it was not the case that the best instructed nuns used Latin Bibles and the most ignorant English ones: but that the best instructed nuns were allowed to use English translations, perhaps by themselves, perhaps to help in the understanding of the Vulgate, while the smaller nunneries and least instructed nuns almost certainly did not have them at all.
This goes to confirm the conclusion that even in the greatest houses, where the nuns were drawn from the highest social classes and might be supposed to be best educated, the knowledge of Latin was dying out.
Other occupations besides reading filled the working hours of the nuns and of these spinning and needlework were the most important. Most women in the middle ages possessed the art of spinning and Aubrey’s Old Jacques may have remembered aright how “he saw from his house the nuns of the priory (Kington St Michael) come forth into the nymph-hay with their rocks and wheels to spin,” though his memory misled him sorely as to the number of these ladies. Sometimes a visitation report gives us a glimpse of the nuns at work: at Easebourne in 1441 the nuns say that the Prioress “compels her sisters to work continually like hired workwomen and they receive nothing whatever for their own use from their work, but the prioress takes the whole profit”[856] and at Catesby in the following year a young nun complains that the Prioress “setts her to make beds, to sewing and spinning and other tasks”[857]. Nevertheless it does not seem that the nuns were in the habit of spinning the wool and flax for their own and their servants’ clothes and account rolls often contain payments made to hired spinsters, as well as to fullers and weavers.
It is more probable that they busied themselves with needlework and embroidery, which were the usual occupations of ladies of gentle birth[858]. Very few traces have unfortunately survived of the work of English nuns. In earlier centuries English needlework had been famous and the nuns had been pre-eminent in the making of richly embroidered vestments. In the thirteenth century, too, English embroidery far surpassed that made in other countries and it has been conjectured that “the most famous embroidered vestments now preserved in various places in Italy are the handiwork of English embroiderers between 1250 and 1300 though their authorship is not as a rule recognised by their present possessors”[859]. Some of these may have been made by nuns; it is thought that the famous Syon cope, for long in the possession of the nuns of Syon, may have been made in a thirteenth century convent in the neighbourhood of Coventry; but such examples of medieval embroidery as have survived usually bear no trace of their origin; since a vestment cannot be signed like a book and it must be remembered that there was a large class of professional “embroideresses” in the country.
Some, however, of the splendid vestments and altar cloths possessed by the richer nunneries were probably the work of the nuns. At Langley in 1485 there were, among other rich pieces of embroidery
iiij fronteys (altar frontals) of grene damaske powdered with swanys and egyls, ... iiij fronteys of blake powdered with swanys and rosys, ... a vestment of blew silke brodyt complete with all yt longyth to hyt, a vestment of grene velwett complete with a crucifixe of silver and gylte apon ye amys, a complete vestiment of red velwet, a vestiment of swede (sewed) work complete, a vestiment of blake damaske brodyrt with rosys and sterys, a complete vestiment of white brodyrte with rede trewlyps (true-love knots), ... j gret cloth (banner) of rede powderyd with herts heds and boturfleys ... a large coverlet of red and blew with rosys and crossys, a tapett of ye same; j large coverlett of rede and yowlowe with flowrs de luce, a tapett of ye same; a large coverlett of blew and better blew with swanys and coks, a tapett of ye same; a coverlett of grene and yowlowe with borys and draguyns, a tapett of ye same; ... a coverlett of ostrych fydyrs and crounyd Emmys (monogram of the Blessed Virgin Mary); a coverlet of grene and yowlowe with vynys and rosys; a coverlet of grene and yowlowe with lylys and swannys; a coverlet of blew and white whyl knotts (wheel knots) and rosys; a coverlet of red and white with traylest (trellis) and Bryds; a coverlet of red and blew with sterrys and white rosys in mydste; a coverlet of yowlowe and grene with egyles and emmys; v coveryngs of bedds, yat hys to sey A coveryng of red saye, a coveryng of panes (stripes) of red and grene and white saye, a coveryng of red and blake saye, a coveryng of red and blew poudyrd with white esses and sterys, a blew saye with a red dragne[860].
Many of these embroideries and tapestries were doubtless legacies or gifts; but it is impossible not to picture the white fingers of the nuns at work on swans and roses, harts’ heads and butterflies, stars and true-love knots. One may deduce that the nuns of Yorkshire, at least, busied themselves in these pursuits from an injunction sent to Nunkeeling, Yedingham and Wykeham in 1314 that no nun should absent herself from divine service “on account of being occupied with silk work” (propter occupacionem operis de serico)[861].
Reference to the sale of embroidery by nuns is surprisingly rare in account rolls. The household roll of the Countess of Leicester in 1265 contains an item, “Paid to the nuns of Wintney, for one cope to be made for the use of Brother J. Angelus by the gift of the Countess at Panham 10d.”[862], which small sum must have been a part payment in advance, perhaps towards the purchase of materials; the nuns of Gracedieu, too, sold a cope to a neighbouring rector for £10, early in the fifteenth century[863], and on one occasion the cellaress of Barking derived a part of her income for the year from the sale of a cope[864], but search has revealed no further instances. The nuns also probably made little presents for their friends, such as purses (though the Gracedieu nuns always bought the purses which they gave to their bailiff, to Lady Beaumont, or to other visitors) and the so-called “blood-bands.” In an age when bleeding was the most common treatment for almost every illness and when monks, in particular, were regularly bled several times a year, these little bandages were common presents, being sometimes made of silk. The author of the Ancren Riwle thus bade his anchoresses “make no purses to gain friends therewith, not blodbendes of silk, but shape and sew and mend church vestments and poor people’s clothes”[865]. The nuns of the diocese of Rouen in the mid-thirteenth century were accustomed to knit or embroider silken purses, tassels, cushions or needlecases for sale or as gifts, and Archbishop Eudes Rigaud was continually forbidding them to do any silk work except for church ornament[866]. There is some reason to think that the nuns, then as now, sometimes eked out their income by doing fine needlework for ladies of the world, though there is no mention of it in nunnery accounts, or indeed in any English records. Among the correspondence of Lady Lisle in the first half of the sixteenth century, however, are several letters to and from a certain Antoinette de Favences at Dunkirk, who would appear to have been a nun, for she signs herself sister Antoinette de Favences and is addressed by Lady Lisle as Madame and Dame. This woman was employed to make caps and coifs for Lady Lisle’s family and friends and there is much correspondence between them as to night-caps which are too wide, lozenge-work and such matters; in one letter Lady Lisle speaks of sending “16 rozimbos and 2 half angels of Flanders, a Carolus of gold,” in payment for the caps[867].
What other accomplishments the nuns may have possessed we do not know. They were possibly skilled in herbs and in the more simple forms of home medicine and surgery, for it was the function of the lady of the manor to know something of these things, though doctors were available (for nuns as well as for lay folk) in more serious illnesses[868]. They doubtless bled each other as did the monks, else how was the wicked Prioress of Kirklees, who slew Robin Hood, so skilled?:
Doun then came Dame Priorèss
Doun she came in that ilk,
With a pair of blood-irons in her hand,
Were wrappèd all in silk....
She laid the blood-irons to Robin’s vein
Alack the more pitye!
And pierc’d the vein and let out the blood
That full red was to see.