At Elstow Bokyngham gave a more detailed injunction about the appointment of bailiffs and other officers.
Let the Abbess for the government of the aforesaid monastery have faithful servants, in especial for the government and supervision without waste of the husbandry and the manors and stock and woods of the aforesaid house; the which the Abbess herself is bound, if she can, to supervise each year in person, or else let her cause them to be industriously supervised by others; and to look after the external and internal business of the house and to prosecute it outside let her appoint also some man of proven experience and of mature age[755].
The purpose of those regulations and restrictions which have hitherto been described, was to assist the nuns in managing their own finances. But the nuns were never very good business women, and they were moreover in theory confined to the precincts of the cloister, so that it was difficult for them to manage their own business, unless they imperilled their souls by excursions into the world. During the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, therefore, a common method of extricating them from their difficulties was by appointing a male guardian, known in different places as Custos, Prior, Warden or Master, to supervise the temporal affairs of a house and to look after its finances. In the early history of Cistercian nunneries each house was governed jointly by a Prior and Prioress and in some cases a few canons are found holding the temporalities jointly with the nuns. Of these Cistercian houses Mr Hamilton Thompson says:
As in the case of the Gilbertine priories, such nunneries are rarely found outside Lincolnshire and Yorkshire: they were under the bishop’s supervision and their connexion with the order of Cîteaux was nominal. Their geographical distribution, as well as the fact that St Gilbert attempted to affiliate his nunneries to the Cistercian order and modelled them upon its rule, provokes the suspicion that such houses were a result of the growth of the Gilbertine order, and, if not intended to become double houses, were at any rate imitations of the corporations of nuns at Sempringham and elsewhere[756].
References to canons occur in connection with the houses of Stixwould, Heynings and Legbourne in Lincolnshire[757], Catesby in Northamptonshire[758] and Swine in Yorkshire[759]. The comperta of Archbishop Giffard’s visitation of Swine in 1267-8 show that the house at that time closely resembled the double houses belonging to the Gilbertine order.
Item compertum est, that the two windows, by which the food and drink of the canons and lay brothers are conveyed (to them), are not at all well guarded by the two nuns who are called janitresses, inasmuch as suspicious conversations are frequently held there between the canons and lay brothers on the one hand and the nuns and sisters on the other. Item compertum est that the door which leads to the church is not at all carefully kept by a certain secular boy, who permits the canons and lay brothers to enter indiscriminately in the twilight, that they may talk with the nuns and sisters, the which door was wont to be guarded diligently by a trusty and energetic lay brother.
It has already been described how the ill-management of the canons and lay brothers (“who dissipate and consume, under colour of guardianship, the goods outside, which were wont to be committed to the guardianship of one of the nuns”) caused the nuns to go short in clothes and food and even to be reduced to drinking water instead of beer twice a week, though the canons and their friends “did themselves very well” (satis habundanter et laute procurantur)[760]. In most cases this double constitution of nuns and canons was in abeyance in Cistercian houses before the fourteenth century, though a prior and canons are mentioned at Stixwould in 1308[761] and Richard de Staunton, “canon of Catesby,” was made master of that house as late as 1316[762].
In other houses where no trace of canons has survived there are often references to the resident Prior, especially in the dioceses of York and Lincoln, and this official is sometimes found in Benedictine houses (e.g. Godstow[763], St Michael’s Stamford[764], and King’s Mead, Derby[765]). He seems to have acted as senior chaplain and confessor to the nuns as well as supervising their financial business. In cases where a nunnery was in some sort of dependence upon an abbey or priory of monks, it is usual to find a religious of that house acting as custos of the nuns. At St Michael’s Stamford, for instance, the abbots of Peterborough had the right of nominating a resident prior, subject to the approval of the Bishop of Lincoln, and the office was often held by a monk of Peterborough[766]. Similarly a monk of St Albans acted as custos of Sopwell[767] and a canon of Newhouse dwelt at Brodholme “to say daily mass for the sisters and to overlook their temporalities”[768]. The joint rule of Cistercian houses by a Prior and Prioress seems to have died out in most cases by the end of the thirteenth century, but it was customary for some secular or regular cleric to be appointed in most of the small and poor houses of York and Lincoln to look after their business[769]. Usually the custos appointed was the vicar or rector of some neighbouring parish. Archbishop Romeyn, for instance, placed Sinningthwaite, Wilberfoss and Arthington under the guardianship of the rectors of Kirk Deighton, Sutton-on-Derwent and Kippax respectively, and he made the vicars of Thirkleby and Bossall successively masters of Moxby[770]. Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln appointed neighbouring rectors and vicars to be masters of Legbourne, Godstow, Rowney, Sewardsley, Fosse, Delapré, St Leonard’s Grimsby, and Nuncoton[771].
