Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535

by Eileen Power

(Hir nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas,
Hir mouth ful smal, and ther-to soft and reed;
But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed;
It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe;
For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe)

conforms to the courtly standard. Only the mention of her chanting of divine service (through the tretys nose) differentiates her from any other well-born lady of the day; and if Chaucer had not told us whom he was describing, we might never have known that she was a nun. It was in these ideals and traditions that most of the inmates of English convents were born and bred.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, another class rose into prominence and, perhaps because it was originally drawn to a great extent from the younger sons of the country gentry, found amalgamation with the gentry easy. The development of trade and the new openings for the employment of capital had brought about the rise of the English merchant class. Hitherto foreigners had financed the English crown, but during the first four years of the Hundred Years’ War it became clear that English merchants were now rich and powerful enough to take their place; and the triumph of the native was complete when, in 1345, Edward III repudiated his debts to the Italian merchants and the Bardi and Peruzzi failed. Henceforth the English merchants were supreme; on the one hand their trading ventures enriched them; on the other they made vast sums out of farming the customs and the war subsidies in return for loans of ready money, and out of all sorts of government contracts. The successful campaigns of Crécy and Poitiers were entirely financed by these English capitalists. Not only trade but industry swelled the ranks of the nouveaux riches and the clothiers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries grew rich and prospered. Evidences of the wealth and importance of this middle class are to be found on all sides. The taxation of movables, which from 1334 became an important and in time the main source of national revenue, indicates the discovery on the part of the government that the wealth of the nation no longer lay in land, but in trade. The frequent sumptuary acts, the luxury of daily life, bear witness to the wealth of the nouveaux riches; and so also do their philanthropic enterprises, the beautiful churches which they built, the bridges which they repaired, the gifts which they gave to religious and to civic corporations. And it was in the fourteenth century that there began that steady fusion between the country gentry and the rich burgesses, which was accomplished before the end of the middle ages and which resulted in the formation of a solid and powerful middle class. The political amalgamation of the two classes in the lower house of Parliament corresponded to a social amalgamation in the world outside. The country knights and squires saw in business a career for their younger sons; they saw in marriage with the daughters of the mercantile class a way to mend their fortunes; the city merchants, on the other hand, saw in such alliances a road to the attainment of that social prestige which went with land and blood, and were not loath to pay the price. “Merchants or new gentlemen I deem will proffer large,” wrote Edmund Paston, concerning the marriage of one of his family. “Well I wot if ye depart to London ye shall have proffers large”[25].

This social amalgamation between the country gentry and the “new gentlemen,” who had made their money in trade, was naturally reflected in the nunneries. The wills of London burgesses, which were enrolled in the Court of Husting, show that the daughters of these well-to-do citizens were in the habit of taking the veil. There is even more than one trace of the aristocratic view of religion as the sole alternative to marriage. Langland, enumerating the good deeds which will win pardon for the merchant, bids him “marie maydens or maken hem nonnes”[26]. At Ludlow the gild of Palmers provided that:

If any good girl of the gild of marriageable age, cannot have the means found by her father, either to go into a religious house or to marry, whichever she wishes to do, friendly and right help shall be given her out of our common chest, towards enabling her to do whichever of the two she wishes[27].

Similarly at Berwick-on-Tweed the gild “ordained by the pleasure of the burgesses” had a provision entitled, “Of the bringing up of daughters of the gild,” which ran: “If any brother die leaving a daughter true and worthy and of good repute, but undowered, the gild shall find her a dower, either on marriage or on going into a religious house”[28]. So also John Syward, “stockfisshmongere” of London, whose will was proved at the Court of Husting in 1349, left, “To Dionisia his daughter forty pounds for her advancement, so that she either marry therewith or become a religious at her election, within one year after his decease”[29]; and William Wyght, of the same trade, bequeathed “to each of his daughters Agnes, Margaret, Beatrix and Alice fifty pounds sterling for their marriage or for entering a religious house” (1393)[30]; while William Marowe in 1504 bequeathed to “Elizabeth and Katherine his daughters forty pounds each, to be paid at their marriage or profession”[31]. Sometimes, however, the sound burgess sense prevailed, as when Walter Constantyn endowed his wife with “the residue of his goods, so that she assist Amicia, his niece, ... towards her marriage or to some trade befitting her position”[32].

The mixture of classes must have been more frequent in convents which were situate in or near a large town, while the country gentry had those lying in rural districts more or less to themselves. The nunnery of Carrow, for instance, was a favourite resort for girls of noble and of gentle birth, but it was also recruited from the daughters of prosperous Norwich citizens; among nuns with well-known county names there were also ladies such as Isabel Barbour, daughter of Thomas Welan, barber, and Joan his wife, Margery Folcard, daughter of John Folcard, alderman of Norwich, and Catherine Segryme, daughter of Ralph Segryme, another alderman; the latter attained the position of prioress at the end of the fifteenth century[33]. These citizens, wealthy and powerful men in days when Norwich was one of the most important towns in England, probably met on equal terms with the country gentlemen of Norfolk, and both sent their daughters with handsome dowries to Carrow. The nunneries of London and of the surrounding district contained a similar mixture of classes, ranging from some of the noblest ladies in the land to the daughters of city magnates, men enriched by honourable trade or by the less honourable capitalistic ventures of the king’s merchants. The famous house of Minoresses without Aldgate illustrates the situation very clearly. It was always a special favourite of royalty; and the storm bird, Isabella, mother of Edward III, is by some supposed to have died in the order. She was certainly its constant benefactress[34] as were Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester and his wife, whose daughter Isabel was placed in the nunnery while only a child and eventually became its abbess[35]. Katherine, widow of John de Ingham, and Eleanor Lady Scrope were other aristocratic women who took the veil at the Minories[36]. But this noble connection did not prevent the house from containing Alice, sister of Richard Hale, fishmonger[37], Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Padyngton, fishmonger[38], Marion, daughter of John Charteseye, baker[39], and Frideswida, daughter of John Reynewell, alderman of the City of London[40], girls drawn from the élite of the burgess class. An investigation of the wills enrolled in the Court of Husting shows the relative popularity of different convents among the citizens of London. Between the years 1258 and the Dissolution, 52 wills contain references to one or more nuns related to the testators[41]. From these it appears that the most popular house was Clerkenwell in Middlesex, which is mentioned in nine wills[42]. Barking in Essex comes next with eight references[43], and St Helen’s Bishopsgate with seven[44]; the house of Minoresses without Aldgate is five times mentioned[45], Haliwell[46] in London and Stratford-atte-Bowe[47] outside, having five and four references respectively, Kilburn in Middlesex three[48], Sopwell in Hertfordshire two[49], Malling[50] and Sheppey[51] in Kent two each. Other convents are mentioned once only and in some cases a testator leaves legacies to nuns by name, without mentioning where they are professed. All these houses were in the diocese of London and either in or near the capital itself; they lay in the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Essex, Hertford and Bedford[52]. It was but rarely that city girls went as far afield as Denny in Cambridgeshire, where the famous fishmonger and mayor of London, John Philpott, had a daughter Thomasina.

Thus the nobles, the gentry and the superior rank of burgess—the upper and the upper-middle classes—sent their daughters to nunneries. But nuns were drawn from no lower class; poor girls of the lowest rank—whether the daughters of artisans or of country labourers—seem never to have taken the veil. A certain degree of education was demanded in a nun before her admission and the poor man’s daughter would have neither the money, the opportunity, nor the leisure to acquire it. The manorial fine paid by a villein when he wished to put his son to school and make a religious of him, had no counterpart in the case of girls[53]; the taking of the veil by a villein’s daughter was apparently not contemplated. The chief barrier which shut out the poor from the nunneries was doubtless the dower which, in spite of the strict prohibition of the rule, was certainly required from a novice in almost every convent. The lay sisters of those nunneries which had lay sisters attached were probably drawn mainly from the lower class[54], but it must have been in the highest degree exceptional for a poor or low-born girl to become a nun.

Medieval wills (our most trusty source of information for the personnel of the nunneries) make it possible to gauge the extent to which the upper and middle classes used the nunneries as receptacles for superfluous daughters. In these wills, in which the medieval paterfamilias laboriously catalogues his offspring and divides his wealth between them, it is easy to guess at the embarrassments of a father too well-blessed with female progeny. What was poor Simon the Chamberlain of the diocese of Worcester to do, with six strapping girls upon his hands and sons Robert and Henry to provide for too? Fortunately he had a generous patron in Sir Nicholas de Mitton and it was perhaps Sir Nicholas who provided the dowers, when two of them were packed off to Nuneaton; let us hope that Christiana, Cecilia, Matilda and Joan married themselves out of the legacies which he left them in his will, when he died in 1290[55]. William de Percehay, lord of Ryton, who made his will in 1344, had to provide for five sons and one is therefore not surprised to find that two of his three daughters were nuns[56]. It is the same with the rich citizens of London and elsewhere; Sir Richard de la Pole, of a great Hull merchant house (soon to be ennobled), mentions in his will two sons and two daughters, one of whom was a nun at Barking while the other received a legacy towards her marriage[57]; Hugh de Waltham, town clerk, mentions three daughters, one at St Helen’s[58]; John de Croydon, fishmonger, leaves bequests to one son and four daughters, one at Clerkenwell[59]; William de Chayham kept Lucy, Agnes and Johanna with him, but made Juliana a nun[60]. The will of Joan Lady Clinton illustrates the proportion in which a large family of girls might be divided between the convent and the world; in 1457 she left certain sums of money to Margaret, Isabel and Cecily Francyes, on condition that they should pay four pounds annually to their sisters Joan and Elizabeth, nuns[61]. It was not infrequent for several members of a family to enter the same convent, as the lists of inmates given in visitation records, or in the reports of Henry VIII’s commissioners, as well as the evidence of the wills, bear witness[62]. The case of Shouldham, already quoted, shows that different generations of a family might be represented at the same time in a convent[63], but it was perhaps not usual for so many sisters to become nuns as in the Fairfax family; in 1393 their brother’s will introduces us to Mary and Alice, nuns of Sempringham, and Margaret and Eleanor, respectively prioress and nun of Nunmonkton[64]. Margaret (of whom more anon) took convent life easily; it is to be feared that she had all too little vocation for it. Sometimes these family parties in a nunnery led to quarrels; the sisters foregathered in cliques, or else they continued in the cloister the domestic arguments of the hearth; there was an amusing case of the kind at Swine in 1268[65], and some years later (in 1318) an Archbishop of York had to forbid the admission of more than two or three nuns of one family to Nunappleton, without special licence, for fear of discord[66].

Probably the real factor in determining the social class from which the convents were recruited, was not one of rank, but one of money. The practice of demanding dowries from those who wished to become nuns was strictly forbidden by the monastic rule and by canon law[67]. To spiritual minds any taint of commerce was repugnant; Christ asked no dowry with his bride. The didactic and mystical writers of the period often draw a contrast between the earthly and the heavenly groom in this matter. The author of Hali Meidenhad in the thirteenth century, urging the convent life upon his spiritual daughter, sets against his picture of Christ’s virgin-brides that of the well-born girl, married with disparagement through lack of dower: