[1337] Cal. of Close Rolls (1307-13), p. 114.
[1338] Ib. (1302-7), p. 419.
[1339] Cal. of Close Rolls (1313-18), p. 43. Sometimes the King sent his friends as well as his enemies to board in a convent and occasionally he endeavoured to do so without paying for them. In 1339 he sent first to Wilton and then to Shaftesbury “Sibyl Libaud of Scotland who lately came to England to the king’s faith and besought that he would provide for her maintenance, requesting them to provide her and her son Thomas, who is of tender age, with maintenance from that house, in food and clothing, until Whitsuntide next, knowing that what they do at this request shall not be to the prejudice of their house in the future.” Cal. of Close Rolls (1339-41), pp. 261, 335. John of Gaunt made use of the convent of Nuneaton to provide a home for five Spanish ladies, who had doubtless come to England with his duchess Constance of Castile; early in 1373 he wrote to his receiver at Leicester bidding him pay the prioress for their expenses 13s. 4d. each week; but evidently they found the convent too dull for their tastes, for in August one of them was “demourrant a Leycestre ovesque Johan Elmeshalle,” and in December the Duke wrote to his receiver again to say that he had heard “que noz damoisels d’Espaigne demurrantz a Nouneton ne voullont pas illoeques pluis longement demurrer”; so it was “Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies” at Nuneaton. It is probable that these “damoisels” were quite young girls, and had been placed at the convent to learn “nortelry.” John of Gaunt’s Reg. (R. Hist. Soc.), II, pp. 128, 231, 276-7. See, for more about these ladies, pp. 320-1, 328, 338.
[1340] Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi.
[1341] V.C.H. Norfolk, II, p. 352. This case is particularly interesting, because it would seem to show that “benefit of clergy” was not claimed by nuns. On this point see Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of Engl. Law, 2nd ed. I, p. 445. “There seems no reason for doubting that nuns were entitled to the same privilege, though, to their credit be it said, we have in our period, found no cases which prove this.” Maitland cites Hale, Pleas of the Crown, II, p. 328, as saying: “Nuns had the exemption from temporal jurisdiction but the privilege of clergy was never granted them by our law”; but elsewhere (Pleas of the Crown, II, p. 371): “Anciently nuns professed were admitted to privilege of clergy”; he cites a case from 1348 (Fitzherbert’s Abridgment Corone, pl. 461) which speaks of a woman, not expressly called a nun, being claimed by and delivered to the ordinary. Stephen, Hist. of Crim. Law of England, II, p. 461, thinks that “all women (except, till the Reformation, professed nuns) were for centuries excluded from benefit of clergy, because they were incapable of being ordained.”
[1342] Mr Hamilton Thompson thinks that “Mestowe” is probably the hundred of Meon-Stoke (Hants.), in a distant part of the county; it is difficult to see why the Abbess made a general claim there and in any case Wherwell, where Henry Harold lived, is in Wherwell Hundred.
[1343] V.C.H. Hants. II, p. 135.
[1344] Dugdale, Mon. III, p. 369.
[1345] Gibbons, Ely Epis. Records, p. 406.
[1346] Cal. of Pat. Rolls (1381-5), p. 355.