Chapter X: The World in the Cloister (2)

These cases of violence will lead us to the consideration of breaches of enclosure which were in no sense the fault of the unhappy nuns. Visits from their peaceful friends they welcomed; the sojourn of great folk they bore; but they would fain have passed their days undisturbed by war's alarms and by the assault and battery of private feuds. But it was not to be. Alarums and excursions sometimes shattered their peace and, especially in the Northern counties, violent attacks at the hands of robbers, lawless neighbours, or enemies of the realm were only too common. Disorder was general and grew worse in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The nunnery of Markyate was once assaulted in the night by fifty robbers and the nuns pillaged and robbed of everything valuable[1344], and in 1408 the Bishop of Ely gave an indulgence for the relief of the nuns of Rowney, "whose chalices, books, ornaments and other goods have been stolen by evil men, so that they have not the wherewithal to perform the divine office"[1345].

Neighbourly disagreements sometimes developed into petty warfare, as the Paston Letters show, and an almost exact parallel to the dispute between John Paston and Lord Molynes over the manor of Gresham is to be found in a complaint made in 1383 by the Prioress of Brodholme, who asserted that a gang of men (whom she named)

"had broken her close at Brodholme, felled her trees and underwood,
dug in her soil, carried off earth, trees, underwood and other goods,
depastured her corn and grass, assaulted her servants and besieged her
and her nuns in the Priory and threatened them with death"[1346].

Such instances might be multiplied[1347]. Sometimes the presence of secular boarders led to unpleasant experiences for the nuns. The Lincoln registers record two such cases, which incidentally furnish an additional reason why the reception of boarders was frowned upon by the Church. In 1304 certain

"satellites of Satan whose names we know not" (Bishop Dalderby informs
his official), "lately came in great numbers to the monastery of the
nuns of Goring, where they boldly laid violent hands upon Henry,
chaplain of the parish church and brother John le Walleys, lay brother
of the same place (from whom they drew blood) and upon certain nuns of
the house who struggled to guard their monastery, and then they
entered and rode their horses up to the high altar of the church,
polluting that holy place shamefully with the footprints and dung of
their horses."

Their object was apparently to seize a certain Isabella de Kent, a married woman then dwelling in the nunnery, and they pursued her to the belfry, where she had taken refuge and dragged her away with them[1348]. An even worse disturbance took place at Rothwell in 1421-2. A gang of ruffians broke open the cloister and doors, seized one Joan (a boarder) and carried her away to a lonely house, where their leader forcibly violated her, with every circumstance of brutality. She escaped back to the priory, whereupon the leader

entering the same priory a second time, like a tyrant and pirate with
a far greater multitude of like henchmen and people untamed and savage
in his company, with naked swords and other sorts of divers weapons of
offence, fell ... upon the same woman, who was then in the presence of
the prioress and the nuns in the hall of the said priory and ...
daringly laid wicked, sacrilegious and violent hands, notwithstanding
the worship both of their persons and of the place, upon the prioress
and nuns of the said place, honourable members of the church and
persons hallowed to God accordingly--who endeavoured gently to appease
their baseness and savagery, so far as their sex as women allowed--and
cudgelled them with cruel strokes, threw them down on the ground and,
trampling on them with their feet, mercilessly kicked them and
violently dragged off their garments of their habits over their heads,
and even as robbers, having caught their prey, carried off the said
woman, dragging her with them out of the priory[1349].

Even more significant is the licence granted to the Abbess and Convent of Tarrant Keynes in 1343 to cut down two hundred acres of under-wood in their demesne land, "on their petition setting forth that their house and possessions in the county of Dorset had been burned and destroyed by an invasion of the king's enemies in those parts"[1350]; or the permission given to the Abbess of Shaftesbury in 1367 to crenellate her Abbey, presumably for purposes of defence[1351]. The south coast was a constant prey to pirates, and it was still within the memory of man that, at the beginning of the French war

the Normayns Pycardes and Spanyerdes entred into the toune (of
Southampton) and robbed and pilled the toune, and slewe dyvers and
defowled maydens, and enforced wyves, and charged their vessels with
the pyllage and so entred agayne into their shyppes[1352].

