And to Dame Alice Patryk lately dead in full payment of all debts 3s. 4d. from the legacy of Peter Erle, chaplain, lately deceased. And to Dame Joan Lancaster in part payment of 6s. 8d. bequeathed to her by the aforesaid Peter 3s. 4d., and to Dame Agnes Swaffham, subprioress, in part payment of 6s. 8d., 20d.[1017]
But it was not only money which was bequeathed to nuns. They often received quite considerable legacies of jewels and plate, robes and furniture. What would we not give today to look for a moment at the beautiful things which Walter Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, left to his sister Joan, the Prioress of Swine, in 1404?
Item, one large gilded cup, with a cover and a round foot, and in the bottom a chaplet of white and red roses and a hind carven in the midst and all round the outside carven with eagles, lions, crowns and other ingenious devices (babonibus), and in the pommel a nest and three men standing and taking the chicks from the nest, of the weight of 18 marks.... Item a robe of murrey cloth of Ypres (? yp’n) containing a mantle and hood furred with budge (? purg’), another hood furred with ermine, a cloak furred with half vair, a long robe (garnach’) furred with vair.... Item one bed of tapestry work of a white field, with a stag standing under a great tree and on either side lilies and a red border, with the complete tester and three curtains of white boulter[1018].
In the same year Anne St Quintin left the same noble lady “one silken quilt and one pair of sheets of cloth of Rennes”[1019]. Eleven years earlier Sir John Fairfax, rector of Prescot, had left his sister Margaret Fairfax, Prioress of Nunmonkton (of whom we have already heard much that was not to her good):
one silver gilt cup with a cover, and one silver cup with a cover, one mazer with a cover of silver gilt, one pix of silver for spices, six silver spoons, one cloak of black cloth furred with gray, one round silver basin and ten marks of silver[1020].
Master John de Wodhouse in 1345 leaves Dame Alice Conyers, nun of Nunappleton, “fifteen marks [and] a long chest standing against my bed at York, one maser cup with an image of St Michael in the bottom and one cup of silver, which I had of her gift, with a hand in the bottom holding a falcon”[1021], and Isabella, widow of Thomas Corp, a London pepperer, in 1356, leaves
to Margaret, sister of William Heyroun, vintner, nun at Barking, a silver plated cup with covercle, twelve silver spoons, two cups of mazer and a silver enamelled pix, together with three gold rings, with emerald, sapphire and diamond respectively and divers household goods[1022].
Possibly some of these splendid pieces of plate found their way to the altar, and the cups and spoons to the frater of the house, but the nuns undoubtedly sometimes kept them for private use in their own camerae. Here also were kept the beds, such as that splendid one left by Bishop Skirlaw to his sister, the “bed of Norfolk” which Sir Robert de Roos left to his daughter Joan (1392)[1023], the “bed of worstede with sheets, which she kindly gave me,” left by William Felawe, clerk, to Katherine Slo, Prioress of Shaftesbury (1411)[1024]. Doubtless Juliana de Crofton, nun of Hampole, knew what use to make of “six shillings and eightpence and a cloak lined with blue and two tablets and one saddle with a bridle and two leather bowls”[1025]; here at one gift was the wherewithal for writing a letter to announce a visit and for paying that visit on horseback, in gay and unconventual attire. Indeed the constant legacies of clothes to nuns go far to explain where it was that they obtained those cheerful secular garments, against which their bishops waged war in vain. In days when clothes were made of heavy and valuable stuffs and richly adorned, it was a very common custom for a woman to divide up her wardrobe between different legatees, and men also handed on their best garments. When in 1397 Margaret Fairfax is found using “divers furs and even gray fur (gris)”[1026], one remembers, with a sudden flash of comprehension, the “cloak of black cloth furred with gray” which her brother left her four years earlier. What did Elizabeth de Newemarche, nun, do with the mantle of brounemelly left her by Lady Isabel Fitzwilliam?[1027] What did Sir William Bonevyll’s sister at Wherwell do with “his best hoppelond with the fur”?[1028] What above all did the Prioress of Swine do with all those costly fur trimmings left her by the Bishop of Durham? Yorkshire nunneries were apt to be undisciplined and worldly; great ladies there, if Archbishop Melton is to be believed, sometimes considered that they might dress according to their rank[1029]. We may safely guess that the Prioress of Swine, like her contemporary at Nunmonkton, wore the furs; and visitation records do not lead us to suppose that other nuns sold their blue-lined cloaks and houppelonds for the sake of their convents, or bestowed them on the poor.
It is a common injunction that nuns are to wear no other ring than that which, at their consecration, made them brides of Christ[1030]; but the rule was often disobeyed and Dame Clemence Medforde’s “golden rings exceeding costly with divers precious stones”[1031] are explained when we remember the “three gold rings, one having a sapphire, another an emerald and the third a diamond” which the rich pepperer’s widow left to Dame Margaret Heyroun[1032]. Madame Eglentyne herself may have owed to one of the many friends, who held her digne of reverence, her “peire of bedes, gauded al with grene,” of small coral. When Sir Thomas Cumberworth died in 1451 he ordered that “the prioris of Coton, of Irford, of Legburn and of Grenefeld have Ilkon of yam a pare bedys of corall, as far as that I have may laste, and after yiff yam gette [give them jet] bedes”[1033], and so also Matilda Latymer left her daughter at Buckland a set of “Bedys de corall”[1034] and Margerie de Crioll left a nun of Shaftesbury “my paternoster of coral and white pearls, which the Countess of Pembroke gave me”[1035].
(5) The fifth and last source from which nuns could derive a private income was by the work of their own hands and brains. It has been stated above that very little is known about the sale of fine needlework by nuns, but a very interesting case at Easebourne seems to show that they sometimes considered themselves entitled to retain for their own private use the sums which they earned. In 1441 one of the complaints against the gay prioress was that she “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.” The bishop’s injunction is extremely significant: