[52] There are two exceptions, Greenfield (Lincs.) (ib. II, p. 327), and Amesbury (Wilts.) (ib. II, p. 326), but the testators in these cases are not burgesses, but a knight and a clerk.
[53] The corresponding fines for girls were merchet if they married off the manor and leyrwite if they dispensed with that ceremony. The medieval lord, concerned above all with keeping up the supply of labour upon his manor, naturally held the narrow view of the functions of women, which has been expressed in our day by Kipling: “Now the reserve of a boy is tenfold deeper than the reserve of a maid, she having been made for one end only by blind Nature, but man for several” (Stalky and Co. p. 212).
[54] Henry de Causton, mercator of London, left a bequest to Johanna, a “sister” at Ankerwyke, formerly servant to his father (1350). Sharpe, op. cit. I, p. 638.
[55] Register of Bishop Godfrey Giffard (Worc. Hist. Soc.), II, pp. 288-9.
[56] Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtees Soc.), I, p. 6.
[57] Test. Ebor. I, p. 9, dated 1345. Cf. will of Roger de Moreton “civis et mercerus Ebor.” 1390; two of four daughters nuns at St Clement’s, York (ib. I, p. 133).
[58] Sharpe, op. cit. I, p. 400, dated 1335.
[59] Ib. I, p. 501, dated 1349.
[60] Ib. I, p. 503, dated 1348.
[61] Testamenta Vetusta, I, p. 286.