PLATE III
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PAGE FROM LA SAINTE ABBAYE
(In the top left hand corner is a nun at confession; in the other corners are visions appearing to a nun at prayer.)
The chaplain of a house usually resided on the premises, sometimes receiving his board from the nuns; occasionally inventories mention his lodgings, which were outside the nuns’ cloister. Thus the Kilburn Dissolution inventory, after describing all the household offices, goes on to describe the three chambers for the chaplain and the hinds, the “confessor’s chamber” and the church[391]. At Sheppey the chamber over the gatehouse was called “the confessor’s chamber” and was furnished forth with
a hangyng of rede clothe, a paynted square sparver of lynen, with iij corteyns of lynyn clothe, a good fetherbed, a good bolster, a pece of blanketts and a good counterpeynt of small verder, in the lowe bed a fetherbed, a bolster, a pece of blanketts olde, and an image coverled, a greate joynyd chayer of waynscot, an olde forme, and a cressar of iron for the chymneye[392].
The relations between the nuns and their priest were doubtless very friendly; he would be their guide, philosopher and friend, sometimes acting as custos of their temporal affairs and always ready with advice.
Madame Eglentyne, it will be remembered, took three priests with her upon her eventful pilgrimage to Canterbury, and one was the never-to-be-forgotten Sir John, whom she mounted worse than his inimitable skill as a raconteur deserved:
Than spak our host, with rude speche and bold
And seyde un-to the Nonnes Preest anon,
“Com neer, thou preest, com hider thou sir John,
Tel us swich thing as may our hertes glade,
Be blythe, though thou ryde up-on a jade.
What though thyn hors be bothe foule and lene,
If he wol serve thee, rekke not a bene;
Look that thyn herte be mery evermo.”
“Yis, sir” quod he, “yis, host, so mote I go,
But I be mery, y-wis I wol be blamed”:—
And right anon his tale he hath attamed,
And thus he seyde unto us everichon,
This swete preest, this goodly man, sir John[393].