Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 Part 2

Dame Iohanne was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, And dame Clarice a knightes doughter ac a kokewolde was hire syre.

Nor were the clergy loath to embrace this opportunity of removing the fruit of a lapse from grace. Hugh de Tunstede, rector of Catton, left ten s.h.i.+llings and a bed to his daughter Joan, a nun of Wilberfoss[119], and at the time of the Dissolution there was a child of Wolsey himself at Shaftesbury[120]. It is significant that it was sometimes necessary to procure the papal dispensation of an abbess- or prioress-elect for illegitimacy, before she could hold office. The dispensation in 1472 of Joan Ward, a nun of Esholt, who afterwards became prioress, is interesting, for the Wards were patrons of the house and her presence ill.u.s.trates one of the uses to which such patronage could be put[121]. The diocese of York affords other instances (they were common enough in the case of priests) of dispensation "_super defectu natalium_"; in 1474 one was granted to Cecily Conyers, a nun at Ellerton, "born of a married man and a single woman"[122] and in 1432 Alice Etton received one four days before her confirmation as Prioress of Sinningthwaite[123]. At St Mary's Neasham in 1437, the Bishop of Durham appointed Agnes Tudowe prioress and issued a mandate for her dispensation for illegitimacy and her installation on the same day[124].

Less defensible from the point of view of the house was the practice, which certainly existed, of placing in nunneries girls in some way deformed, or suffering from an incurable defect.

Now earth to earth in convent walls, To earth in churchyard sod.

I was not good enough for man, And so am given to G.o.d.

It will be remembered that the practice roused the disapprobation of Gargantua, whose abbey of Theleme contained only beautiful and amiable persons.

Item, parcequ'en icelluy temps on ne mettoit en religion des femmes, sinon celles qu'estoyent borgnes, boiteuses, bossues, laides, deffaictes, folles, insensees, maleficiees et tarees, ... ("a propos, dist li moyne, une femme qui n'est ny belle, ny bonne, a quoi vault elle?--A mettre en religion, dist Gargantua.--Voyre, dist le moine, et a faire des chemises.") ... feut ordonne que la (i.e. a Theleme) ne seroyent receues, sinon les belles, bien formees et bien naturees, et les beaux, bien formez et bien naturez[125].

Occasionally the nuns seem to have resented or resisted these attempts to foist the deformed and the half-witted upon them. One of the reasons urged by the obstinate inmates of Stratford against receiving little Isabel Bret was that she was deformed in her person[126]. It was complained against the Prioress of Ankerwyke at Alnwick's visitation in 1441 that she made _ideotas_ and other unfit persons nuns[127]; and in 1514 the Prioress of Thetford was similarly charged with intending shortly to receive illiterate and deformed persons as nuns and especially one Dorothy Sturges, a deaf and deformed gentlewoman. Her designs were frustrated, but the nuns of Blackborough were less particular and in 1532 Dorothy answered among her sisters that nothing was in need of reform in that little house[128].

At the time of the Dissolution the Commissioners found that one of the nuns of Langley was "in regard a fool"[129]; and a certain Jane Gowring (the name of whose convent has not been preserved) sent a pet.i.tion to Cromwell, demanding whether two girls of twelve and thirteen, the one deaf and dumb and the other an idiot, should depart or not[130]. At Nuncoton in 1440 a nun informed Bishop Alnwick that two old nuns lay in the fermery and took their meals in the convent's cellar "and likewise the infirm, _the weak minded_ (_imbecilles_) and they that are in their seynies do eat in the same cellar"[131]. Complaints of the presence of idiots were fairly frequent. It is easy to understand the exasperation of Thetford over the case of Dorothy Sturges, when one finds Dame Katherine Mitford complaining at the same visitation that Elizabeth Haukeforth is "_aliquando lunatica_"[132]; but a few years later Agnes Hosey, described as "_ideota_," gave testimony with her sisters at Easebourne and excited no adverse comment[133]. In an age when faith and superst.i.tion went hand in hand a mad nun might even bring glory to her house; the tale of Catherine, nun of Bungay, ill.u.s.trates this. In 1319 an inquiry was held into the miracles said to have been performed at the tomb of the saintly Robert of Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose canonisation was ardently desired by the English; among these miracles was the following:

Sir Walter Botere, chaplain, having been sworn, says that the miracle happened thus, to wit that he saw a certain Catherine, who had been (so they say) a nun of Bungay, in the diocese of Norwich, mad (_furiosam_) and led to the tomb of the said father; and there she was cured of the said madness and so departed sane; and he says that there is public talk and report of this.

Three other witnesses also swore to the tale[134]. Even cases of violent and dangerous madness seem at times to have occurred, judging from a note at Alnwick's visitation of Stainfield in 1440, in which it is said that all the nuns appeared separately before the Bishop, "with the exception of Alicia Benyntone, who is out of her mind and confined in chains"[135].

Lay and ecclesiastical opinion alike condemned another practice, which seems to have been fairly widespread in medieval England, that of forcing into convents children too young to realise their fate, or even girls old enough to resist, of whom unscrupulous relatives desired to be rid, generally in order to gain possession of their inheritance; for a nun, dead in the eyes of the law which governed the world, could claim no share in her father's estate[136]. It is true that influential people, who could succeed in proving that a nun was unwillingly professed, might obtain her release[137]; but many little heiresses and unwanted children must have remained for ever, without hope of escape, in the convents to which they had been hurried, for it is evident that the religious houses themselves did all they could to discourage the presentation of such pet.i.tions, or the escape of unwilling members. The _chanson de nonne_, the song of the nun unwillingly professed, is a favourite theme in medieval popular poetry[138]; and dry doc.u.ments show that it had its foundation in fact. It is possible to collect from various sources a remarkable series of legal doc.u.ments which ill.u.s.trate the practice of putting girls into nunneries, so as to secure their inheritance.

As early as 1197 there is a case at Ankerwyke, where a nun who had been fifteen years professed returned to the world and claimed a share of her father's property, on the ground that she had been forced into the monastery by a guardian, who wished to secure the whole inheritance. Her relatives energetically resisted a claim by which they would have been the losers and appealed to the Pope. The runaway nun was excommunicated and her case came into the Curia Regis, but the result has not survived and it is impossible to say whether her story was true[139]. The case of Agnes, nun of Haverholme, ill.u.s.trates at once the reason for which an unwilling girl might be immured in a nunnery and the obstacles which her order would place in the way of escape. She enters history in a papal mandate of 1304, by which three ecclesiastics are ordered to take proceedings in the case of Agnes, whose father and stepmother (how familiar and like a fairy tale it sounds) in order to deprive her of her heritage, shut her up in the monastery of Haverholme. "The canons and nuns of Sempringham (to which order Haverholme belonged) declare," continues the mandate, "that she took the habit out of devotion, but refuse to confirm their a.s.sertion by oath"[140]. The inference is irresistible. Another case, the memory of which is preserved in a pet.i.tion to Chancery, concerns Katherine and Joan, the two daughters of Thomas Norfolk, whose widow Agnes married a certain Richard Haldenby. Agnes was seised of certain lands and tenements in Yorks.h.i.+re to the value of 40 a year, as the nearest friend of the two girls, whose share of their father's estate the lands were. But her remarriage roused the wrath of the Norfolk family and an uncle, John Norfolk, dispossessed her of the land and took the children out of her guardians.h.i.+p, "with great force of armed men against the peace of our lord the king," breaking open their doors and carrying away the deeds of their possessions. Then, according to the pet.i.tion of Agnes and her second husband, "did he make the said Katherine a nun, when she was under the age of nine years, at a place called Wallingwells, against her will, and the other daughter of the aforesaid Thomas Norfolk he hath killed, as it is said." The mother begs for an inquiry to be held[141].

But the most vivid of all these little tragedies of the cloister are those concerned with Margaret de Prestewych and Clarice Stil. The case of Margaret de Prestewych has been preserved in the register of Robert de Stretton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield; and it is satisfactory to know that one energetic girl at least succeeded in making good her protests and in escaping from her prison. In her eighth year or thereabouts, according to her own pet.i.tion to the Pope, her friends compelled her against her will to enter the priory of the nuns of Seton, of the order of St Augustine, and take on her the habit of a novice. She remained there, as in a prison, for several years, always protesting that she had never made nor ever would willingly make any profession. And then, seeing that she must by profession be excluded from her inheritance, she feigned herself sick and took to her bed. But this did not prevent her being carried to the church at the instance of her rivals and blessed by a monk, in spite of her cries and protests that she would not remain in that priory or in any other order. On the first opportunity she went forth from the priory without leave and returned to the world, which in heart she had never left, and married Robert de Holand, publicly after banns, and had issue.

