St Mary’s, Winchester, also pleaded the royal administration of its temporalities as one reason for its impoverishment, when petitioning the Pope for leave to appropriate the church of Froyle in 1343 and 1346[581].
Sometimes the abbeys found it cheaper to compound with the King for a certain sum of money and thus to purchase the right of administering their own temporalities, saving to the King, as a rule, knights’ fees, advowsons, escheats and sometimes wards and marriages. Romsey Abbey secured this privilege, after the escheator had already entered, in 1315, for a fine of forty marks; but in 1333, when there was another voidance, the convent had to agree to pay £40 for the first two months and pro rata for such time as the voidance continued, saving to the King knights’ fees, advowsons and escheats[582]. In 1340 the royal escheator was ordered to let the Prioress and Convent of Wherwell have the custody of their temporalities, in accordance with a grant made some years previously, by which the house was to render £230 for a year and pro rata[583]. In 1344 a similar order was made in the case of Wilton, whose late Abbess (prudent woman) had seized the opportunity to purchase the right for £60 from the King, when he lay at Orwell before crossing the sea[584]. Similarly, the next year, Shaftesbury received the custody of its temporalities in consideration of a fine of £100, made with the King by its Abbess, in the second year of his reign[585]. With four great abbeys falling vacant in little over ten years, the royal exchequer reaped a good harvest; and though the payment of a lump sum was better than falling into the hands of the escheator, and though the nuns would make haste to elect a new abbess as soon as possible, a voidance was always a costly matter.
But perhaps the most serious tax upon the resources of the nunneries was the right, possessed by some dignitaries (notably the King and the Bishop of the diocese), to nominate to houses in their patronage persons whom the nuns were obliged to receive as members of their community or to support as corrodians, pensioners or boarders. The right of nominating a nun might be exercised upon a variety of occasions. The Archbishop might do so to certain houses in his province on the occasion of his consecration, and this right was energetically enforced by Peckham, who nominated girls to Wherwell, Castle Hedingham, Burnham, Stratford, Easebourne and Catesby[586]. A Bishop possessed, in some cases, a similar right on the occasion of his consecration. Rigaud d’Assier, Bishop of Winchester, sent nuns to Romsey, St Mary’s Winchester and Wherwell[587]; Ralph of Shrewsbury, Bishop of Bath and Wells, nominated to Minchin Barrow and to Cannington[588]; Stephen Gravesend, Bishop of London, sent a girl to Barking[589]; and the successive bishops of Salisbury exercised the prerogative of placing an inmate in Shaftesbury Abbey and of appointing one of the nuns to act as her instructor[590]. The existence of this right seems to have varied with different dioceses and its exaction with different bishops, if it is possible to judge from the absence of commendatory letters in some registers and their presence in others. The Bishop of a diocese also sometimes had the right of presenting a nun to a house when a new superior was created there. This was the case at Romsey, where nuns were thus nominated in 1307, 1333 and 1397[591], and at Romsey also there occurs one instance (the only one of the kind which search has yet yielded) of the nomination of a nun by the bishop, because of “a profession of ladies of that house which he had lately made.” Bishop Stratford thus appointed Jonette de Stretford (perhaps a poor relative) “en regard de charite” in 1333, a month after having appointed Alice de Hampton by reason of the Abbess’ creation[592].
The King possessed in houses under his patronage rights of nomination corresponding to those of the Bishop. That of presenting a nun on the occasion of his coronation was frequently exercised. Edward II sent ladies to Barking, Wherwell and St Mary’s Winchester[593]; Barking received nuns from Richard II, Henry IV and Henry VI[594] and Shaftesbury from Richard II, Henry V and Henry VI[595]. He also possessed the right in certain abbeys of presenting a nun on the occasion of a voidance and there are many such letters of presentation enrolled upon the Close rolls; for instance Joan de la Roche was sent to Wilton in 1322[596], Katherine de Arderne to Romsey in 1333[597] and Agnes Turberville to Shaftesbury in 1345[598].
Sometimes similar rights to these were exercised by private persons, who held the patronage of a house or with whom it was connected by special ties; the family of le Rous of Imber, for example, had the right (resigned in 1313) of presenting two nuns, with a valet, to Romsey Abbey[599]. But the royal rights were always the most burdensome and, though such privileges as those described above, and the even more burdensome right to demand corrodies and pensions, normally affected only great abbeys such as Barking, Romsey, St Mary’s Winchester, and Shaftesbury, the smaller houses (not under royal patronage) were not always exempt from sudden demands—witness the case of Polsloe below—and a wide range of nunneries was affected by archiepiscopal and episcopal rights. Moreover even the great houses, in spite of their large endowments, were crippled by the system, as may be gathered from their constant complaints of poverty and of overcrowding. The obligation to receive fresh inmates by nomination was especially burdensome when it was incurred on more than one occasion by the same house and coincided with other exactions. The case of Shaftesbury is noticeable in this connection; the King claimed the right to administer its temporalities during voidance, to nominate a nun on his own coronation and on the election of an Abbess, to demand a pension for one of the royal clerks on the latter occasion, and to send boarders or corrodians for maintenance; and the Bishop of Salisbury could nominate a nun on his own promotion to the see and could demand a benefice for one of his clerks on the election of an Abbess. It is, of course, possible that all these prerogatives were not invariably exercised and that a new inmate was not sent to Shaftesbury every time a King was crowned, a Bishop consecrated or an Abbess elected; but it was exercised sufficiently often to be a strain upon the house.
Even when the right of nomination was confined to one occasion, it seems to have been generally resented and frequently resisted. The reason for resistance lay in the fact that the house was forced to support another inmate without the hope of receiving the donation of land or rents, which medieval fathers gave to the convents in which their daughters took the veil; and as the dowry system became more and more common, the hardship of having to receive a nun for nothing would soon appear intolerable. In some cases a sturdy resistance against this “dumping” of nuns finds an echo in the bishops’ Registers. Four houses out of the six to which Peckham nominated new inmates attempted a refusal, and the excuses which they offered are interesting. Two years after his consecration the nuns of Burnham were still refusing to receive his protégée, Matilda de Weston; they had begun by trying to question his right to nominate and he seems to have taken legal action against them, after which they pleaded poverty (resulting from an unsuccessful lawsuit) and also an obligation to receive no novice without the consent of Edmund Earl of Cornwall, son of their founder. The Archbishop directed a stern letter to them, rejecting both their excuses and announcing his intention of pursuing his right, but the end of the matter is not known[600]. An equally determined resistance was offered by the Prioress of Stratford, who had been ordered to receive Isabel Bret. In 1282 Peckham wrote to her for the third time, declaring that her excuses were frivolous; she had apparently objected that the girl was too young and that her house was too heavily burdened with nuns, lay sisters and debts for another inmate to be received, but the Archbishop declared the youth of the candidate to be rather a merit than a defect and pointed out that, so far from being a burden to their house, she would bring it honour, for by receiving her they would multiply distinguished friends and benefactors and would be able to rely on his own special protection in their affairs[601]. A further letter to the Bishop of London is interesting, because it mentions a third objection made by the recalcitrant nunnery.
“We have received your letter,” writes Peckham, “in favour of the Prioress and Convent of Stratford, urgently begging us to moderate our purpose concerning a certain burden which is alleged to be threatening them from us, on account of the insupportable weight and the poverty of the house and the deformity of the person, whom we have presented to them for admission. Concerning which we would have you know that already in the lifetime of your predecessor of good memory, we had ordered them to receive that same person and for two years we continued to believe that they would yield to our wishes in the matter, yet without burden to themselves, by the provision of the parents of the said little maid; especially seeing that never yet have we been burdensome to any monastery making a truthful plea of indigence. We believe that what they allege about deformity would be an argument in favour of our proposal; would that not only these women of Stratford, concerning whom so many scandals abound, but also all who so immodestly expose themselves to human conversation and company, were or at least appeared notable for such deformity that they should tempt no one to crime! We have moreover heard that the greater part of the convent would willingly consent to the reception of the girl, were they not hindered by the malice of the prioress; nevertheless, lest we should seem deaf to your entreaties, we suspend the whole business until we come to London, to ascertain how our purpose may be carried out without notable damage to them[602].”
The Archbishop had his way however; for eleven years later the will of Robert le Bret was enrolled in the Court of Husting and contained a legacy of rents on Cornhill “to Isabella his daughter, a nun of Stratford”[603]. Peckham also wrote in a tone of strained patience to the nuns of Castle Hedingham, who had refused to receive Agnes de Beauchamp, warning them that besides incurring severe punishment at his own hands, further obstinacy would offend the Queen of England, at whose instance he had undertaken the promotion of the said Agnes[604]. The Prioress of Catesby was equally troublesome and as late as 1284 the Archbishop wrote reprimanding her for her inconstancy and feigned excuses, because, after promising to receive the daughter of Sir Robert de Caynes and after repeated requests on his part that they should admit the girl, she and her nuns had written asking to be allowed to admit another person in her stead[605].
Real poverty often nerved the nuns to such bold resistance. In the Register of Bishop Grandisson of Exeter there is a letter from Polsloe Priory, written in 1329 and addressed to Queen Philippa, on the subject of a certain Johanete de Tourbevyle[606], whom she had requested the nuns to receive as a lay sister. Written in the French of their daily speech, with no attempt at formal phraseology, their naive plea still rings with the agitation of the “poor and humble maids,” torn between anxiety not to burden their impecunious house, and fear of offending the new-made Queen of England:
To their very honourable and very powerful and redoubtable lady, my lady Dame Philippa, by the grace of God queen of England, etc., her poor and humble maids, the nuns of Polsloe, in all that they may of reverence and honour; beseeching your sweet pity to have mercy on our great poverty. Our very noble dame, we have received your letters, by the which we understand that it is your will that we receive Johanete de Tourbevyle among us as sister of the house, to take the dress of a nun in secular habit. Concerning the which matter, most debonair lady, take pity upon us, if it please you, for the love of God and of His mother. For certainly never did any queen demand such a thing before from our little house; though mayhap they be accustomed to do so from other houses, founded by the kings and holding of them in chief; but this do not we, wherefore it falls heavily upon us. And if it please your debonair highness to know our simple estate, we are so poor (God knows it and all the country) that what we have suffices not to our small sustenance, who must by day and night do the service of God, were it not for the aid of friends; nor can we be charged with seculars without reducing the number of us religious women, to the diminution of God’s service and the perpetual prejudice of our poor house. And we have firm hope in God and in your great bounty that you will not take it ill that this thing be not done to the peril of our souls; for to entertain and to begin such a new charge in such a small place, a charge which would endure and would be demanded for ever afterwards, would be too great a danger to your soul, my Lady, in the sight of God, wherefrom God by His grace defend you! Our most blessed Lady, may God give you a long and happy life, to His pleasure and to the aid and solace of ourselves and of other poor servants of God on earth; and we should have great joy to do your behests, if God had given us the power[607].