The Nonne and Three Preestes.
163. Another Nonne. It was not common for Prioresses to have female chaplains; but Littré gives chapelaine, fem., as an old title of dignity in a nunnery. Moreover, it is an office still held in most Benedictine convents, as is fully explained in a letter written by a modern Nun-Chaplain, and printed in Anglia, iv. 238. See also N. and Q. 7 S. vi. 485; The Academy, Aug. 23, 1890, p. 152.
164. The mention of three priests presents some difficulty. To make up the twenty-nine mentioned in l. 24, we only want one priest, and it is afterwards assumed that there was but one priest, viz. the Nonnes Preest, who tells the tale of the Cock and Fox. Chaucer also, in all other cases, supposes that there was but one representative of each class.
The most likely solution is that Chaucer wrote a character of the Second Nun, beginning—
'Another Nonne with hir hadde she
That was hir chapeleyne'—
and that, for some reason, he afterwards suppressed the description. The line left imperfect, as above, may have been filled up, to stop a gap, either by himself (temporarily), or indeed by some one else.
If we are to keep the text (which stands alike in all MSS.), we must take 'wel nyne and twenty' to mean 'at least nine and twenty.'
The letter from the Nun-Chaplain mentioned in the last note shews that an Abbess might have as many as five priests, as well as a chaplain. See Essays on Chaucer (Ch. Soc.), p. 183. The difficulty is, merely, how to reconcile this line with l. 24.