Women in English Life from Mediæval to Modern Times, Vol. I

by Georgiana Hill

Abbesses were also summoned to attend or to send proxies to the King’s Council in later times, as in 1306, when four abbesses

“were cited to the Great Council held to grant an aid on the knighting of the Prince of Wales—an assembly which, although not properly constituted, exercised some of the functions of a parliament.”[14]

The Parliamentary writ bears the names of the abbesses of Wilton, Wynton or Winchester, Shaftesbury, and Barking, then spelt Berkeyngg. Abbesses were required to furnish military service by proxy.

The Saxon abbesses were invested with immense powers, and owed obedience to none save the Pope. Much of the deference paid them was doubtless on account of their high rank, abbesses being always of good birth, and frequently of royal blood. In later times, as well as in the Saxon era, this was the case. Anne, Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV., was prioress of Sion monastery.

Abbesses seem to have been tenacious of their privileges, and to have known how to resist the encroachments of the clergy when any interference was attempted. It has been said that they claimed the right to ordain. At the same time, they were subject to deposition if they abused their power or were inattentive to their duties. The nuns would carry their complaints to the bishop, who would occasionally take the superintendence of a nunnery into his own hands instead of appointing any abbess—perhaps dividing the immediate governance between two of the nuns. It was the duty of an abbess not only to look after the internal affairs of the convent, but to see that the necessary repairs to the building were carried out.

The powers of an abbess varied according to period and place, for while in some cases they were free to act pretty much as they pleased, in others they were subject to strict rules, and had their liberty much curtailed.

“By a council near Paris, in the eighth century, it is ordered that the bishop, as well as the abbess, may send a nun misbehaving herself to a penitentiary; that no abbess is to superintend more than one monastery, or to quit the precincts except once a year, when summoned by her sovereign; and that the abbess must do penance in the monastery for her faults by the bishop’s direction. Charlemagne enacted that the bishop must report to the Crown any abbess guilty of misconduct, in order that she might be deposed. Abbesses were forbidden, in the reign of his successor, to walk alone, and thus were placed, in some degree, under the surveillance of the sisterhood. Charlemagne prohibited abbesses from laying hands on any one, or pronouncing the blessing.”[15]

On account of the property and lands belonging to convents, abbesses and prioresses were constantly brought into relationship with the outer world, and not always in a very pleasant way. The command which they had over the fiefs of the convent was a frequent source of friction with the laity. In 1292 the Prioress of Mynchin Buckland, in Somersetshire, was a party in a suit, together with a widow and two men, touching the right of common pasture in an appurtenance of the convent. The case went against the religious house, but the prioress and the widow both escaped paying their share of the costs on the plea of poverty.[16]

Sometimes troubles arose from the interference of the clergy. In the fourteenth century a diocesan official made himself very disagreeable to the sisters of Mynchin Buckland priory, demanding to see their title to certain churches which they had held from time immemorial. The sisters replied by demanding, in their turn, to see his commission, whereupon he grew indignant, and imposed upon them a heavy fine for contumacy. The case was carried to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who at once stopped the proceedings of the diocesan official, and restored quietude to the convent.

In the reign of Edward III. we find a prioress suing a sheriff for recovery of a pension granted to her convent in the reign of Henry III. As the sheriff positively refused to pay, the prioress carried the case to the King’s Court, where the recalcitrant sheriff was thoroughly beaten. Lands granted to a convent without due formalities sometimes created difficulties, as in the reign of Henry IV., when the Prioress of Mynchin Barrow found her claim to a meadow which had been granted without the royal licence was bringing her into conflict with the laity. However, her rights were maintained after full examination.