English Monastic Life

Dame Margaret Twyford.

Dame Philippa Jake.

Dame Alice Dunwich.

Dame Katherine Midelton.

Dame Anne de Norton.

Dame Alice Roby.

Dame Margery Witham.

Dame Katherine Pounce.

Dame Alice Prestwold.

Dame Elizabeth Jurdon (originally put 3rd).

Dame Petronilla Dunwich (originally put 5th).

Dame Elizabeth Hakulthorp.

Dame Alice Powtrell or Pouncstrell.

The spiritual needs of this community were, of course, ministered to by a chaplain. He is generally called “Sir William,” but on one occasion he appears as “Sir William Granger, or Norwich.” He was paid 38s. 4d. a year as his stipend, and this was to include 6d. as the price of a pair of gloves. On certain occasions, as on the greater feasts, Sir William had other clerical help, such as that of “Henry the Chaplain,” and the “Parson of Hatherun.” It is not uninteresting to notice that the nuns’ little present for the services of these reverend gentlemen was, it would seem, delicately handed to them in purses purchased for the purpose. They had also the ministration of an “extraordinary” confessor, a certain Friar William Young, and to him was given 1s. 8d. for the expenses of his journey each time he came to the convent. Something additional was, of course, bestowed on him when, as in 1418, he remained to help in the Holy-Week services. At times, not very frequently, “my Lady,” the prioress, entertained the clergy at a little simple banquet; she did not merely provide for them, for that, of course, the convent always did with true hospitality; but she dined with them. Dame Petronilla does not say, when they “dined with my Lady,” but when “my Lady dined with them,” as, for example, when she notes on the Sunday within the octave of our Lady’s Assumption in the year 1416: “a sucking-pig for the table of my Lady, because to-day she dined with the Vicar.”

It may be mentioned that Dame Petronilla and her assistant Dame Katherine made up their accounts from Sunday to Sunday, as far as expenses are concerned, so that in running through the pages it is possible to form some idea of how these good mediæval nuns lived. I do not think that the most captious critic could charge them with feasting on the “fat of the land,” or with much indulgence in the luxuries even of those primitive days. There is one peculiarity, however, in these otherwise excellent accounts, which rather interferes with a full knowledge of the commissariat at Grace Dieu. The sisters did not think it necessary to enter among the payments the value of the farm and garden produce they consumed, beyond the cost of sowing and gathering into their barns. However, we know that they must have eaten bread and made use of the exceedingly few vegetables and pot-herbs that were then grown in the gardens of England, so we may take these as additional to the “food stuffs” shown in the accounts as paid for. A few examples will be sufficient to give the reader an insight into the general catering at Grace Dieu early in the fifteenth century. These are the first entries among the expenses written by Dame Petronilla when she commenced her duties as “Treasurer,” as she calls herself in one place, after the Feast of the Purification, 1414.

“For two Sundays after the Purification purchased two small pigs price 6d. For house food during the time of Lent, £3 6s. 8d. For seventy hard dried fish for the same time, 11s. 6d. A calf bought for the convent for Quinquagesima Sunday (Shrovetide), 9d. Four small pigs for the same day, 9d. Beef bought for the same day, 20d. Mustard bought at Ashby, 1d. Cheese bought on Friday in Sexagesima week, 5d. Thomas Fene for 2 quarters of red-herrings for Lent, 12d. Nicholas Swon (the swineherd, as the reader may remember), 2d. for catching two small pike at the sluice.”

The Lenten arrangements for feeding the natural man and woman from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday in those hardy and robust days are, even to think of, enough to turn our refined and educated stomachs. Eggs, to a certain limited extent, no doubt these good religious had; although, on the principle before explained, we do not find them mentioned, except as included in their natural producer, the domestic hen. But beyond this, during all this penitential time, the staple food, here as everywhere throughout England, was salted and dried fish. Conger, green fish, ling, and codling stockfish, wealing or whiting, and mackerel are among those named in Russell’s Book of Nurture as the usual Lenten food. How tired the mouth of even the most ascetic religious must have got of the taste of salt fish, however much it was disguised with mustard sauce, or, as on great festivals, “baken, dressed, and dished with white sugar”! No wonder the rising generation in those primitive times were warned by Russell to look carefully upon what they ate for fear they might light on some unsavoury morsel; and “of all manner salt fish,” he says, “look ye pare away the pele (skin) before beginning upon it.” No wonder that after six weeks of salt herring, stockfish, and such-like, our ancestors in the cloisters could look forward to the time-honoured Easter-day joke of “the devil on horseback,” or a split red-herring riding as a jockey on the back of a duck, perpetrated by the convent cook.