Sometimes, on the other hand, canons or monks of religious houses in the vicinity were charged with looking after the affairs of nunneries. Swine was managed by Robert de Spalding, a canon of the Premonstratensian house of Croxton, and in 1289-90 Archbishop Romeyn wrote remonstrating with the Abbot of Croxton for recalling him, and begging that he might be allowed to continue at Swine, “cum idem vester canonicus proficuos labores ibidem impenderit ad relevacionem probabilem depressionis notorie dicte domus”; but the capable Robert was not allowed to return and in 1290 John Bustard, canon of St Robert’s Knaresborough, was appointed in his place. John was not a success and the next year the Abbot removed him; in 1295 Robert of Spalding became master again and in 1298 the rector of Londesborough was appointed[772]. At Catesby in 1293 the office of master was held by a certain Robert de Wardon, a canon of Canons Ashby, who had apparently left the nuns and gone back to his own house, to the great detriment of the nunnery, for Bishop Sutton wrote in 1293 to the Prior of Canons Ashby, bidding him send back the truant[773]. Similarly a canon of Wellow is found as warden of St Leonard’s Grimsby in 1232 and in 1303[774], a monk of Whitby as guardian of Handale and Basedale in 1268[775], a canon of Newburgh at Arden in 1302[776] and a canon of Lincoln at Heynings in 1291: concerning the latter Bishop Sutton wrote to the nuns that since, “because of private business and various other impediments he is prevented from looking after your business as much as it requires, the vicar of Upton your neighbour is to look after your affairs in his absence,” and in 1294 he was definitely replaced by the rector of Blankney[777]. It is clear from this letter that the masters of nunneries could be non-resident and this was no doubt usually the case when the office was held by the rector of a neighbouring parish. Indeed sometimes the same man would be master of more than one nunnery; as in the case of the monk of Whitby mentioned above. It was probably rare after the beginning of the fourteenth century for a custos to reside at a nunnery, as the early Cistercian priors had done[778].
The appointment of custodes to manage the finances of nunneries was a favourite policy with Archbishop Peckham, doubtless because it facilitated the enforcement of strict enclosure upon the nuns. At Godstow there was already at the time a master, but Peckham also gave the custody of Davington to the vicar of Faversham in 1279, and that of Holy Sepulchre, Canterbury, to the vicar of Wickham in 1284, while at Usk in 1284 he ordered the nuns to have “some senior priest circumspect in temporal and in spiritual affairs to be, with the consent of the diocesan, master of all your goods, internal and external, temporal and spiritual”[779]. At other times a custos would be appointed to meet a particular difficulty when the financial state of a house had become specially weak. About 1303, for instance, a monk of Peterborough was made for a season special warden of St Michael’s, Stamford, “with full powers over the temporalities and of adjudicating and ordering all temporal matters both within and without the convent as he should think profitable”; the appointment is specially interesting because there was at the time a resident prior at St Michael’s and the “spiritual disposition of all things concerning the house” is reserved to this prior and to the prioress[780]. A more serious crisis occurred at the Priory of White Hall, Ilchester, which was evidently in a disorderly condition at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In 1323 Bishop John of Drokensford wrote to Henry of Birlaunde, rector of Stoke and to John de Herminal, announcing that the Prioress, Alice de Chilterne, was defamed of incontinence with a chaplain and had so mismanaged and turned to her own nefarious uses the revenues of the house that her sisters were compelled to beg their bread; she had however submitted herself to the Bishop, but as public affairs called him to London and as he did not wish to leave the nunnery unprovided for, he committed the custody to these two men, ordering them to administer the necessities of life to the Prioress and sisters, according to the means of the house, until his return[781]. Some ten years later Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury similarly gave the custody of White Hall, Ilchester, to the rectors of Limington and St John’s Ilchester[782]. The nunnery of Barrow, near Bristol, was also in a disorderly condition; in 1315 John of Drokensford wrote to the Prioress ordering her to leave the management of secular matters to a custos appointed by him, and the same day appointed William de Sutton; and in 1324-5, when he had been obliged to remove the Prioress Joanna Gurney, he committed the custody of the house to William, rector of Backwell, ordering him to do the best he could with the advice of the subprioress and one of the nuns[783]. More often sheer financial distress, rather than moral disorder, was the reason for which a custos was appointed to a house. At St Sepulchre’s Canterbury, the rector of Whitstable was made custos, “by reason of the miserable want and extreme poverty of the said house” (1359) and for the same reason another secular cleric received the “supervision, custody or administration” of the same house in 1365[784]. In 1366 Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham,