the prioress shall by no means compel her sisters to continual work of their hands and if they should wish of their own accord to work, they shall be free to do so, but yet so that they may reserve for themselves the half part of what they gain by their hands; the other part shall be converted to the advantage of the house and unburdening it from debt[1036].
In fine, the Bishop is obliged to acquiesce in a serious breach of the Benedictine rule: the plea of the nuns to commit the sin of proprietas is considered as a reasonable demand; and the compromise that half their earnings should go to the common fund is intended rather to check the prioress than the nuns. From the injunctions of other bishops it would appear that the private boarders and private pupils taken by individual nuns sometimes paid their fees to those individuals and not to the house[1037]; the “household” system made the reception of such boarders easy.
From whatever source nuns obtained control of money and goods, whether from the peculium, from gifts, from legacies, or from the proceeds of their own labour, one thing is clear: in a fourteenth or fifteenth century house, where the system of the peculium and the familia obtained, there was a considerable approximation to private life and to private property. The control of money and goods and the division into households, catering separately for themselves, worked in together. The responsibility of the convent towards its members was sometimes limited to a bare minimum of food, such as the staple bread and beer, and perhaps a small dress allowance. All the rest was provided by the nuns themselves. In strict theory annuities, gifts and legacies, were put into common stock and administered by the convent. In practice they were obviously retained in individual possession and administered as private property by the nuns. Even legacies of lump sums to a whole convent were probably divided up between the nuns, an equal sum being paid to each and perhaps double to the prioress.
An analysis of the conditions revealed at Alnwick’s visitation of the Lincoln diocese in 1440-5 throws an exceedingly interesting side-light, not only on the vow of monastic poverty, as understood in the fifteenth century, but also on the domestic economy of the houses, the majority of which were small and poor. It may also conveniently be compared with the evidence given by the same visitations as to the system of familiae in these houses. At some the house supplied all food and clothes or a peculium for clothes, at some it provided only a bare minimum of food, at some neither dress nor dress allowance was provided. At Legbourne
every nun has one loaf, one half gallon of beer a day, one pig a year, 18d. for beef, every day in Advent and Lent two herrings, and a little butter in summer and sometimes two stone of cheese a year and 8d. a year for raiment and no more;
the sum of 2s. 2d. a year for beef and clothes was certainly not excessive[1038]. At Stixwould
every nun receives in the year one pig, one sheep, a quarter of beef, two stones of butter, three stones of cheese, every day in Advent and Lent three herrings, six salt fish and twelve doughcakes a year; and they were wont to have 6s. 8d. for their raiment, but for several years back (one nun said for twenty years) as regards raiment they have received nothing.
At St Michael’s Stamford, the house provided only “bread and beer and a mark for fish and flesh and other things and as to their raiment they receive naught of the house”; out of the mark the nuns catered for themselves. Other houses provided still less out of the common funds; at Gokewell the nuns received nothing from the house but bread and beer and at Markyate (a poor house, of not unblemished reputation and badly in debt) “they receive of the house only bread, beer and two marks for their raiment and what else is necessary for their living, which are less than enough for their sundry needful wants”; Alnwick ordered all victuals to be given them “of the commune stores of the house owte of one selare and one kytchyne” and fixed the dress allowance at a noble yearly, but he did not say how the house was to raise funds. At Nuncoton the allowance was 8s. a year, but when Alnwick came the nuns had received only 1s. each. At Fosse, Langley and Ankerwyke the houses provided meat and drink, but no dress or dress allowance; and at Catesby it was complained that “the prioress does not give the nuns satisfaction in the matter of their raiment and money for victuals and touching the premises the prioress is in the nuns’ debt for three-quarters of the year”[1039]. From these references it is plain that the nuns usually bought their own clothes and often catered for themselves in flesh food; also that the poverty of many houses was so great that the nuns could not have lived decently without the help of friends, whether because their dress allowances were always in arrears, or because the house recognised no responsibility to clothe them from its exiguous funds. Yet as regards food at least, the habit of catering separately for separate messes was undoubtedly less economical than the regular maintenance of a common table would have been.
A highly interesting light on the control of money allowances for the purchase of food by the individual nuns of a convent is thrown by convent account rolls. These accounts show two different methods of catering in force. In one all the housekeeping was done by the cellaress, who bought such stores as were needed to supplement the produce of the home farm and provided the nuns with the whole of their food. This is the normal method, which accords with the Rule; it is to be found in the Syon cellaresses’ rolls and in the roll of Elizabeth Swynford, Prioress of Catesby (1414-15). The latter sets forth: (1) the produce of the home farm, how many animals were delivered to the larder, how many to the kitchen, how much grain was malted, etc.; (2) the payments for food bought to supplement this home produce:
in flesh and eggs bought from the feast of St Michael until Lent 33/0½, and in expenses of the house from Easter unto the feast of St Michael in beef and eggs bought, £7. 1. 9., ... in 2 barrels 4 kemps of oil and salt fish bought in time of Lent £3. 0. 6,