A word may perhaps be said as to the method by which the nuns administered their estates. Miss Jacka distinguishes two main types of administration, discernible in the Valor:
The London houses, except Syon and a number, chiefly, of the smaller nunneries scattered throughout the country, had a single staff of officials, steward, bailiff, auditor, receiver; their revenues were drawn from scattered rents and other profits rather than from entire manors. There seem to have been about forty houses of this type in addition to the London houses. The second group comprises the great country nunneries in the south of England, including Syon and a number of smaller houses whose revenues were reckoned under the headings of various manors each managed by its own bailiff.... The staff of Syon may be taken as an unusually complete and elaborate example of the usual system, whose principle appears worked out on a smaller scale, in the case of smaller nunneries. The nuns had in the first place what may be called a central staff, a steward at £3. 6s. 8d., a steward of the hospice at £23. 15s. 4d., a general receiver at £19. 13s. 4d. and an auditor at £8. 3s. 4d. Their lands in Middlesex were managed by their steward of Isleworth, Lord Wyndesore, whose fee was £3, a steward of courts at £1 and a bailiff at £2. 13s. 4d., who had a separate fee of 13s. 4d. as bailiff of the chapel of the Angels at Brentford. Their extensive possessions in Sussex were managed by a receiver and a steward of courts for the whole county, whose fees were £3 and £2 respectively, by four stewards for various districts with fees from £1. 6s. 8d. down to 13s. 4d. and by 13 bailiffs arranged under the stewards, of whom one received £2. 3s. 4d. and the rest from £1 to 6s. 8d. Their one manor in Cambridgeshire was managed by a steward at 13s. 4d. and a bailiff at £1. With the central staff was reckoned a receiver for Somerset, Dorset and Devon, whose fee was £6. 13s. 4d.; the ladies held no temporalities in Somerset; in Dorset they had a chief steward, £1. 6s. 8d., a steward of courts, 6s. 8d., and a bailiff, 11s., and their large possessions in Devon were managed by two stewards (£2. 13s. 4d.), two stewards of courts (13s. 4d., 6s. 8d.), six bailiffs, with fees ranging from 4s. to £2 and an auditor, 3s. 4d. They received £100 a year from unspecified holdings in Lancashire and had there a steward of courts at £1. Their possessions in Lincolnshire were mainly spiritual, but they employed a receiver, whose fee was 13s. 4d. In Gloucestershire they had large possessions. The two chief stewards of Cheltenham received each £3. 6s. 8d. and the chief steward of Minchinhampton £2. Two stewards of courts each received £1. 6s. 8d. and the two stewards at Slaughter £1. Three bailiffs received £2. 13s. 4d., £2 and 13s. 4d., with livery. A bailiff and receiver of profits arising from the sale of woods was paid £4 and the steward of the abbot of Cirencester was paid 6s. 8d. for holding the abbess’ view of frankpledge. In Wiltshire the nuns held a manor and a rectory and paid £1 to a steward for both: they seem to have been leased. In counties where all their possessions were spiritual they had no local officials; in Somerset both the rectories they held were leased and in Kent, although that is not stated, it is suggested by the round sums which were received (£26. 13s. 4d., £10, £20). The leasing of property for a fixed sum of course made the administration of it very much simpler. All the temporalities of the Minoresses without Aldgate were leased and their staff consisted of a chief steward, Lord Wyndesore, whose fee was £2. 13s. 4d., a receiver at £4. 5s. 10d. and an auditor at 13s. 4d.[278]
A closer analysis of the chief sources of income of a medieval nunnery, as they may be distinguished in the Valor and in various account rolls, is now possible. They may be classified as follows: Temporalities, comprising: (1) rents from lands and houses, (2) perquisites of courts, fairs, mills, woods and other manorial perquisites, (3) issues of the manor, i.e. sale of farm produce, (4) miscellaneous payments from boarders, gifts, etc.; and Spiritualities, comprising (5) tithes from appropriated benefices, alms, mortuaries, etc. The distinction between temporalities and spiritualities is a technical one and there was sometimes little difference between the sources of the two kinds of income, but the temporal revenues were usually larger[279].