Lent, however, is naturally not a fair sample of the food supplied to the Grace Dieu nuns, so let us take the page of expenses for Easter week. Here it is: —

“A stall-fed ox, 16s. 1 pig from the farm. 3 small pigs, price 14d. 1 calf, price 2s. Almonds and rais (raisins), 12d., and for Friday 150 fresh herrings and a stockfish (i. e. cod), 2s.”

The almonds and raisins were a great luxury to the good sisters, and only on a few other occasions during the four years of Dame Petronilla’s housekeeping does this extraordinary expense occur! We cannot help thinking, too, with what pleasure the nuns must have welcomed the change of fish diet on the Friday in Easter week. Two shillings was in those days a great sum to pay for any article of food, but the fresh sea fish must have been scarce enough in Charnwood Forest before the days of railroads. “White herring fresh, if it be seaward and newly caught, with the roe white and tender,” says an old authority, “is toothsome food”; and the Book of Nurture tells “the cook” how best to prepare it for his master’s eating.

“The white herring by the bak a brode ye splat him sure,

Both roe and bones voyded, then may your lord endure to eat merily with mustard.”

We need not linger further over the food supplied to the sisters. One week was very much like another, and the changes were few and far between. It is not often that the accounts show such expenses as “paid to the wife of James the miller for twelve chickens for the table, 12d.” – spring chickens, too, they must have been, for they were eaten on Low Sunday. One All Saints’ Day, by the way, the nuns had four geese, for which the price paid was 3d. each; and one Christmas Day their table was supplied from the farm with nine fowls, and we are told they had seven at their dinner, the other two being reserved to furnish forth their supper. Pork, beef, veal, and fish: these were the ordinary dishes supplied. Mutton, curiously, though not altogether rare, does not appear very frequently in their menu, and lamb is named as a dish at only one of my lady prioress’s little banquets; although the receipt for “lamb-skins sold from the kitchen” shows that it was not altogether unknown to the common table. Probably these nuns were “good housewives,” in the best sense, and preferred to get all they could out of their flocks in the shape of wool, etc., rather than eat tender, but tasteless and immature mutton.

It should be remembered that in the commissariat of Grace Dieu was evidently included the feeding of the retainers of the convent, as well as that of the nuns. These domestics were many, and were fed certainly as well, and sometimes apparently better than were the ladies themselves. The names of two-and-twenty men-servants and eight women who were retainers of the convent, and their wages, or “rewards” as they are called, are preserved in the account-book. They vary very considerably, from 26s. 8d. paid to one Henry Smith, to 2s. 6d. bestowed on “Hirdeman”; and among the women the difference ranges from 22s. 6d. paid to Isabel Botelor, to 1s. 8d. to Matilda Gerrard. Henry Smith, named above, seems to have been a sort of factotum, a real treasure and excellent servant. He is called bailiff in one place, and was no doubt of a higher standing than most of the others. Whatever there was to be done, inside or outside the house, it is evident that no one but Henry Smith could see to it properly.

Besides their wages, these retainers of the Augustinian dames had their cottages and clothes looked to for them by the convent bursar. Thus before the autumn work of cleaning the land and sowing the winter corn commences, we find a record of “twenty-four pairs of shoes” given out, which are charged to the convent account at 2s. 8½d.– not the pair, but the two dozen. This sum would appear, perhaps, ridiculously small, even for those days, had we not some reason to think that the leather for making them was provided to the local cobbler from the convent store; for on one occasion Dame Petronilla notes that she paid 8d. for tanning (pro albacione) the skin of a horse, bought of Robert Harston. Another present from the nuns to their workpeople in view of these autumn works, the cost of which appears in these accounts, was a pair of gloves to each of the thirty men and women about to be engaged in the weeding and ditching and hedging; as for their clothes, these were all made on the premises from the raw material. Thus in one year we read: —

