[1227] Poetical Works of John Skelton, ed. Dyce, I, p. 95.
[1228] Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, Text B, Passus V, ll. 304 ff.
[1230] Songs and Carols, ed. Th. Wright (Percy Soc.), pp. 91-5.
[1231] Gower, Mirour de l’Omne, ed. G. C. Macaulay, p. 289. Translated in Coulton, Med. Garn. pp. 577-8.
[1232] At Esholt in 1535 Archbishop Lee even had to enjoin “that the prioress suffer no ale house to be kept within the precinct of the gates of the saide monasterie.” Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 452. An explanation of this may be found by comparing the evidence at Archbishop Warham’s visitation of the Hospital of St James outside Canterbury in 1511. “The Prioress complains that Richard Welles stays and talks in the precincts of the house and his wife sells beer in the precincts. They are very quarrelsome people, brawlers and sowers of discord. There is always a crowd of people at the house of Richard.” E.H.R. VI, p. 22. At both these houses the nuns probably employed a secular alewife to make their beer and she sold also to other customers within their precincts. Compare Peckham’s injunction to Wherwell in 1284: “Iterum ob Dei reverentiam et ecclesiae honestatem perpetuo inhibemus ne mercatores sedere in ecclesia cum suis mercibus permittantur.” Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham (Rolls Ser.), II, p. 654. Also Bishop Bokyngham’s letter forbidding merchants to sell their wares in the conventual church or churchyard of Stainfield under pain of excommunication (1392). V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 131. Medieval churches were put to strange uses. They served sometimes as a market-place, sometimes as a granary, sometimes as a playground, sometimes as a stage.
[1233] Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, II, p. 35, note b.
[1234] Wood, op. cit. pp. 35-6.
[1235] Wood, op. cit. pp. 36-37 (No. XV).
[1236] On this subject see Part II of Thiers’ treatise De la Clôture, pp. 265-497.