(1) Rents from lands and houses. A house which possessed several manors besides its home farm would either lease them to tenants (“farm out the manor” as it was called), or put in bailiffs, who were responsible for working the estates and handing over to the convent the profits of their agriculture, and who may also have collected rents where no separate rent collector was employed. For besides the profits arising from the demesne land (of which some account will be given below), the convent derived a much more considerable income from the rents of all tenants (whatever the legal tenure by which they held) who held their land at a money rent. The number of such tenants was likely to increase by the commutation of customary services for money payments; since, except in the particular manor or manors wherein the produce of the demesne was reserved for the actual consumption of the community, it was to the interest of a convent to lease a great part of the demesne land to tenants at a money rent and so save itself the trouble of farming the land under a bailiff[280]. In addition to these rents from agricultural land an income was sometimes derived, as has already been pointed out, from the rent of tenements in towns.
In most account rolls a careful distinction was drawn between “rents of assize” and “farms.” The former were the payments due from the tenants (whether freehold or customary) who held their holdings at a money rent; these rents were collected by the different collectors of the nunnery or brought to the treasurers by the tenants themselves. “Farms” were leases, i.e. payments for land or houses which were held directly in demesne by the nunnery, but instead of being worked by a bailiff, or occupied by the household, were “farmed out” at an annual rent. A “farmer” might thus hold in farm an entire manor, and, for the payment of an annual sum to the nuns, he would have the right to the produce of the demesne and to the rents of rent-paying tenants. He might be quite a small person and hold in farm only a few acres of the demesne (in addition perhaps to an ordinary tenant’s holding on the manor). He might hold the farm of a mill, or a stable, or a single house[281]. In any case he paid a rent to the nuns and made what he could out of his “farm”; while they much preferred these regular payments to the trouble of superintending the cultivation of distant lands, in an age when communication was difficult and slow.
Nevertheless the rents were not always easy to collect, for all the diligence of the bailiff and of the various rent-collectors[282]. There are some illuminating entries in the accounts of St Radegund’s Cambridge. In 1449-50 the indignant treasuress debits herself with “one tenement in Walleslane lately held by John Walsheman for 6s. 8d. a year, the which John fled out of this town within the first half of this year, leaving nought behind him whereby he could be distrained save 7d., collected therefrom”; and in the following year she again debits herself “for part of a tenement lately held by John Webster for 12s. a year, whence was collected only 7s. for that the aforesaid John Webster did flit [literally, devolavit] by night, leaving naught behind him whereby he could be distrained.” Yet these nuns seem to have been indulgent landlords; in this year the treasuress debits herself “for a tenement lately held by Richard Pyghtesley, because it was too heavily charged before, 2s. 3d., ... and for a portion of the rent owed by Stephen Brasyer on account of the poverty and need of the said Stephen, by grace of the lady Prioress this time only, 15d.” and there are other instances of lowered rents in these accounts[283]. Other account rolls sometimes make mention of meals and small presents of money given to tenants bringing in their rents.
(2) Various manorial perquisites and grants. Besides the rents from land and houses the position of a religious community as lord of a manor gave it the right to various other financial payments. Of these the most important were the perquisites of the manorial courts. These varied very much according to the extent and number of the liberties which had been granted to any particular house. To Syon, beloved of kings, vast liberties had been granted (notably in 1447), so that the tenants upon its estates were almost entirely exempt from royal justice. The abbess and convent had
view of frankpledge, leets, lawe-days and wapentakes for all people, tenants resiant and other resiants aforesaid, in whatsoever places, by the same abbess or her successors to be limited, where to them it shall seem most expedient within the lordships, lands, rents, fees and possessions aforesaid, to be holden by the steward or other officers.
They had the assizes of bread and ale and wine and victuals and weights and measures. They had all the old traditional emoluments of justice, which lords had striven to obtain since the days before the conquest,
soc, sac, infangentheof, outfangentheof, waif, estray, treasure-trove, wreck of the sea, deodands, chattels of felons and fugitives, of outlaws, of waive, of persons condemned, of felons of themselves [suicides], escapes of felons, year day waste and estrepement and all other commodities, forfeitures and profits whatsoever.