The sanctity which attached to the person of a nun was apt to be forgotten in the brutal warfare of the day and the Abbess might well fear for her flock. The English nunneries did not, indeed, experience anything to compare with the unimaginable sufferings endured by French convents during the hundred years' war[1353]. But they were by no means immune from the effects of civil war; Wilton, Wherwell and St Mary's, Winchester, were all burned during the struggle between Stephen and Matilda[1354], and during the Wars of the Roses the nuns of Delapre were unwilling witnesses of the Battle of Northampton (1460), which was held "in the medowys beside the Nonry"; after the fight was over the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London rested at the nunnery and many of the slain were buried in its churchyard[1355].

The most striking example of the effect of warfare upon monastic houses in England is, however, provided by the history of the northern monasteries, which were throughout their history (but especially during the first part of the fourteenth century) in danger from the inroads of the Scots. So great was the destruction wrought in 1318 that it was necessary to make a new assessment of church property for purposes of taxation, in part of the province of York[1356]. Nor was the trouble purely material, though the poverty of the nunneries (in particular) was sometimes abject and the harrying of their lands must have made prosperity at all times a vain hope. The moral results of such disorder were even more serious. It was almost impossible to maintain an ordinary communal life, when at any moment it might be necessary to disperse the nuns and quarter them in other houses out of the line of the marauders' march. Even in houses which were never actually attacked, the prevalent unrest, the lawlessness which is naturally engendered by border warfare, must have been disorganising and demoralising. It is easy to understand why cases of immorality and grave disorder are more prevalent in the convents of the north of England than in those of any other district.

In 1296 the chronicler of Lanercost describes thus the first great raid of the Scots:

In this raid they surpassed in cruelty all the fury of the heathen;
when they could not catch the strong and young people, who took
flight, they imbrued their arms, hitherto unfleshed, with the blood of
infirm people, old women, women in childbed and even children two or
three years old, proving themselves apt scholars in atrocity, insomuch
that they raised little span-long children pierced on pikes, to expire
thus and fly away to the heavens. They burnt consecrated churches;
both in the sanctuary and elsewhere they violated women dedicated to
God [i.e. nuns] as well as married women and girls, either murdering
them or robbing them, after gratifying their lust. Also they herded
together a crowd of little scholars in the schools of Hexham and
having blocked the doors set fire to that pile [so] fair [in the sight
of God]. Three monasteries of holy collegiates were destroyed by them,
Lanercost, of the Canons Regular; and Hexham of the same order and
[that] of the nuns of Lambley; of all of these the devastation can by
no means be attributed to the valour of warriors, but to the dastardly
conduct of thieves, who attacked a weaker community, where they would
not be likely to meet with any resistance[1357].

Some allowance must be made for the indignation of a canon of Lanercost, whose own house had been burnt; but even so it is plain that the religious houses must have endured terrible things at the hands of the Scots; and the peril of the nuns was to honour as well as to life and home.

In several cases record of the actual dispersal of the nuns has been preserved, though such dispersal lasted only for a short time. The priory of Holystone, which lay right upon the border, was in a particularly exposed position and in 1313, when Bruce was devastating the northern counties, a letter from the Bishop of Durham bears vivid testimony to its miserable plight:

"The house of the said nuns," he says, "situated in the March of
England and Scotland, by reason of the hostile incursions which daily
and continually increase in the March, is frequently despoiled of its
goods and the nuns themselves are often attacked by the marauders,
harmed and pursued and, put to flight and driven from their home, are
constrained miserably to experience bitter suffering. Wherefore we
make these things known to you, that you may compassionate their
poverty, which is increased by the memory of happier things, and that
your pity and benevolence may be shown them, lest (to the disgrace of
their estate) they be forced publicly to beg"[1358].