The bishop, to whom the case had been referred by the Pope, found upon inquiry that these things were true, and in 1383 released her from the observance of her order[142].

Within a few years of this high spirited lady's escape the case of little Clarice Stil engaged the attention of the King's court. The dry-as-dust pages of the medieval law-books hide many jewels for whoever has patience to seek them, but none brighter than this story. It all arose out of a writ of wards.h.i.+p sued by one David Carmayngton or Servyngton against Walter Reynold, whom he declared to have unjustly deforced him of the wards.h.i.+p of the land and heir of Robert Stil, the heir being Clarice.

Walter, however, said that no action lay against him, because Clarice had entered into the order of St John of Jerusalem, of which the Prioress of Buckland was prioress, and had been professed in that order on the very day of the purchase of the writ. In answer David unfolded a strange story.

He alleged that William Stil, the father of Robert, had married twice; by his first wife Constance he had one daughter Margaret, who was now the wife of Walter Reynold; by his second wife Joan he had two children, Robert and Clarice. William died seised of certain tenements which were inherited by Robert, who died without an heir of his body; whereupon (David alleged) Walter, by connivance with the Prioress of Buckland and in order to disinherit Clarice (in which case his own wife Margaret would be the next of kin), took Clarice after her brother's death and conveyed her to Buckland Priory, she being then eight years of age, and kept her there under guard. David's counsel gave a dramatic account of the proceeding:

Sir, we say that the same Walter by covinage to compel the said Clarice to be professed, took the said Clarice when she was between the ages of seven and eight years, to the house of nuns at Buckland, and in that place were two ladies, nuns, who were of his a.s.sent to cause the infant to be professed, and they told the child that if she pa.s.sed the door the devil would carry her away.

It was furthermore pleaded that on the day of purchase of the writ, Clarice was within the age of twelve years and that she was still within that age, and that therefore she could not be considered professed by the law of the land. By this time one's sympathies are all on the side of David, and of terrified little Clarice, with whom the devil was to run away. Unfortunately the judges referred the matter to an ecclesiastical court and ordered a writ to be sent to the Bishop of Bath and Wells. The Bishop made his return

that the said Clarice on August 1st, 1383, of her own free will, was taken to the said Prioress of Buckland by Stephen Joseph, rector of the church of Northeleye, without any connivance on the part of the said Walter and the said Prioress, and she remained at the said priory for two years to see if the life would please her. Afterwards, on October 18th, 1385, she a.s.sumed the religious habit and made profession according to the manners and customs of the said house. And on the day when Clarice entered the house she was more than eight years old and on the day of purchase of the writ more than twelve years old, and at the present time is more than fourteen years old, and is well contented with the religious life.

The Bishop also found that no guards had been placed over Clarice by Walter, or by the Prioress. So David lost his suit and was in mercy for a false claim; and he also lost, upon a technical point, another suit which he had brought against the Prioress of Buckland. Nevertheless one's sympathies remain obstinately on his side. That touch about the devil a.s.suredly never sprang even from the fertile brain of a lawyer[143].

The illegitimate, the deformed, the feeble-minded and the unwilling represent a not very pleasant side of the conventual system. The nunneries contained other and less tragic inmates, who may be distinguished from the majority; for to them went in voluntary retirement a large number of widows[144]. If the nun unwillingly professed has always been a favourite theme in popular literature, so also has the broken-hearted wife or lover, Guinevere hiding her sorrows in the silent cloister.

Many of the widows who took the veil were, however, less romantic figures.

