As to their lands and estates, in their later history they were sometimes farmed out at mere annual rents with but small control from the religious, so that they would differ but little from any ordinary landed property. But this was the exception, and unknown in the earlier centuries of their existence.

The Gilbertine houses had canons attached to them with the avowed object of looking after the temporal affairs of the nuns, and in their elaborate statutes there are the fullest details as to the management of the granges by the lay-brothers, as lately set forth in English in Miss Graham’s interesting book on this Order. To most of the older Benedictine nunneries, as well as to the two large houses of Nuneaton and Amesbury, dependencies of Fontevrault, special officials were attached to superintend the tenants.

Nevertheless, the abbess or prioress, if manors pertained to the house, had all the privileges and responsibilities attached to the position, notwithstanding her sex, and was the lady of the manor. The abbesses of Barking, Nunnaminster, Shaftesbury, and Wilton, held of the king an entire barony, and were actually summoned for a time to parliament as barons. Now and again the convents had for their superiors ladies who were as remarkable for their zeal in temporal as in spiritual matters. In the chartulary of the Hampshire abbey of Wherwell, at the British Museum, is an interesting and beautiful account of “the blessed mother, the abbess Euphemia”, who ruled the house from 1226 until her death in 1257. The following extracts of part of the story of her rule, written by an inmate of the house shortly after her death, show the thoroughness of her administration in temporal matters, leaving out the account of her rebuilding most of the conventual buildings on improved sanitary lines, and planting and draining the precincts, and doubling the number of the sisters:

“Euphemia, notwithstanding all her attention to spiritual affairs, and the good of the actual monastery, so conducted herself with regard to exterior affairs, that she seemed to have the spirit of a man rather than a woman. The court of the abbey manor, owing to the useless mass of squalid buildings, and the nearness of the kitchen to the granary and old hall, was in much danger of fire; whilst the confined area and the amount of animal refuse was a cause of offence both to the feet and nostrils of those who had occasion to pass through. The Mother Euphemia, realising that the Lord had called her to the rule, not that she might live at ease, but that she might, with due care and dispatch, uproot, and destroy, and dissipate all that was noxious, and establish and erect that which would be useful, demolished the whole of these buildings, levelled the court, and erected a new hall of suitable size and height. She also built a new mill some distance from the hall, and constructed it with great care, in order that more work than formerly might be done therein for the service of the house. She surrounded the court with a wall and the necessary buildings, and round it she made gardens and vineyards and shrubberies in places that were formerly useless and barren, and which now became both serviceable and pleasant. The manor house of Middleton, which was close to a public thoroughfare, and was further disfigured by old and crumbling buildings, she moved to another site, where she erected permanent strong buildings and a farmhouse on the bank of the river. She also set to work in the same way at Tufton, in order that the buildings of both the manor houses in that neighbourhood might be of greater service and more secure against the danger of fire.”

A recently published volume on Wroxall Priory, Warwickshire, shows how admirably that convent managed the affairs of the manor. The tenants dined with the prioress at Christmas.

CHAPTER III
EDUCATION IN MONASTERIES

A CONSIDERABLE educational work was accomplished by the monks and regular canons, quite outside the careful claustral teaching of the novices who were being trained to enter their own ranks. An able work, published a few years ago, on the early schools of England, the writer of which, however, never lost an opportunity of decrying the ‘religious,’ attempted to show that English monasteries had but little, if any, connexion with education outside the actual cloister. But his own pages of documentary school evidence might be cited against him. We have, for instance, definite information of the close connexion of monasteries and schools in documents pertaining to Bruton Abbey, Somersetshire, Winchcombe Abbey, Gloucestershire, and the celebrated abbeys of Evesham and Sherborne, as well as the priories of Lewes and Launceston. At some of the more important hospitals, the heads of which were often termed priors, and whose brethren were certainly regulars and followed the Austin rule, education was one of their definite functions. Thus the hospital, or priory, of Bridgwater educated thirteen poor boys up to the time of its dissolution, whilst actual thirteenth-century lists of the names of the boys being taught at the great York hospital of St. Leonard’s, adjoining the abbey of St. Mary, are still extant. Wherever the records or rolls of one of the greater monasteries are extant in any abundance, references to schools and schooling are almost certain to be found. The accounts, for instance, of the great priory of Durham show that the monastic funds were used to further schooling, altogether apart from the instruction or training of their novices. The boys who attended it were called the Children of the Almery; they were taught by one of the priory chaplains, who received a stipend, and they were also fed at the priory’s charge, but seem to have returned home to sleep. The accounts for 1369-70 show that Nicholas, the chaplain, received a stipend of 56s. 8d. pro erudicione puerorum. In 1372-3 the master of the Almery school received 39s. 3d., in addition to a gown, and 2s. for coal. John Garner, master of the grammar school, received 53s. 4d. about 1430, payable at Pentecost and Martinmas. George Trewhytt, in 1500, received a stipend, as grammar schoolmaster, of 60s., together with a furred gown worth 10s. 11d. In 1536-7 the sacrist’s roll shows that the boys’ schoolroom was repaired; and in the same year the bursar received from the almoner 40s. to pay for a table for the schoolmaster.

FOUNTAINS ABBEY (Cistercian)

(By kind permission of the Editor of the Photographic News.)