[875] Visit. of Dioc. Norwich (Camden Soc.), p. 243.
[876] Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, pp. 226, 236. William of Wykeham in 1387 ordered that three or four at least of the more discreet nuns of this large abbey, “in regula sancti benedicti et obseruanciis regularibus sufficienter erudite” should be chosen to instruct the younger nuns in these matters. New Coll. MS. f. 86. At St Mary’s, Winchester, in 1501, besides Margaret Legh, mistress of the novices, there was Agnes Cox, senior teacher (dogmatista). V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 124. At Elstow in 1421-2 the bishop ordered “That a more suitable nun be deputed and ordained to be precentress; and that elder nuns, if they shall be capable and fit for such offices, be preferred to younger.” Linc. Visit. I, p. 50. Dean Kentwode’s injunction to St Helen’s Bishopsgate in 1432 runs: “That ye ordeyne and chese on of yowre sustres, honest, abille and cunnyng of discretyone, the whiche can, may and schall have the charge of techyng and informacyone of yowre sustres that be uncunnyng, for to teche hem here service and the rule of here religione.” Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 554.
[877] The controversy was roused by an article by Mr J. E. G. de Montmorency entitled “The Medieval Education of Women in England” in the Journal of Education (June, 1909) pp. 427-31. This was challenged by Mr Coulton, loc. cit. (July, 1910), pp. 456-7; see the correspondence passim, especially the two articles by Mr A. F. Leach, loc. cit. (Oct. and Dec. 1910), pp. 667-9, 838-41. The subject was afterwards treated with great erudition by Mr Coulton in a paper read before the International Congress of Historical Studies in 1913, reprinted with notes as Monastic Schools in the Middle Ages (Medieval Studies, X, 1913).
[878] For the rest of this chapter I shall not give full references in footnotes, because they can easily be traced in [Note B], p. [568] below.
[879] Cistercian Statutes, 1256-7, ed. J. T. Fowler (reprinted from Yorks. Archaeol. Journ.), p. 105.
[880] Probably, however, after the dissolution of her house.
[881] Tanner, Notitia Monastica (1744 edit.), p. xxxii (basing his opinion on three secondary authorities and on a misunderstanding of two medieval entries, one of which refers to lay sisters and the other to an adult boarder).
[882] N. Sanderus, de Schismate Anglicana, ed. 1586, p. 176. The statement is not in the original Sanders. A well-known passage in the Paston Letters illustrates the practice as regards girls; Margaret Paston writes to her son in 1469 “Also I would ye should purvey for your sister to be with my Lady of Oxford, or with my Lady of Bedford, or in some other worshipful place whereas ye think best, for we be either of us weary of other.” It is probable that this method of educating girls was more common than nunnery education.
[883] Quoted by Mr Leach, Journ. of Educ. (1910), p. 668.
[884] Possibly, as Mr Coulton points out (Med. Studies, X, p. 26), this may account for the fact that evidence of girl pupils is wanting for some of the wealthier and more important nunneries; he instances Shaftesbury, Amesbury, Syon, Studley and Lacock. For the life of the nuns at Lacock and Amesbury we have very little information of any kind, but our information is fairly full for Shaftesbury, and very full for Syon and for Studley.