Although their presence as secular boarders was discouraged, because it brought too much of the world within cloister walls, those who desired to make regular profession were willingly received, the more so as they often brought a substantial dower with them. Thus when Margaret, Countess of Ulster, a.s.sumed the habit at Campsey in 1347, she took with her, by licence of the Crown, the issues of all her lands and rents in England for a year after her admission, and after that date 200 marks yearly were to be paid for her sustenance[145]. Such widows often enjoyed a respect consonant with their former position in society and not infrequently became heads of their houses. Katherine de Ingham and Eleanor Lady Scrope both entered the Minories in their widowhood and eventually became abbesses[146]. But it does not need much imagination, nor an unduly cynical temperament, to guess that this element of convent life must occasionally have been a disturbing one. The conventual atmosphere did not always succeed in killing the profaner pa.s.sions of the soul; and the advent of an opinionated widow, ripe in the experience of all those things which her sisters had never known, with the aplomb of one who had long enjoyed an honoured position as wife and mother and lady of the manor, must at times have caused a flutter among the doves; such a situation, for instance, as Bishop Cobham found at Wroxall when he visited it in 1323[147]. Isabel Lady Clinton of Maxstoke, widow of the patron of the house, had retired thither and had evidently taken with her a not too modest opinion of her own importance. She found it impossible to forget that she was a Clinton and to realise that she, who had in time gone by given her easy patronage to the nuns and lodged with them when she would, was now a simple sister among them. Was she to submit to the rule of Prioress Agnes of Alesbury, she without whose goodwill Prioress Agnes had never been appointed? Was she to listen meekly to chiding in the dorter, and in the frater to bear with sulks? Impossible. How she comported herself we know not, but the bishop "found grave discord existing between the Prioress and dame Isabel Clinton, some of the sisters adhering to one and some to the other." Evidently a battle royal. The bishop, poor man, did his best. He enjoined peace and concord among the inmates; the sisters were to treat the prioress with reverence and obedience; those who had rebelled against her were to desist and the prioress was to behave amicably to all in frater, dorter, and elsewhere. And so my lord went his way. He may have known the pertinacity of the late patroness; and it was perhaps with resignation and without surprise that he confirmed her election as prioress on the death of the hara.s.sed Agnes.

The occasional cases in which wives left their husbands to enter a convent were less likely to provoke discord. Such women as left husband and children to take the veil must have been moved by a very strong vocation for religion, or else by excessive weariness. Some may perhaps have found married life even such an odious tale, "a licking of honey off thorns," as the misguided realist who wrote _Hali Meidenhad_ sought to depict it. In any case, whether the mystical faith of a St Bridget drew her thither, or whether matrimony had not seemed easy to her that had tried it, the presence of a wedded wife was unlikely to provoke discord in the convent; the devout and the depressed are quiet bedeswomen. It was necessary for a wife to obtain her husband's permission before she could take the veil, since her action entailed celibacy on his part also, during her lifetime.

Sometimes a husband would endow his wife liberally on her entry into the house which she had selected. There are two such dowers in the Register of G.o.dstow Nunnery. About 1165 William de Seckworth gave the t.i.thes of two mills and a grant of five acres of meadow to the convent, "for the helth of hys sowle and of hys chyldryn and of hys aunceters, with hys wyfe also, the whyche he toke to kepe to the forseyd holy mynchons to serve G.o.d"[148]; and a quarter of a century later Geoffrey Durant and Molde his wife, "whan e same Moole yelded herself to be a mynchon to the same chirch," granted one mark of rent to be paid annually by their son Peter, out of certain lands held by him, "which were of the mariage of the said Moolde"[149]. Nor did Walter Hauteyn, citizen of London, in his solicitude for his son and three daughters, forget the mother who had left her husband and children for the service of G.o.d; to Alice his wife, a nun of St Sepulchre's Canterbury, he bequeathed in 1292 his dwelling place and rents upon Cornhill for life, with remainder to his heirs[150].

CHAPTER II

THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE

"My lady Prioresse, by your leve So that I wiste I sholde you not greve, I wolde demen that ye tellen sholde A tale next, if so were that ye wolde.

Now wol ye vouche-sauf, my lady dere?"

"Gladly" quod she, and seyde as ye shal here.

CHAUCER.