The expiration of the truce with Scotland in 1322 was followed by another raid and by Edward II's unsuccessful campaign, in the course of which the Scots overran Yorkshire and very nearly captured the King at Byland Abbey. The canons of Bridlington (whither he fled) departed with all their valuables to Lincolnshire, sending an envoy to purchase immunity from Bruce at Melton. The poor nuns of Moxby and Rosedale did not escape so easily. In November Archbishop Melton wrote to the Prioress of Nunmonkton, ordering her to receive two nuns of the house of Moxby, which had been "destroyed and devastated by the Scots"; the Prioress tried to excuse herself, on the plea that it was unseemly for Austin nuns to be received in a Benedictine convent and that her house barely sufficed to support herself and her sisters; but the Archbishop sternly replied that he was sending the nuns for a time only and that it behoved the convent of Nunmonkton to receive them, in order to avoid their being dispersed in the world. He added that he had placed a like burden upon other nunneries in his diocese which had escaped the horrors of the invasion, and a note in his Register shows that two nuns were sent to Nunappleton, two to Nunkeeling and two to Hampole, while the Prioress went to Swine. Three days later he boarded out the nuns of Rosedale, who had received similar injuries at the hands of the Scots, sending one to each of the houses of Nunburnholme, Sinningthwaite, Thicket, Wykeham and Hampole[1359]. The dispersal of the nuns of Rosedale did not extend beyond six months and the nuns of Moxby probably returned about the same time, for they were back in their own house in 1325, when their Prioress resigned "super lapsu carnis"[1360]. The moral record of both houses--and indeed of the majority of Yorkshire nunneries--is bad at this period, and at least part of the responsibility must be laid at the door of the Scottish invasions.

Yorkshire also suffered in the invasion which ended with the Battle of Neville's Cross (1346), when the Scots

went forth brenning and destroying the county of Northumberland; and
their currours ran to York and brent as much as was without the walls
and returned again to their host within a days journey, of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne[1361].

One of these marauding bands ("the most outrageoust people in all the country," Froissart calls them) came galloping into that lonely and beautiful dale, where the nunnery of Ellerton stands beside the brown torrent of Swale. They entered the house and carried away seven charters and writings, so the nuns complained later[1362]; what else they did in that quiet spot and whether the nunnery of Marrick on the hill above escaped them history will not tell us. Such disasters were common enough in the north. The records of Armathwaite in Cumberland show that an unlucky proximity to the border might hamper a convent throughout the whole of its career. In 1318 pasture for cattle in Inglewood Forest was granted to "the poor nuns of Armathwaite, who had been totally ruined by the Scots"; in 1331 they were excused a payment of ten pounds for the same reason; and in 1474 they were obliged to apply for a ratification of their possessions, because their house had been almost destroyed by the Scots, who had not only spoiled them of their church ornaments, books, relics and jewels, but also of all their charters and evidences[1363]. The obscure little nunnery of Lambley on Tyne suffered in the same way, for in the Receiver's Account made at its dissolution in 1536 there occurs, under the heading _Decasus Redditus_, the entry of a tenement in Haltwhistle called Redepath, "eo quod comburatum (_sic_) per Scottos"[1364].

But the most horrible story of outrage suffered by a nunnery in time of war is that strange tale reported by the anonymous monk of St Albans, who wrote a _Chronicon Angliae_ between the years 1376 and 1379[1365]. The suffering of French nunneries at the hand of Free Companies and English was not more terrible than the fate of these English nuns at the hand of their own countrymen. In 1379 an army was mustered in England to replace Duke John of Brittany upon his throne, which had been annexed by Charles V of France. The main army, under John FitzAlan of Arundel, Marshal of England (the same who had "two and fiftie new sutes of apparell of cloth of gold or tissue") was delayed in England for some months, first by a difficulty in raising the money to equip it, and then by contrary winds, and it was December before Sir John was ready to sail. Complaints came from all hands of the depredations committed along the coast by the lawless soldiers, but their other misdeeds were insignificant compared with the crime recorded in the St Albans Chronicle:

