Again we read of Malling in Kent that it was excused from payments in 1404; in 1349 the bishop of Rochester had found it so decayed as to be hardly capable of restoration[987]. Two abbesses had died of the pestilence; there were only eight inmates left in the house, four of whom were professed and four non-professed.
Malling recovered itself, but not so Wyrthorp in Northamptonshire, where Emma de Pinchbeck and many of the Austin nuns fell victims to the pestilence[988]. The archbishop appointed Agnes Bowes as prioress, but the convent was beyond recovery. In 1354 Sir Th. Holland, the patron of the house, petitioned that it should be united to the nunnery at Stamford, to which its prioress and the one remaining nun removed[989]. In the royal licence which secured this change it is stated ‘that the convent being poorly endowed was by the pestilence which lately prevailed reduced to such poverty that all the nuns but one on account of penury had dispersed.’ In the course of the 14th century other nunneries complained of insufficient revenue and poverty, among them Seton in Cumberland[990], St Sepulchre’s at Canterbury in 1359[991], and Rusper and Easebourne which were both situated in Sussex.
In a few cases accounts are preserved of successive visitations to the same nunnery extending over a number of years, which afford a valuable record of part of the life-history of the house. The visitations conducted between 1442 and 1527 at Rusper and at Easebourne are most instructive as showing the gradual collapse which many of the smaller houses experienced.
The chief complaint made during the visitation of Rusper in 1442 was that the prioress of the house had failed to render account to the sisterhood during the term she had held office[992]. She was consequently enjoined by the bishop of Chichester to produce an account year by year and submit it to him and to the sisterhood. Some thirty years later in 1478 upon enquiry it was found that the convent was in debt, and the bishop asked for an inventory of the house, which was drawn up for him. The community at this time consisted of the prioress and five nuns, four of whom are entered as professed, one as non-professed.
Again in 1484 the bishop visited Rusper, and three nuns were consecrated on this occasion. But the house had entered on a downward course of poverty and decay. In 1485 Rusper was exempted from paying subsidy on the plea of poverty. During the visitation of 1521 the nuns referred their pecuniary poverty to the onerous expenses caused by the too frequent visits of friends and relations who came to stay with the prioress, while the prioress herself referred the poverty to other reasons, but agreed that the house was fast going to ruin. No complaints were made at the visitation three years later (1524), except against a certain William Tychen, who sowed discord. Again in 1527 the prioress and nuns deposed that all was well in the house, but that its poverty was extreme and that it was on the brink of ruin.
The accounts of the visitations to Easebourne[993] are even more instructive, for there the deteriorating effects of mismanagement and poverty were increased by want of discipline and quarrelsomeness among the nuns. In 1414 the community consisted of the prioress and six or seven nuns. In 1437 and 1439 its poverty was already so great that letters patent were secured on the plea of insufficient revenue, exonerating the prioress and her convent from certain payments called for by the clergy. In 1441 the house was in debt to the amount of £40, and here also the convent cast the blame of mismanagement on the head of the house, referring the debts to ‘costly expenses of the prioress, who frequently rides abroad, and pretends she does so on the common business of the house, though it is not so, with a train of attendants much too large, and tarries long abroad, and she feasts sumptuously both at home and abroad.... And while she does so the members of the convent are made to work like hired workwomen, and they receive nothing whatever for their own use from their work, but the prioress takes the whole profit.’
In reply to their complaints the bishop forbade the prioress to compel the sisters to continual work; ‘and if they should wish of their own accord to work, they shall be free to do so, but yet so that they may receive 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 its debts.’ But discharging those debts was no easy matter. The prioress was commanded to sell her costly fur trimmings for the advantage of the house, and if she rode abroad to spend only what was needful, and to content herself with four horses. The administration of temporal goods was taken from her altogether and given to ‘Master Thomas Boleyn and John Lylis, Esquire.’ But under their management the debt of £40 had increased in nine years to £66; and in 1475, as again in 1485 and 1489, the house had to be excused from payments. Rumours of an unfavourable character about what went on in the house now reached the bishop, and before the next visitation in 1478, the prioress Agnes Tauke was summoned to Chichester, where she promised on her oath before the bishop and others to resign her office if called upon to do so.
The deposition made by her nuns during the ensuing visitation confirmed the unfavourable rumours; two nuns had left the priory ostensibly for their health and were abroad in apostasy. One nun referred this conduct to neglect on the part of the prioress, another to that of the chaplain, John Smyth, who confessed to having sealed or caused to be sealed a licence to one of the nuns to go out of the priory after having had criminal intercourse with her. Other complaints were made against the prioress, ‘that she had her kinsmen staying with her for weeks at the priory and gave them the best food, while the nuns had the worst’; also that she was herself of bad character. But these recriminations were not accepted by the bishop. The desire of Agnes Tauke to improve matters was accepted as genuine and she was not called upon to resign.
Discontent however remained a standing characteristic of the nuns at Easebourne. At the visitation of 1521 the prioress deposed that the nuns lived honestly and religiously according to the rule of St Augustine (sic) and were sufficiently obedient to her, but the nun sexton blamed the prioress for ‘not making up any account annually as she ought in presence of the sisters concerning her administration of goods,’ and another nun deposed that she neglected to provide for the sisters the sum of thirteen shillings and four pence in money to which they were entitled. Again in 1524 the prioress deposed that all was well, but the sub-prioress complained of disobedience, both among the professed and the non-professed nuns, who on their side complained of harshness of treatment. The bishop believed the complaints of the latter and blamed the behaviour of the sub-prioress, who submitted to correction.
The recriminations of the nuns at Easebourne recall a picture drawn about this time by Langland (c. 1390) in the Vision of Piers the Ploughman, in which Wrath personified as a friar describes how he stirred up quarrels in a nunnery. In its earliest version the poem omits these passages; and Langland, so ready to abuse and ridicule monk and friar, is chary in his references to nuns. In the later versions of his poem (text B and C) ‘Wrath’ is described as acting first as gardener and then as cook in a nunnery, where in the character of ‘the prioress’ potager and of ‘other poor ladies,’ he ‘made them broths of various scandals.’ Among the stories he set going was