It usually happened that the head of a nunnery was a woman of some social standing in her own right. All nuns were Christ's brides, but an earthly father in the neighbourhood, with broad acres and loose purse strings, was not to be despised. If a great lady retired to a nunnery she was very like to end as its head; Barking Abbey in Ess.e.x had a long line of well-born abbesses, including three queens and two princesses; and when Katherine de la Pole (the youngest daughter of that earl of Suffolk who was slain at Agincourt) is found holding the position of abbess at the tender age of twenty-two, it is an irresistible inference that her birth was a factor in the choice[151]. The advantage in having a woman of local influence and rich connections as prioress is ill.u.s.trated in the history of Crabhouse nunnery under Joan Wiggenhall[152]; how she worked and built "be the grace of oure Lord G.o.d an be the helpe of Edmund Perys, Person of Watlington,"

her cousin; and how

whanne this good man beforeseyde was pa.s.sid to G.o.d, oure Lord that is ful graciouse to alle his servauntis that have nede and that troste on hym, sente hem anothir goode frende hem to helpe and comforte in her nede, clepid Mayster Jon Wygenale, Doctoure of Canon and person of Oxborow, and Cosyn to the same Prioresse;

and how

in the xix yere of the same Prioresse, ffel a grete derth of corne, wherefore sche muste nedis have lefte werke with oute relevynge and helpe of sum goode creature, so, be the steringe of oure Lord, Mayster Jon Wygenale befor sayde sente us of his charite an 100 cowmbe malte and an 100 coumbe Barly and besyde this procurid us xx mark. And for the soule of my lord of Exetyr, of whos soule G.o.d of hys pyte he wil have mercy, we had of him xl pounte and v mark to the same werke, whiche drewe ccc mark, without mete and drinke. And within these vij yere that the dortoure was in makynge the place at Lynne clepped Corner Bothe was at the gate downe and no profite came to the place many yeris beforne. So that maystir Jon before seyde of hys gret charite lente the same prioresse good to make it up ageyne and procured hir xx mark of the sekatouris of Roger Chapeleyn[153].

The election of a superior was a complicated business, as may be gathered from the list of seventeen doc.u.ments relating to the election of Alice de la Flagge as Prioress of Whiston in 1308, and enrolled in the _Sede Vacante_ Register of Worcester diocese[154]. Indeed there were so many formalities to be fulfilled that the nuns seem often to have found great difficulty in making a canonical election, and there are frequent notices in the episcopal registers that their election has been quashed by the Bishop on account of some technical fault; in such cases, however, the Bishop's action was merely formal and he almost always reappointed the candidate of their choice[155]. An election was, moreover, not only complicated but expensive; it began with a journey to the patron to ask for his _conge d'elire_ and it ended with more journeys, to the patron and to the Bishop, to ask for confirmation, so that the cost of travel and the cost of paying a clerk to draw up the necessary doc.u.ments were sometimes considerable; moreover a fee was payable to the Bishop's official for the installation of the new head. The account of Margaret Ratclyff, Prioress of Swaffham Bulbeck in 1482, contains notice of payments "to the official of the lord bishop, at the installation of the said prioress for his fee i. li." and to one Bridone "for the transcript of the decree of election of the prioress v. s."[156]. An account roll of St Michael's Stamford for the year 1375-6 ill.u.s.trates the process in greater detail; under the heading of "expenses de nostre Elit" are the following items:

Paid for the hire of horses with expenses going to the abbot of Peterborough [the patron] to get licence to elect our choice 9-1/2_d._ Paid for the hire of horses going to the bishop of Lincoln and to the abbot of Peterborough and for their expenses at our election 4_s._ 8-1/2_d._ Paid for bread, ale and meat for our election on the election day 2_s._ 11-1/2_d._ Paid for a letter to the abbot of Peterborough for a licence to elect 3_d._ Paid for the installation of our elect, 10_s._[157] Total 18_s._ 8-1/2_d._[158]

The only necessary qualifications for the head of a house were that she should be above the age of twenty-one[159], born in wedlock and of good reputation; a special dispensation had to be obtained for the election of a woman who was under age or illegitimate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE II

ABBESS RECEIVING THE PASTORAL STAFF FROM A BISHOP

BENEDICTION OF AN ABBESS BY A BISHOP]

As a rule the nuns possessed the right of free election, subject to the _conge d'elire_ of their patron and to the confirmation of the bishop, and they secured without very much difficulty the leader of their choice.

