[1486] Bede, Eccles. Hist. Book IV, ch. 25.
[1487] Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, ed. Stubbs (Rolls Series, 1867), I, pp. 135-6. Ralph Niger describes the transaction thus: “Juratus se tria monasteria constructurum, duos ordines transvertit, personas de loco ad locum transferens, meretrices alias aliis, cenomannicas Anglicis substituens.” Ib. II, p. XXX.
[1488] “Et quod indignum scribi, ad domos religiosarum veniens, fecit exprimi mammillas earundem, ut sic physice si esset inter eas corruptela experiretur” [1251]. Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora, ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls Series, 1880), V, p. 227. In 1248 he had deposed an abbess of Godstow, Flandrina de Bowes, and Adam Marsh writes to him: “Plurimum credo fore salutiferam visitationem quam in domo Godestowe fieri fecistis. Paternitatis vestrae sollicitudinem largitio divina remuneret.” Monumenta Franciscana, ed. J. S. Brewer (Rolls Series, 1858), p. 117. If Matthew Paris’ account of his procedure be true it would seem almost to rival the behaviour of Layton and Legh, however different the character and motive which inspired it.
[1489] The earliest list of comperta which we possess is the result of Archbishop Walter Giffard’s visitation of Swine in 1268. Though there is no charge of actual immorality the house was in a thoroughly unsatisfactory state. The Archbishop’s two sisters, the one Prioress of Elstow and the other Abbess of Shaftesbury, were both in serious trouble in 1270 and 1298 respectively, their nuns being also involved, and in 1296 there occurred the famous Giffard abduction from Wilton. Peckham’s injunctions to nunneries show widespread breach of enclosure and some suspicious conduct during the ’80s, a nun of Lymbrook is guilty with a monk of Leominster in 1282, and besides Matthew Paris’ account of Grosseteste’s proceedings in the diocese of Lincoln in 1251, we have notice of apostates there in 1295, 1296 and 1298 and in the York diocese in 1286, 1287, 1293 and 1299. See this chapter and notes, passim.
[1490] For the disappearance or suppression of eight small nunneries prior to 1535 see [Note H] below.
[1491] At Chicksand, for instance, Layton “fownde two of the nunnes not baron,” and at Harrold “one of them hade two faire chyldren, another one and no mo”; but is this so much worse than what Alnwick found at Catesby and St Michael’s, Stamford, in the same diocese a century before? Or take Layton’s description of the Prior of Maiden Bradley, quoted above; is it not much less serious than the description of Alexander Black of Selby in one of Archbishop Giffard’s visitation detecta in 1275? “Alexander Niger, monachus, tenet Cristinam Bouere et Agnetem filiam Stephani, de qua suscitavit prolem, et quamdam mulierem nomine Anekous, de qua suscitavit vivam prolem apud Crol, et aliam apud Sneyth quae vocatur Nalle, et alias infinitas apud Eboracum et Akastre et alibi, et quasi in qualibet villa unam; et fetidissimus est, et recte modo captus fuit cum quadam muliere in campis, sicut audivit.” Reg. Walter Giffard, p. 326. Or than what Alnwick discovered at the New Collegiate Church at Leicester in 1440? Layton’s general charges against the monks and nuns of Yorkshire are pure gossip or invention; but we should not have been deeply surprised to find them in a York archiepiscopal register of the early fourteenth century.
[1492] Of some of the Anglo-Saxon kings it was said, and said with horror, that they most willingly chose their mistresses from convents. See a letter from St Boniface to Ethelbald King of Mercia on this point, instancing the similar habits and evil fates of Ceolred of Mercia and Osred of Northumbria (Bon. Epis. XIX).
[1493] For these ladies, see references in p. [451], note 5, and below, p. [501], note 3.
[1494] Mémoires de J. Casanova de Seingalt (edition Garnier, 1910), tt. II, III, IV.
[1495] Dugdale, Mon. III, pp. 365-6. Compare a detectum at Crabhouse (1514): “Item, the younger nuns are disobedient and when the seniors charge them with their faults the prioress punishes alike the reformers and the sinners.” Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp, p. 109.