in expenses for the prioresse and the steward with their servants and for hors hyre and for the wages of them that wente to kepe the courte wyth the prioresse atte Wynge atte two tymes xvjs vd, whereof the stewards fee was that of vjs viijd; item paid to the fermour of Wynge for his expenss ixd[214].
The accounts of St Michael’s Stamford are full of items such as “in the expenses of the Prioress on divers occasions going to the Bishop, with hire of horses 3s.” “in the expenses of the Prioress going to Rockingham about our woods 1s. 2½d.,” “paid for the hire of two horses for the prioress and her expenses going to Liddington to the Bishop for a certificate 2s. 8d.,” “paid for the expenses of the Prioress at Burgh (i.e. Peterborough) for two days 5s. 8d.”; twice the Prioress went very far afield, as usual (it would appear) on legal business, for in 1377-8 there is an entry, “Item for the expenses of the Prioress and her companions at London for a month and more, in all expenses £5. 13s. 4d.” (a large sum, a long distance and a lengthy stay), and in 1409-10 there is another payment “to the Prioress for expenses in London 15s.”[215]
In spite of repeated efforts to enforce stricter enclosure upon nuns, it is evident that the head of the house rode about on the business of the convent and overlooked its husbandry in person, even where (as at St Michael’s Stamford) there was a male prior or custos charged with the ordering of its temporal affairs. The general injunction that an abbess was never to leave her house save “for the obvious utility of the monastery or for urgent necessity”[216] was capable of a very wide interpretation, and it is clear from the evidence of visitations and accounts that it was interpreted to include a great deal of temporal business outside the walls. If a house possessed a male custos the Prioress would have less occasion and less excuse for journeys, though for important affairs her presence was probably always necessary; Bishop Drokensford, appointing a custos to Minchin Barrow, warns the Prioress no longer “to intermeddle with rural business (negociis campestribus) and other secular affairs” but to leave these to the custos and to devote herself to the service of God and to the stricter enforcement of the rule[217]. But in houses where no such official existed the prioress doubtless undertook a certain amount of general estate management. One of Alnwick’s orders to the Prioress of Legbourne in 1440 was “that ye bysylly ouersee your baylly, that your husbandry be sufficyently gouernede to the avayle of your house”[218]; and in the intervals of their long struggle to keep nuns within their cloisters, the Bishops seem to have recognised the necessity for some travel on the part of the heads of houses, and to have facilitated such travel by granting them dispensations to have divine service celebrated wherever they might be. Thus in 1400 the Prioress of Haliwell obtained a licence to hear divine service in her oratory within her mansion of Camberwell, or elsewhere in the diocese, during the next two years[219], and in 1406 the Abbess of Tarrant Keynes was similarly allowed to have the service celebrated for herself and her household anywhere within the city and diocese of Salisbury[220].
It is significant that among the arguments used to oppose Henry VIII’s injunction that monks and nuns should be strictly enclosed (which was, for the nuns, only a repetition of Pope Boniface’s decree of three centuries earlier) was that of the difficulty of supervising the husbandry of a house, if its head were confined to cloistral precincts.
“Please it you to be advertised,” wrote Cecily Bodenham, the last Abbess of Wilton, to Cromwell in 1535, “that master doctor Leigh, the King’s grace’s special visitor and your deputy in this behalf, visiting of late my house, hath given injunction that not only all my sisters, but I also, should continually keep and abide within the precincts of my house: which commandment I am right well content with in regard of my own person, if your mastership shall think it so expedient; but in consideration of the administration of mine office and specially of this poor house which is in great debt and requireth much reparation and also which without good husbandry is not like, in long season, to come forward, and in consideration that the said husbandry cannot be, by my poor judgment, so well by an other overseen as by mine own person, it may please your mastership of your goodness to license me, being associate with one or two of the sad and discreet sisters of my house, to supervise abroad such things as shall be for the profit and commodity of my house. Which thing though, peradventure, might be done by other, yet I ensure you that none will do it so faithfully for my house’s profit as mine own self. Assuring your mastership that it is not, nor shall be at any time hereafter, my mind to lie forth of my monastery any night, except by inevitable necessity I cannot then return home”[221].
It is, however, very plain that the journeys taken by abbesses and prioresses were not always strictly concerned with the business of their convents, or at least they combined business most adroitly with pleasure. These ladies were of good kin and they took their place naturally in local society, when they left their houses to oversee their husbandry, to interview a bishop or a lawyer about their tithes, or quite openly to visit friends and relatives. They emerged to attend the funerals of great folk; the Prioress of Carrow attended the funeral of John Paston in 1466[222], and Sir Thomas Cumberworth in his will (1451) left the injunction:
I will that Ilke prior and priores that comes to my beryall at yt day hafe iiis iiijd and ilke chanon and Nune xijd ... and Ilke prior and priores that comes to the xxx day (the month’s-mind) hafe vjs viijd and Ilke chanon or none that comes to the said xxx day haf xxd[223].
Sometimes they attended the deathbeds of relatives; among witnesses to the codicil to the will of Walter Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, in 1404 was “religiosa femina Domina Johanna Priorissa de Swyna, soror dicti domini episcopi”[224]; and it was not unusual for an abbess or prioress to be made supervisor or executrix of a will[225]. Nor was the sad business of deathbeds the only share taken by these prioresses in public life. Clemence Medforde, Prioress of Ankerwyke, went to a wedding at Bromhale; and unfortunately a sheepfold, a dairy and a good timber granary chose that moment to catch fire and burn down, setting fire also to the smouldering indignation of her nuns; whence many recriminations when the Bishop came on his rounds[226]. Stranger still at times were the matters for which their friends sought their good offices. The aristocratic Isabel de Montfort, Prioress of Easebourne, was one of the ladies by whose oath Margaret de Camoys purged herself on a charge of adultery in 1295[227].
The fact that these ladies were drawn from the wealthy classes and constantly associated on terms of equality with their friends and relatives, sometimes led them to impart a most unmonastic luxury into their own lives. They came from the homes of lords like Sir John Arundel, who lost not only his life but “two and fiftie new sutes of apparell of cloth of gold or tissue,” when he was drowned off the Irish coast; or Lord Berkeley who travelled with a retinue of twelve knights, twenty-four esquires “of noble family and descent” and a hundred and fifty men-at-arms, in coats of white frieze lined with crimson and embroidered with his badge; or else of country squires and franklins, like the white-bearded gentleman of whom Chaucer says that
To liven in delyt was ever his wone,
For he was Epicurus owne sone,
······
Withoute bake mete was never his hous,
Of fish and flesh, and that so plentevous
It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke,
Of alle deyntees that men coude thinke;