“Paid for the spinning of six score (bundles) of linen flax, 5s.; paid for weaving the three score ells of linen cloth from the same, 3s. 4d.; paid for woofing and warping three-and-twenty ells of woollen cloth, 6s. 2d.; paid for spinning twenty lbs. of wool at 1¼d. the pound, 2s. 6d.; paid for dyeing twenty-seven ells of cloth blood red, at 4d. the ell, 7s. 8d.; paid for spinning woollen cloth for ordinary livery, 11d.”; and so on.

All this evidently was for the clothes of the entire establishment, including the men and women who worked on the farm, and in the laundry, the kitchen, and the bakehouse, etc.

Curiously, as it seems to us perhaps now, each of the nuns had a maximum allowance of 6s. 8d. a year for clothes. It taught them, no doubt, to look after the articles of their dress with care and thrift, better than if the white woollen tunic, scapular and veil, woven from the produce of their own flock of sheep, and the still whiter linen wimple spun from the flax and made into good sound cloth by their own hands, or at least under their own direction, were to appear to drop from the hand of Providence without reference to cost. One or two curious entries seem to show that friends sometimes gave the annual sum allowed for the clothing of some of the nuns. Thus one year William Roby paid “for the clothes of his relation, Dame Agnes Roby”; and at another time Margaret Roby brought the 6s. 8d. for the same purpose when she came on a visit. One interesting item of knowledge about the work of the nuns is conveyed in a brief entry of receipt. It is clear that these ladies were good needlewomen, and their work must have been exceptionally excellent, seeing that a cope was purchased from them by a neighbouring rector for £10.

The indication that these accounts give us of the farming operations of the Grace Dieu nuns is sufficient to make us wish that Dame Petronilla had been a little more explicit; still we are grateful for what we learn about the crops, and their sowing, and weeding, and gathering, the stacking of the wheat, and oats, and peas, and the threshing out of the grain. Thus the wages of Adam Baxter and his wife, and the wife of Robert Harston for weeding thirty acres of barley are set down. Each of these, by the way, had a pair of gloves given them before they were set to the task, and the entire work cost the convent 10s. 3d. Three men beyond the usual farm staff were ordinarily employed in cutting the grass, and in making and stacking the hay. In the general harvesting, men and women were employed in the fields; and, be it remarked, their labour was paid for at the same rate. What are called the autumn works – the harvesting and the subsequent cleaning of the ground – seem to have lasted about seven or eight weeks, and were begun soon after the feast of the Assumption of our Blessed Lady. It is curious, and not uninteresting, to find that the Irish came over for the harvesting in Leicestershire in the fifteenth century as they do now; thus we have Mathew Irishman and Isabel Irish named, together with Edward Welshman, as engaged in the fields of Grace Dieu in 1415. Altogether, the cost of the extra labour in the autumn works amounted to nearly £10, a large sum indeed in those days.

Besides payments of extra money for the harvesting and regular work, some indication of the kindly way in which the good nuns recognised the services of their dependents on special occasions appears in these accounts. In the lambing season, for instance, Henry, the shepherd, was given 2d. “for his good service and care of the sheep,” and John Stapulford received the same sum “for looking after the lambs before their weaning,” whilst John Warren for “fold-hurdling” was rewarded with 1s.; and to take another instance of a somewhat different kind, the convent bailiff at Kirby, one Richard Marston, was given a purse, as a sign that the nuns appreciated his care of their property. One chance entry shows that when the sheep were being sheared, the labourers were given extra meat for their meals, since Dame Petronilla gives 16d. for a calf to feed them specially, on a day when evidently she and her sisters in religion were eating fish in the convent refectory.

