A word may first be said on the subject of nunnery libraries. Concerning these we have very little information; and, such as it is, it does not leave the impression that nunneries were rich in books. No catalogue of a nunnery library[802] has come down to us and such references to libraries as occur in inventories show great poverty in this respect, the books being few and chiefly service-books. An inventory of the small and poor convent of Easebourne, taken in 1450, shows what was doubtless quite a large library for a house of its size. It contained two missals, two portiforia (breviaries), four antiphoners, one large Legenda, eight psalters, one book of collects, one tropary, one French Bible, two ordinalia in French, one book of the Gospels and one martyrology[803]. The inventories of Henry VIII’s commissioners give very little information as to books and seem to have found few that were of any value. The books found at Sheppey are thus described: “ij bokes with ij sylver clapses the pece, and vj bokes with one sylver clasp a pec, l bokes good and bad” (in the church), “vij bokes, whereof one goodly mase boke of parchement and dyvers other good bokes” (in the vestry), and “an olde presse full of old boks of no valew” (in a chapel in the churchyard) and “a boke of Saynts lyfes” (in the parlour)[804]. At Kilburn were found “two books of Legenda Aurea, one in print, the other written, both English, 4d.”; the one in print must have been Caxton’s edition, thus valued, together with a manuscript, at something like 6s. 8d. in present money for the pair! Also “two mass books, one old written, the other in print, 20d., four processions in parchment (3s.) and paper (10d.), two Legends in parchment and paper, 8d., and two chests, with divers books pertaining to the church, of no value”[805]. It will be noted that the books are almost always connected with the church services. It is perhaps significant that in only one list of the inmates of a house is a nun specifically described as librarian[806].
Something may be gleaned also from the legacies of books left to nuns in medieval wills. These again are nearly always psalters or service books of one kind or another; and indeed the average layman was more likely to possess these than other books, for all alike attended the services of the church. Thus Sir Robert de Roos in 1392 leaves his daughter, a nun, “a little psalter, that was her mother’s”[807]; Sir William de Thorp in 1391 leaves his sister-in-law, a nun of Greenfield, a psalter[808]; William Stow of Ripon in 1430 leaves the Prioress of Nunmonkton a small psalter[809], William Overton of Helmsley in 1481 leaves his niece Elena, a nun of Arden, “one great Primer with a cover of red damask”[810], and so on. There may be some significance in the fact that John Burn, chaplain at York Cathedral, leaves the Prioress and Convent of Nunmonkton “an English book of Pater Noster”[811]. It strikes a strange and pleasant note when Thomas Reymound in 1418 leaves the Prioress and Convent of Polsloe 20s. and the Liber Gestorum Karoli, Regis Francie[812], and when Eleanor Roos of York in 1438 leaves Dame Joan Courtenay “unum librum vocatum Mauldebuke,” whatever that mysterious tome may have contained[813].
Some light is also thrown backward upon their possessors by isolated books which have come down to our own day and are known to have belonged to nuns. These come mostly, as might be expected, from the great abbeys of the south, where the nuns were rich and of good birth, from Syon and Barking, Amesbury, Wilton and Shaftesbury, St Mary’s Winchester, and Wherwell[814]. Sometimes the MS. records the name of the nun owner. Wright and Halliwell quote from a Latin breviary, in which is an inscription to the effect that it belonged to Alice Champnys, nun of Shaftesbury, who bought it for the sum of 10s. from Sir Richard Marshall, rector of the parish church of St Rumbold of Shaftesbury. There follows this prayer for the use of the nun:
Trium puerorum cantemus himnum quem cantabant in camino ignis benedicentes dominum. O swete Jhesu, the sonne of God, the endles swetnesse of hevyn and of erthe and of all the worlde, be in my herte, in my mynde, in my wytt, in my wylle, now and ever more, Amen. Jhesu mercy, Jhesu gramercy, Jhesu for thy mercy, Jhesu as I trust to thy mercy, Jhesu as thow art fulle of mercy, Jhesu have mercy on me and alle mankynde redemyd with thy precyouse blode. Jhesu, Amen[815].
A manuscript of Capgrave’s Life of St Katharine of Alexandria, which belonged to Katherine Babyngton, subprioress of Campsey in Suffolk, has a very different inscription:
Iste liber est ex dono Kateryne Babyngton quondam subpriorisse de Campseye et si quis illum alienauerit sine licencia vna cum consensu dictarum [sanctimonialium] conuentus, malediccionem dei omnipotentis incurrat et anathema sit[816].
Sometimes the owner of a manuscript is known to us from other sources. There is a splendid psalter, now in St John’s College, Cambridge, which belonged to the saintly Euphemia, Abbess of Wherwell from 1226 to 1257, whose good deeds were celebrated in the chartulary of the house[817]. In the Hunterian Library at Glasgow there is a copy of the first English translation of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi, which belonged to Elizabeth Gibbs, Abbess of Syon from 1497 to 1518; it is inscribed
O vos omnes sorores et ffratres presentes et futuri, orate queso pro venerabili matre nostra Elizabeth Gibbis, huius almi Monasterii Abbessa [sic], necnon pro deuoto ac religioso viro Dompno Willielmo Darker, in artibus Magistro de domo Bethleem prope sheen ordinis Cartuciensis, qui pro eadem domina Abbessa hunc librum conscripsit;
the date 1502 is given[818].
The books known to have been in the possession of nuns throw, as will be seen, but a dim light upon the educational attainments of their owners. More specific evidence must be sought in bishops’ registers, and in such references to the state of learning in nunneries as occur in the works of contemporary writers. It is clear that nuns were expected to be “literate”; bishops sending new inmates to convents occasionally assure their prospective heads that the girls are able to undertake the duties of their new state[819]. What to be sufficiently lettered meant, from the convent point of view, appears in injunctions sent to the Premonstratensian house of Irford, forbidding the reception of any nun “save after such fashion as they are received at Irford and Brodholme, to wit that they be able to read and to sing, as is contained in the statute of the order”[820]; and again in injunctions sent by Bishop Gray to Elstow about 1432: