[388] For Maundy Thursday, see Brand, op. cit. pp. 75-9. For the Barking Maundy see below, p. [568], for the St Mary de Pré Maundy see Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 359, and for the St Michael’s, Stamford, Maundy, see P.R.O. Mins. Accts. 1260 passim. The nuns of St Radegund’s owned certain lands in Madingley which were held by the Prior of Barnwell on payment of a rent of 2s. 3d., called “Maundy silver.” Gray, op. cit. p. 146. Maundy money is still distributed at Magdalen College, Oxford.
[389] See below, p. [566], for the Barking pittances. The following extracts from one of the St Michael’s, Stamford, accounts is typical of the rest: “Item paid for wassail 4d. ... paid to the convent on the Feast of St Michael and the dedication of the church 6s. Item paid for ... on All Saints Day and St Martin’s Day 3s. Item paid for a pittance of pork on two occasions 6s. Item paid for fowls at Christmas for the convent 5s. 6d. Item paid for herrings on St Michael’s Day for the poor 1s. 8d. Item paid for beer for the convent on Maundy Thursday (Jour de Cene) 10d. Item paid for bread and wafers on the same day 6d. Item paid for spices on the same day 3s. Item paid for herrings for the poor on the same day 1s. 8d. Item given to the poor on the same day 1s. 9d. Item for holy bread on Good Friday 2d. Item paid for fflaunes 2d. Item paid for herrings on St Laurence’s Day 9d.” P.R.O. Mins. Accts. 1260/11. At this convent “holy bread” was always brought for Good Friday, “flaunes” (or sometimes eggs, saffron and spices to make them) for Rogationtide, beer and spices on Maundy Thursday, herrings on St Lawrence’s Day, and various money pittances were paid to the nuns from time to time for the misericord of Corby and sometimes of Thurlby, the appropriated churches. On one occasion there is an entry “Paid to the convent for the misericord of Thurlby, to wit 28 fowls, 12 gallons of beer and mustard and a gift to the prioress 9s., paid to the convent for the misericord of Corby 9s., paid to the pittancer for a pittance from Thurlby throughout the year 14s. 4d.” Ib. 1260/3. See an interesting list of pittances payable on forty different feasts throughout the year to the nuns of Lillechurch or Higham: they are either extra portions of food or special sorts of food, e.g. “crepis” on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, “flauns” on Easter Day and 12d. on St Radegund’s Day. R. F. Scott, Notes from the Records of St John’s Coll. Cambridge, 1st series (from The Eagle, 1893, vol. XVII, no. 101, pp. 5-7).
[390] For these prebendal canonries see Mr Hamilton Thompson’s article on “Double Monasteries and the Male Element in Nunneries,” in The Ministry of Women, A Report by a Committee appointed by his Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, app. VIII, pp. 150 sqq.
[391] Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 424.
[392] Walcott, M. E. C. Inventories of ... the Priory of Minster in Shepey (Arch. Cant. 1869), p. 30. This house paid stipends to three chaplains, one being “curat of the Paryshe churche”; a “Vycar’s chamber” is described among what are obviously outlying buildings. At Cheshunt the “Prestes Chamber” contained a feather bed, with sheets and coverlet and a “celer of blewe cloth,” valued at 4s. 10d. Cussans, Hist. of Herts. Hertford Hundred, II, p. 70.
[393] Chaucer, Cant. Tales, Prologue of the Nonne Prestes Tale, ll. 3998 ff.
[394] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 120-1, 123.
[395] Valor. Eccles. I, p. 397, IV, p. 220.
[396] Ib. I, p. 276.
[397] Ib. II, p. 109.