A word must now be said about that necessary item in the accounts of every well-regulated religious house, “repairs.” These seem to have exercised the two bursars of Grace Dieu very considerably. The special trouble evidently began with the roof of the house. In the first year of their stewardship they had in, of course, Robert the Slater, and for some reason his bill was only partly met in that twelvemonth. All during Lent, he and his mate were at work mending holes, and making others. From the house his ministrations extended to the cloister. Then came the gutters all over the establishment, which stood in urgent need of attention, as gutters always appear to do, even in our more civilised days. Next it was found that the church must be looked to; and before this was over, the dependants had come to the conclusion that whilst all this repairing was being done at the convent and Robert the Slater was about with his mate and his material upon the ground, it would be a pity not to renovate their cottages. Poor Dame Petronilla must have been well-nigh distracted at the thought that Robert the Slater – who, by the way, did more than roofing, and seems to have been a jack-of-all-trades, though loose tiles were his forte – having once secured a foothold in the establishment, had come to stay. But she gave in with exemplary resignation, and the dependants had their cottages repaired, or what was the same thing, received money to pay for them. Taking one thing with another, more than £10 went in this way during the first year of the procuratorial reign of Dames Petronilla and Katherine.

Among the workmen that haunted Grace Dieu in these days, and who, if there is any fitness in things so far as ghosts are concerned, ought to be found haunting the ruins to-day, was one called Richard Hyrenmonger. He came, we learn, from Donington, and the accounts prove that he must have had a good store of all kinds of nails, and keys, and bolts, judging by the variety he was able to produce. Under him worked John the Plumber, or rather two Johns the Plumber, senior and junior; and, like modern plumbers are wont to do, they appear to have plagued Dame Petronilla and her assistant with their constant tinkering at the pipes and drains of the establishment. “John the senior” and “John the junior,” for example, were six days mending “le pype,” for which they were paid 3s. 4d.; but apparently it was not properly done, for just after this, “le pype” misbehaved itself again, and Dame Petronilla had to purchase a new brass pipe to bring the water to the door of the refectory, and the two Johns were at work again. Of course Richard the Ironmonger always found a lot of work for himself on the farm, so that what with one thing and another, Grace Dieu must have been a very comfortable inheritance for him.

Among the miscellaneous manners and customs of the good nuns of Grace Dieu which are recalled to us in these faded papers of accounts, very few of course can find place here. One such is the yearly visit of the candle-maker to prepare the tallow dips for the dark winter evenings. The preparation made for his coming appears in the purchase of tallow and mutton fat to be used for rush-lights and cresset-lights, which must have done hardly more than make visible the darkness of a winter evening and an early winter morning at Grace Dieu. My lady prioress apparently had an oil lamp of some kind, and we read of special candles for the wash-place and at the door of the refectory, etc. It is to be supposed that the nuns had some means of warming themselves during the cold winter months, for we read of a travelling tinker employed upon mending a chimney to the hall fireplace, and probably they were burning logs from out of Charnwood somewhere or other; but in these accounts there is no mention of fuel except on one occasion, when Richard the Ironmonger had some coal purchased for him; but this was only that he might heat a ploughshare that had got out of shape.

Another most important matter in mediæval times was the annual salting of the winter provisions which took place in every establishment. On St. Martin’s Day, November 11th, the mediæval farmer considered seriously what was the number of his live stock, what was his store of hay, and how long the one could be kept by the other. The residue of the stock had to go into the salting-tub for the winter food of the family and dependants. So at Grace Dieu the purchase of the salt for the great operation is entered in the accounts. On one occasion also Dame Petronilla, “when a boar was killed” – whether by accident or not does not appear – had it spiced as well as salted, and it was no doubt served up on great occasions as a special delicacy in the common refectory.