Often enough it must have been clear, especially in small communities, that one of the nuns was better fitted to rule than her sisters, and, as at Whiston, they

unanimously, as if inspired by the Holy Spirit[160], chose dame Alice de la Flagge, a woman of discreet life and morals, of lawful age, professed in the nunnery, born in lawful matrimony, prudent in spiritual and temporal matters, of whose election all approved, and afterwards, solemnly singing Te Deum Laudamus, carried the said elect, weeping, resisting as much as she could, and expostulating in a high voice, to the church as is the custom, and immediately afterwards, brother William de Grimeley, monk of Worcester, proclaimed the election. The said elect, after being very often asked, at length, after due deliberation, being unwilling to resist the divine will, consented[161].

But Jocelin of Brakelond has taught us that a monastic election was not always a foregone conclusion, that discussion waxed hot and barbed words flew in the season of blood-letting "when the cloistered monks were wont to reveal the secrets of their hearts in turn and to discuss matters one with another," and that "many men said many things and every man was fully persuaded in his own mind." Nuns were not very different from monks when it came to an election, and the chance survival of a bishop's register and of another formal doc.u.ment among the muniments of Lincoln, has preserved the record of an election comedy at Elstow Abbey, almost worthy to rank with Jocelin's inimitable account of the choice of Samson the subsacrist.

After the death of Abbess Agnes Gascoigne in July 1529, the nineteen nuns of Elstow, having received Henry VIII's _conge d'elire_, a.s.sembled in their chapter house on August 9th, to elect her successor. They chose Master John Rayn "_utriusque juris doctorem_," as director, Edward Watson, notary public as clerk, and the Prior of Caldwell and the rectors of Great Billing and Turvey as witnesses. Three novices and other lay persons having departed, the director and the other men explained the forms of election to the nuns in the vulgar tongue and they agreed to proceed by way of scrutiny. Matilda Sheldon, subprioress, Alice Boifeld, _precentrix_, and Anne Preston, _ostiaria_ (doorkeeper) were chosen as scrutineers and withdrew into a corner of the chapter house, with the notary and witnesses. There Matilda Sheldon and Anne Preston nominated Cecilia Starkey, _refectoraria_, while Alice Boifeld nominated Elizabeth Boifeld, sacrist, evidently a relative. The three scrutineers then called upon the other nuns to give their votes; Anne Wake, the prioress, named Cecilia Starkey; Elizabeth Boifeld and Cecilia Starkey (each unable to vote for herself, but determined not to a.s.sist the other) voted for a third person, the subsacrist Helen Snawe; and Helen Snawe and all the other nuns, except two, gave their votes in favour of Elizabeth Boifeld.

Consternation reigned among the older nuns, prioress, subprioress, _refectoraria_ and doorkeeper, when this result was announced. "Well,"

said the Prioress, "some of thies yong Nunnes be to blame," and on the director asking why, she replied: "For they wolde not shewe me so muche; for I asked diverse of them before this day to whome they wolde gyve their voices, but they wolde not shewe me." "What said they to you?" asked the director. "They said to me," replied the fl.u.s.tered and indignant prioress, "they wolde not tell to whome they wolde gyve their voices tyll the tyme of th.e.l.lection, and then they wolde gyve their voices as G.o.d shulde put into their mynds, but this is by counsaill. And yet yt wolde have beseemed them to have shewn as much to me as to the others." And then she and Dame Cecilia said, "What, shulde the yong nunnes gyve voices? Tushe, they shulde not gyve voices!" Clearly the situation was the same which Jocelin of Brakelond had described over three centuries before: "The novices said of their elders that they were invalid old men and little capable of ruling an abbey." However the Prioress was obliged to admit that the younger nuns had voted in the last election and the subprioress thereupon, in the name of the scrutineers, announced the election of Dame Elizabeth Boifeld by the "more and sounder part of the convent" (poor Anne Wake!).

But the Prioress and disappointed Dame Cecilia still showed fight; the votes must be referred to the Bishop of Lincoln. Further discussion; then Dame Cecilia gracefully gave way; she consented to the election of Dame Elizabeth Boifeld and would not proceed further in the matter. Master John Rayn published the election at the steps of the altar. Helen Snawe (whom after events showed to be a leading spirit in the affair) and Katherine Wingate were chosen as proctors, to seek confirmation from the Bishop, and Dame Elizabeth was taken to the altar (amid loud chanting of _Te Deum Laudamus_ by the triumphant younger nuns) and her election announced. She, however, preserved that decorous semblance of unwillingness, or at least of indifference, which custom demanded from a successful candidate, even when she had been pulling strings for days, for when the proctors came to her at two o'clock "in a certain upper chamber called Marteyns, in our monastery" and asked her consent to her election, "she neither gave it nor refused." Away went the proctors, without so much as a wink to each other; let us leave our elect to meditate upon the will of G.o.d. At four p.m. they came to her "in a certain large garden, called the Pond Yard, within our monastery"; and at their repeated instances she gave her consent.

