[1177] Hereford Epis. Reg. Spofford, p. 81. Compare the charge made against the clergy of Ripon Minster in 1312: “Vicarii capellani, et caeteri ministri ... spectaculis publicis, ludibriis et coreis, immo teatricalibus ludis inter laicos frequentius se immiscent.” J. T. Fowler, Memorials of Ripon Minster (Surtees Soc.), II, p. 68. Also one of the comperta at Alnwick’s visitation of Humberstone Abbey in 1440, “He says that Wrauby answered the abbot saucily and rebelliously when [the abbot] took him to task for climbing up a gate to behold the pipe-players and dancers in the churchyard of the parish church.” Linc. Visit. II, p. 140.
[1178] Manners and Meals in Olden Time, ed. Furnivall (E.E.T.S.), p. 40.
[1179] See above, p. [81], and compare the injunctions sent by Cardinal Nicholas of Cues to the Abbess of Sonnenburg, c. 1454, forbidding her to go on pilgrimages or to visit health resorts or to attend weddings. Eckenstein, Woman under Monasticism, p. 425.
[1180] Quoted in Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities (ed. 1877), pp. 382, 394. Compare the almost precisely similar account given by Erasmus in his Guide to Christian Matrimony (1526), quoted in Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, pp. 439-40.
[1181] See above, p. [309] and below, p. [388].
[1182] Coulton, Chaucer and his England, pp. 108-9. Weddings were, however, occasionally celebrated in convent churches, e.g. on Jan. 3rd, 1465-6 the Bishop of Ely addressed a licence to Thomas Trumpington, “President of religion of the Minoresses of the convent of Denny,” authorising him to celebrate matrimony in the convent church between William Ketterich junior and Marion Hall, domestic servants in the monastery, the bans to be put up in the parish church of Waterbeach. Ely Epis. Records, ed. Gibbons, p. 145. Compare case at Crabhouse in 1476, V.C.H. Norfolk, II, p. 409. Dugdale notes that Henry VIII is said to have married one of his wives in the Chapel at Sopwell. Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 364. Such weddings would necessarily have taken place in convent churches where the nave was also used as a parish church, but this was not so at Denny. Wriothesley’s Chronicle contains an account of a triple wedding held at Haliwell in 1536. “This yeare, the 3 daye of July, beinge Mondaye, was a greate solempnytie of marriage kept at the nonnerye of Halywell, besyde London, in the Erle of Ruttlandes place, where the Erle of Oxfordes sonne and heyer, called Lord Bulbeke maryed the Erle of Westmorelandes eldest daughter named Ladye Dorytye and the Erle of Westmorelandes sonne and heyre, called Lord Nevell, maryed the Erle of Ruttlandes eldyste daughter, named Ladye Anne, and the Erle of Rutlandes sonne and heire called Lord Roosse maryed the Erle of Westmorelandes daughter, named Ladye Margaret; and all these three lordes were maryed at one masse, goinge to churche all 3 together on by another and the laydes, there wyfes, followinge, one after another, everye one of the younge ladyes havinge 2 younge lordes goinge one everye syde of them when they went to church and a younge ladye bearinge up everye of their gowne traynes; at wh. maryage was present all the greate estates of the realme, both lordes and ladyes.” Afterwards they all went home and had a great feast, followed by a dance, to which the King came dressed as a Turk. Wriothesley’s Chronicle, ed. W. D. Hamilton (Camden Soc. 1875), I, pp. 50-1. A reference may also be made to No. XLVI of Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, ed. Th. Wright, t. I, p. 284: “Or advint toutesfoiz ung jour que une des niepces de madame l’abbesse se marioit et faisoit sa feste en l’abbaye; et y avoit grosse assemblée des gens du païs; et estoit madame l’abbesse fort empeschée de festoyer les gens de bien qui estoyent venuz à la feste faire honneur à sa niepce.”
[1183] From “Proofs of Age, temp. Henry IV,” quoted in Trans. R. Hist. Soc. N.S. XVI (1902), p. 163.
[1184] “Or viennent commeres de toutes pars; or convient que le pauvre homme [i.e. the husband] face tant que elles soient bien aises. La dame et les commeres parlent et raudent, et dient de bonnes chouses et se tiennent bien aises, quiconques ait la peine de le querir, quelque temps qu’il face ... et tousjours boyvent comme bottes.... Lors les commeres entrent, elles desjunent, elles disnent, elles menjent a raassie, maintenant boivent au lit de la commere, maintenant à la cuve, et confondent des biens et du vin plus qu’il n’en entreroit en une bote; et à l’aventure il vient à barrilz ou n’en y a que une pipe. Et le pauvre homme, qui a tout le soussy de la despense, va souvent veoir comment le vin se porte, quant il voit terriblement boire.... Briefment tout se despend; les commeres s’en vont bien coiffées, parlant et janglant, et ne se esmoient point dont il vient.” Les Quinzes Joyes de Mariage (Bib. Elzevirienne, 1855), pp. 27-8, 30, 37-8.
[1185] G. G. Coulton, French Monasticism in 1503 (Medieval Studies No. XI. 1915), p. 22 note 2.
[1186] New Coll. MS. f. 87. On the other hand such connections with rich families might be a source of wealth to a house. Mr Coulton draws attention to “the letter of an abbot at Bordeaux in Father Denifle’s Désolation des Eglises, etc. I, p. 583 (A.D. 1419). The abbey had been so impoverished by war that the Abbot begged for a papal indult permitting him to stand godfather to forty children of noble or wealthy families.” Coulton, loc. cit.