. Item they have rights of pannage and stubble and multure (i.e. payment by their tenants for grinding at their mill) of which they know not the value. Item they have a mill at St Saëns of small value. Item they have 57 sheep, item 12 plough horses and one waggon (quadrigam); item they have 18 beasts, as well cows as oxen. Item they have only 2 modii of corn for their food until harvest. They have nothing to drink. There is owing to them £26. 5s. 2d. The debts which they owe amount in all to £234. 3s. 3d.[1859]
The inventory of Bondeville for the same year is equally interesting:
These are the goods and rents of the house of Bondeville: £93 tournois; of common corn 30 modii; in the grange of Heaus they believe that they have 7 modii of common corn; in the abbey grange about one modium of barley; in the other granges nothing. In the abbey there are 2 waggons (quadrige), with 6 horses and one riding horse, 6 cows and 14 calves. They have in the granges 264 sheep; item in the grange of Heaus 27 cows; item 30 little pigs; item three ploughs (aratra) in all, each for three beasts; item 4 little foals. These are the debts of the house, concerning which account has been rendered to the convent: £220 in money and 2 modii of barley; [wages] to the household for the harvesting. Item they had no oats save for sowing time. They expend each month at least 68 minae of corn; item they have in the cellar 6 barrels of wine and 2 of cider; item they do not think that the buildings can be repaired [at a less cost than] for £80 tournois; item after Easter they will be obliged to buy all the other foodstuffs for the house, save bread, peas and vegetables[1860].
Mention is sometimes made in Rigaud’s register of dependent cells attached to some of the houses. St Paul by Rouen was thus attached to Montivilliers, Bourg-de-Saane to St Amand and Ste Austreberte to St Saëns. These cells were doubtless used partly as centres of administration for the more distant estates of the convent, partly as places of recreation or convalescence, where sick nuns could be sent for a change. For instance there were six nuns of Montivilliers at St Paul by Rouen in 1263 and it was noted that there ought to be four, but that two others were there because of illness; the nuns had a lay boarder staying with them and two servants; their income—as assessed for the tithe—was £140 and their debts amounted to £40; they complained that the king’s foresters oppressed them by frequently dining at their expense and by unjustly molesting their servants in the forest, although they had usage (i.e. rights of hunting, gathering wood, etc.) there; the Archbishop had no fault to find with them except that they did not sing the service cum nota, because there were so few of them, and that they had only a single mass, the parochial mass, daily[1861]. It is evident that a close connection was supposed to be kept up between the mother house and the cell, for in 1260 the Abbess of Montivilliers had been ordered to visit them diligently[1862]; and in 1258 Rigaud noted, “Alice prioress of Saint Paul by Rouen was presented to us by the prioress of Montivilliers, she having been elected by the convent of the said place”[1863]. At his first visitation of St Amand in 1248 the Archbishop found that they had a single priory at Saane, where there are four nuns[1864]. In 1261 he ordered the Abbess to visit these nuns at Saane more often than had been her custom and at subsequent visitations he noted the number of nuns (varying from four to five) in residence there[1865]. Ste Austreberte, the daughter cell of St Saëns, was hardly more than a grange with a chapel attached. In 1254 Rigaud found that one nun was living there alone and ordered that another should be sent to join her; in 1257 there was still a single inmate, but in 1258 and 1259 the number had been raised to two[1866]. In 1260 the Archbishop decided to recall the inmates to St Saëns:
Because truly the place of St Austrebert is very slenderly endowed with rents, so that these two nuns cannot live there conveniently and decently, we ordered the prioress to call them back and forbade her henceforth to send any more thither, on account of the danger[1867].
But now complications arose. Evidently the dependent house had been used for the purpose of getting rid of a quarrelsome nun, for in 1261 Rigaud found that the Prioress had not obeyed his order to recall the two nuns, “because, as she says, Marie d’Eu (de Augo) one of these two, was a scold and she feared lest she should upset the whole convent if she returned”[1868]. The order was repeated and was apparently obeyed as far as the ill-tempered Marie was concerned (although there were still two nuns at Ste Austreberte in 1264[1869]), for in 1265 the Archbishop found the whole convent “living in discord and in disorder, especially the prioress and Marie d’Eu”[1870]; he would perhaps have done better to leave her where she was. An echo of her régime at Ste Austreberte was heard in 1265, when Marie d’Eu was ordered to return the chalice of the chapel of Ste Austreberte as quickly as possible and to restore to the Prioress any charter or letters concerning the manor of Ste Austreberte, which she had received from the convent. At the same time the Prioress was ordered to provide the chapel there with a suitable server (servitore)[1871]. Mention of visits to the granges or farms of the convents sometimes occurs. At Bondeville in 1251 it was found that “the sisters drank in the granges”[1872] and in 1255 that a lay sister and a lay brother were living alone in a grange (perhaps in the grange of Heaus, mentioned in the inventory), whereupon the Archbishop ordered the sister to be withdrawn or else given a companion[1873]. In 1268 the Abbess of Bival was ordered to remove “a certain child,” whom she was having brought up in the grange of Pierremans (which had been so improvidently let to William of the Fishponds twelve years before) and a penance was imposed upon her in 1269 because she had not obeyed the injunction[1874].
So far only the temporal affairs of these Rouen nunneries have been considered; there remains the more important question of their social, moral and spiritual condition. A clearer idea will be formed of the results of Eudes Rigaud’s investigations, if the chief sources of complaint be classified under the following heads:
(1) Complaints of incompetence and irregular behaviour against the head of a house,
(2) General laxity in keeping the rule,
(3) The sin of property and the failure to live a communal life,