[1406] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 91, 116.
[1407] R. E. G. Cole, The Priory of Brodholme (Assoc. Architec. Soc. Reports and Papers, XXVIII), p. 66.
[1408] At Markyate in 1336 “an apostate nun was received back again and absolved by Bishop Burghersh and three others sought absolution at the same time for having aided and abetted her in her escape.” V.C.H. Beds. I, p. 360.
[1409] It must be conceded that the Church gave the nuns every inducement to take measures to prevent such disasters; for instance in the Liber Poenitentialis of Theodore the Anglo-Saxon nun guilty of immorality is given eight years of penance and ten if there be a child; a married layman and a nun who are lovers have six years of penance and seven if there be a child. Here, as ever, the Church went on the principle that sin was bad but scandal worse; si non caste tamen caute. Of the practice of abortion I find no record in English pre-Reformation documents, though Henry VIII’s disreputable commissioner, Dr Layton, accused the Yorkshire nuns of taking potations “ad prolem conceptum opprimendum.” Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Soc. 1843), p. 97. There is a proved case of it in Eudes Rigaud’s visitation of St-Aubin (1256), and a suspicion at St Saëns (1264), Reg. Visit. Rigaud, ed. Bonnin, pp. 255, 491. See below, p. [668]. One of Caesarius of Heisterbach’s exempla hangs upon it. Caes. Heist. Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange, II, p. 331. In seventeenth and eighteenth century Italy the practice seems to have been common, witness Casanova.
[1410] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 96.
[1411] Wykeham’s Reg. II, pp. 114-5.
[1412] “Et proles obiit immediate post.” Jessopp, op. cit. p. 109.
[1413] See e.g. faculty given “to dispense twenty persons of illegitimate birth of the realms of France and England, whether sons of priests or married persons, or monks, or nuns, to be ordained and to hold two benefices apiece.” Cal. of Papal Letters, IV, p. 170.
[1414] M. E. Lowndes, The Nuns of Port Royal (1909), p. 13. The Abbess in question was Angélique d’Estrées, sister of Gabrielle, Henry IV’s mistress, and famous for her scandalous life and her struggle with her successor, the famous Mère Angélique (Jacqueline Arnauld) of Port Royal.
[1415] Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Soc. 1843), p. 58. But it must be remembered that we cannot believe uncorroborated a single word that Layton says.