"When," says the chronicler, "Sir John Arundel and his companions were
come to the sea and no breeze favoured them, he ordered that a more
favourable wind should be awaited. Meanwhile he proceeded to a certain
monastery of virgin nuns, which stood not far away, and entering with
his men, he asked the mother of the monastery to permit his fellow
soldiers, engaged on the king's service, to lodge there. But the nun,
considering in her mind that danger might arise from such guests and
that his request was absolutely contrary to religion, pointed out to
him with due reverence and humility that many of his followers were
young and might easily be moved to commit an inexpiable crime, which
would not only bring ill fame upon the place but would also be a
danger and an evil to himself and his men, who should shun not only an
offence against chastity but all manner of crimes, if they acted as
befitted men about to go to the wars. But he began to insist with
great fervour, declaring that her suspicions were false and her
imaginings without truth, whereupon she prostrated herself on the
ground before him, and answered, 'My lord, I know that your men are
unbridled and fear not even God. It is expedient neither for us nor
for you that they should enter our cloister. Wherefore I beseech and
counsel you with clasped hands, that you give up this intention and
seek other hosts (who abound in the neighbourhood) for yourself and
for your men.' But he persisted and, contemptuously bidding her arise,
swore that he would in no wise give up his determination to have
hospitality for his people there. Wherefore he straightway ordered his
men to enter the building and to occupy the public and private rooms
until the time came for setting sail. And they, inspired (it is
thought) by a devil, burst into the cloister of the monastery, and as
is the wont of such an undisciplined mob, broke the one into this, the
other into that room, wherein the maidens, daughters of the
neighbouring gentry, were lodged to be taught; and many of these were
already prepared to take upon them the habit of holy religion and had
set their mind on the purpose of virginity. These, scorning reverence
for the place and casting aside the fear of God, the men oppressed and
violated by force. Nor did their lust rage against these alone, for
they feared not to pollute the widow's continence and the conjugal
tie. For many widows had gathered there to receive hospitality, as is
customary in such abbeys, either for lack of property or in order the
more perfectly and safely to preserve their chastity. They forced into
public adultery the married women who had gathered there for the same
reasons, and not content (it is said) with these misdeeds they
subjected the nuns themselves to their lust. Whereupon at first those
who suffered the injury, and soon all who dwelt in the neighbourhood
and who heard the news of so great a crime, heaped very horrible
curses upon their heads and called down upon them whatever misfortune
and whatever adversity God might be able to raise against them."

The chronicler goes on to relate how, undeterred and indeed encouraged by Sir John Arundel, the men spread over the country-side and pillaged it, carrying off a bride and stealing plate from the altar of a church, for which sacrilege they were solemnly excommunicated. At last, however, Sir John (in spite of the protests of the shipman who was to carry him) decided to set sail. His men carried off with them the stolen bride and a number of wives, widows and virgins from the abbey, forced the wretched women on board and put to sea. But a storm came on and the ships were driven out into the Atlantic. In the midst of the roaring tempest the guilty soldiers seemed to see a spectre, more awful than death itself, which stalked among them on the deck and foretold the loss of all who sailed upon Sir John Arundel's ship. Even more pitiable was the condition of the women:

"Hard it is to relate," says the chronicler, "what clamour, what
lamentation, what groans, what tears, arose among the women, who by
force or of their own will had boarded the ship, when buffeted by the
winds and waves they rose to the skies and descended to the depths;
for now they saw not the spectre of death, but death itself among
them, and could not doubt that they must die. What mental anguish,
what bodily fear, what remorse and anxiety assailed the conscience of
the men, who to satisfy their lust had dragged these women into the
peril of the seas, they were best able to describe who, although
sharers in so great a crime, were nevertheless permitted by God's
mercy to reach a port of safety. Wherefore the men were doubtful what
to do in the midst of the clamour, for on the one hand the wind and
storm, on the other the tears and cries of the women, urged them to
action. First, therefore, they tried to lighten the vessel, throwing
overboard first the worthless baggage, then precious things, that
perchance a hope of safety might arise. But when they perceived their
desperate plight to be rather increased than diminished, they cast the
blame of their misfortune upon the women, and in a spirit of madness
they seized hold of them (with the same hands wherewith before they
had sweetly caressed them, the same arms wherewith they had lustfully
embraced them) and threw them into the sea, to be devoured by fishes
and sea beasts, to the number (it is said) of sixty women. But not
even thus was the tempest stayed, but rather it grew greater so that
it deprived them of all hope of escaping the danger of death."