The picture of the Grace Dieu nuns afforded by these accounts is that of charming, peace-loving ladies; good practical Christian women, as all nuns should be; taking a personal interest in the welfare of their tenants and dependants; occupied, over and besides their conventual and religious duties, in works of genuine charity. They taught the daughters of the neighbouring gentry, and were not too exacting in requiring even what had been promised as the annual pension. They encouraged ladies to come and join them in celebrating the festivals of the church, and out of their small means they set aside a not insignificant portion for the care and clothing of sick in their infirmary; whilst out of their income they found not less than eight corrodies – or pensions – which cost them £7 7s. 4d., or more than five per cent. of their annual revenue. Of their work mention has already been made. They grew the wool and spun it and wove it into cloth, not only for their own garments, but also for those of their retainers; whilst a chance entry of receipt reveals that they were indeed skilled in a high degree in ecclesiastical embroidery. That they were not guilty of “dilapidation” of their house their extensive repairs prove; and that they cared for their lands and farm buildings must be obvious from the purchases made, and the items of expense in connection with every kind of agricultural implement. They took their burden in common ecclesiastical expenses, even contributing their quota of 3d. towards the expenses of the Procurator cleri of the district to Convocation. They were peace-loving, if we may judge from the absence of all law expenses, save and except one small item for an appearance at the local marshal’s court, and whether even this was for themselves or for one of their tenants, and what it was about, does not appear. As it was only 2d., it could not have been much to interfere with the general harmony which apparently existed in the neighbourhood. They lived, too, within their income, which was, more or less, £103 13s. 6d. a year. It is true that in the first year, owing probably to the exceptional repairs which the nuns undertook, they went somewhat beyond their means. The sum was only slight, being but £7 11s. 10½d., and it is pleasant to observe that “out of love of the nuns,” and “to relieve the house of anxiety,” a lady paid the deficit, making her gift £7 12s.

Dame Petronilla and Dame Margaret! how little they could have thought when they penned their simple accounts that they would have given such pleasurable information five hundred years after their time! How little they could ever have dreamed of the pleasant light their jottings would have thrown on so many of their doings and their little ways! They were kind, prudent, charitable souls, without a doubt, and if they might at times have used better ink than they did, that fault was a point of holy parsimony. And if they might have given here and there just a little more information on certain points, they are willingly forgiven and more than forgiven, for what they have left to posterity. Their souls, oft so troubled and vexed by the many cares incidental to the office of a conventual Martha, have long doubtless been in peace, and their spirits no longer vexed by Richard the “Hyrenmonger” and the two Johns, the senior and junior plumbers. What would they think, could they to-day revisit the scene of their former labours and cares? The old home they evidently loved so well is past repairing now, and not even the kindly help of that old servant and friend of the convent, Henry Smith, could avail to suggest the best way of setting about reparation.

All the larger nunneries and probably most of the smaller ones, to whatever Order they belonged, opened their doors for the education of young girls, who were frequently boarders. In fact the female portion of the population, the poor as well as the rich, had in the convents their only schools, nuns their only teachers, in pre-Reformation times. Chaucer, in describing the well-to-do miller of Trompington, says —

“A wyf he hadde, come of noble kyn;Sche was i-fostryd in a nonnery …Ther durste no wight clepe hir but MadameWhat for hir kindred and hir nortelryThat sche had lerned in the nonnerye.”

John Aubrey, too, writes almost as an eye-witness of the Wiltshire convents that “the young maids were brought up … at nunneries, where they had examples of piety, and humility, and modesty, and obedience to imitate and to practise. Here they learned needlework, the art of confectionery, surgery (for anciently there were no apothecaries or surgeons – the gentlewomen did cure their poor neighbours: their hands are now too fine), physic, writing, drawing, etc. Old Jacques could see from his house the nuns of the priory (St. Mary’s, near Kington St. Michael) come forth into the nymph-hay with their rocks and wheels to spin: and with their sewing work. He would say that he had told threescore and ten: but of nuns there were not so many, but in all, with lay sisters and widows, old maids and young girls, there might be such a number. This,” he concludes, “was a fine way of breeding up young women, who are led more by example than precept; and a good retirement for widows and grave single women to a civil, virtuous, and holy life.”

In the well-known case of Nunnaminster, Winchester, there were, at the time of the suppression, twenty-six girl boarders who were reported by the local commissioners to be daughters of “lords, knights, and gentlemen.” The list that is set forth begins with a Plantagenet and includes Tichbornes, Poles, and Tyrrells. So, too, in the case of the Benedictines of Barking, of Kingsmead, Derby, and of Polesworth and Nuneaton, Warwickshire; of the Cluniacs of Delapré, Northampton; of the Cistercians of Wintney, Hants; and of the Gilbertines of Shouldham, Norfolk, it can be established that not only were many of the nuns of good birth, but that their pupils were in the main drawn from the same class.