"Wherefore we, the above-named nuns, pray the Lord Bishop to ratify and confirm our election of the said Elizabeth Boyfeld as our Abbess." Which the Lord Bishop did[162].

But this was by no means the end of the matter. A year later the whole nunnery was in an uproar[163]. The bishop, for reasons best known to himself, had removed the prioress Dame Anne Wake and had appointed Dame Helen Snawe in her place; perhaps Dame Anne had said "Tush" once too often under the new _regime_; perhaps she was getting too old for her work; or perhaps Abbess Elizabeth Boifeld had only commanded Dame Snawe's intrigues at a price; evidently the subsacrist was no less adroit than that other subsacrist of Bury St Edmund's. At any rate Dame Anne Wake was put out of her office and Dame Helen Snawe ruled in her stead. It might have been expected that this change would be welcomed by the nuns, considering how strong the Boifeld faction had been at the election of the Abbess. But no; during the year of triumph Helen Snawe had aroused the hearty dislike of her sisters; led by Dames Barbara Gray (who had voted against the Abbess at the last election) and Alice Bowlis they had strenuously opposed her subst.i.tution for the old Prioress; they had been impertinent to the Abbess of their own choice (indeed she was only a figure-head); they had written letters to their friends and refused to show them to her; and finally when the election of Dame Snawe was announced, they had risen in a body and left the chapter-house as a protest. This was intolerable, and the Bishop's vicar-general came down to examine the delinquents. Matilda Sheldon, the subprioress, admitted to having left the chapter, but denied that she had done so for the reason attributed and said that she did not know of the departure of the other nuns, until she saw them in the dorter. Margaret Nicolson showed more spirit; she said that she went out "because she wold not consent that my lady Snawe shulde be priores," and that "ther was none that ded councell hir to goo" and that "my lady abbes did commaunde them to tary, that not withestandyng they went forthe"; and she gave the names of eight nuns who had followed the subprioress out. Dame Barbara Gray was next asked "yf she ded aske licence of my Lady Abbas to wryte letters to hir frends," and replied "that she ded aske licens to wryte to hir frends and my Lady Abbas sade, 'Yf ye showe me what ye wryte I am content,' and she saide agene, 'I have done my devoir to aske licence, and yf ye wyll nede see it I will wryte noo letters.'" Asked whether she had left the chapter house, this defiant young woman declared that "yf it were to do agene she wolde soo doo," and moreover "that she cannot fynde in hir hert to obbey my lady Snawe as priores, and that she wyll rather goo out of the house by my lord's licence, or she wyll obbey hir ... and that she wyll never obbey hir as priores, for hir hert cannot serve hir." Asked for her objection to Dame Snawe, she said that "she wyll shewe noo cause at thys tyme wherfor she cannot love hir"; but after a little pressure she declared with heat that "the priores maks every faute a dedly syne"[164], treats all of them ill except her own self and if she "doo take an oppynyon she wyll kepe itt," whether it be right or wrong. Dame Margery Preston was next examined and was evidently rather frightened at the result of her actions; she said that she had left the chapter-house as a protest against the deposition of the old prioress and not for any ill will that she bore Dame Snawe, "and she sais," the record continues, "that she ys well content to obbey my lady Snawe as priores. And she desiers my lord to be a good lord to the olde priores, because of her age." Ill-used Dame Cecilia Starkey, so unkindly circ.u.mvented by Dame Snawe a year ago, next appeared before the vicar-general and said "that she went forthe of the chapter howse, but she sais she gave noo occasion to eny of hir susters to goo forthe. And says she knewe not howe many of hir susters went forthe whyle she come intoo the dorter; saynge that she cannot fynde in hir hert nor wyll not accepte and take my lady Snawe as priores" (an amusing comment on her vote in 1529). Next came Dame Alice Foster, who admitted to having left the chapter-house