The story is soon ended. The ships were driven onto the coast of Ireland, Sir John Arundel's vessel ran upon a rock, and he was drowned, with all his suits of apparel, his goods and his horses; and twenty-five other vessels of the ill-fated expedition, laden with soldiers and horses and baggage, also went down in the storm. Public opinion did not fail to attribute these disasters to the crimes of which Sir John and his troops had been guilty; and so, with dramatic fitness, ends this tale of the golden days of chivalry[1366]. Side by side with it must be set another episode, drawn from an earlier age and from an epic instead of a chronicle. It was part of the chivalrous convention to show a special respect to nunneries, in their double character of religious and aristocratic institutions. Yet the most striking account of a nunnery in the twelfth century, when this convention was at its height, has for subject a brutal sacrilege committed by a great baron upon a church of nuns. This is the famous episode of the burning of Origny in the _chanson de geste_ "Raoul de Cambrai." The writer of the poem makes Raoul's knights recoil in shame from a crime in which their allegiance has made them unwilling partners, and manifests the utmost horror and pity at this action so opposed to all the ideals of chivalry; but it is only one of the many proofs that the golden idol had feet of clay. Whether or not the account was founded upon an actual incident is unknown; but it deserves quotation because it illustrates all too clearly the fate of nuns when their quiet houses stood in the way of warring knights. It represents one side of chivalry as truly as "Queen Guenever in Almesbury, a nun in white clothes and black" represents another. In the same century that produced "Raoul de Cambrai" a chronicler, writing of the wars of Stephen and Matilda in England, records, "Burnt also was the abbey of nuns of Wherwell by a certain William of Ypres, an evil man, who respected neither God nor man, because certain supporters of the Empress had taken refuge therein"; and another:

The famous town [of Winchester] was given to the flames, wherein a
convent of nuns with its offices, and more than twenty churches, with
the greater part of the town and the monastery of St Grimbald's and
the dwellings attached to it, were reduced to ashes[1367].

What these bald statements mean the _chanson de geste_ can tell us better.

Raoul de Cambrai, the greatest villain who ever led knights to war, had in his train a young knight Bernier. One day he set out to pillage Origny, in which town was a famous convent, where Bernier's fair mother Marcens had retired to end her days in peace. But as he hurled himself, with four thousand men, upon the town, the gates of the convent opened

and the nuns came forth from the church, gentle ladies, each with her
psalter, for there they did the service of God. Marcens was there, who
was Bernier's mother. "Mercy, Raoul, in the just God's name! You do
great sin if you allow harm to come to us, for easily can we be driven
forth." In her hand she held a book of the time of Solomon and she was
saying an orison to God.

After a tender inquiry for her son, Marcens proceeded to plead with Raoul to raise the siege; clearly the burgesses regarded the abbess of the great convent as their leader and a fit person to negotiate with their enemy.

"Sir Raoul," she said, "shall I beseech you in vain to withdraw you?
We be nuns, by all the saints of Bavaria; we shall never hold lance
nor banner, nor by our hand shall any man be brought to his grave."

But Raoul answered her with a stream of coarse abuse, showing even less respect for her sex and calling than Sir John Arundel showed to the abbess who refused him lodging[1368]. Marcens put aside his charges with a word of dignified denial and proffered him terms of truce:

"Sir Raoul, we know not how to wield arms; easily can you destroy us
and put us to flight. We have neither shield nor lance for our
defence. All our livelihood we have from this altar and within this
town; noble men hold this place dear and send us silver and pure gold.
Therefore do you grant us a truce for hearth and church and go you and
take your ease in our meadows; of our own substance we will feed you
and your knights and your squires shall have corn and oats and plenty
to eat for your steeds." "By the body of St Richier," answered Raoul,
"For love of you and since you ask it, I will grant you the truce,
whoever may dislike it."

But Raoul de Cambrai had no regard for his knightly word; he quarrelled with the townsfolk and swore to burn Origny about their ears.

"The rooms burn," the _chanson_ continues, "The ceilings crumble: the
barrels catch fire and their hoops burst. Woe and sin it is, for the
children burn too. Evil has Count Raoul done, for the day before he
gave his faith to Marcens that they should not lose so much as a fold
of silk; and on the morrow he burned them in his wrath. In Origny,
that great and rich town, the sons of Herbert, who love the place had
put Marcens, Bernier's mother, and a hundred nuns to pray to God.
Count Raoul, the hot-heart, sets fire to the streets; the houses burn,
the ceilings melt, the wine spills and the cellars flow with it; the
bacon burns, the larders fall, the fat makes the great fire burn more
fiercely. It strikes up to the tower and to the high belfry and the
roofs fall in, so great is the blaze between the two walls. The nuns
are burnt, all hundred of them are burnt (woe it is to tell); burnt is
Marcens that was Bernier's mother, and Clamados the daughter of Duke
Renier. The smell of burning flesh rises from the flames and the brave
knights weep for pity. When Bernier sees the fire grow worse, he is
near mad with grief. Could ye but have seen him sling on his shield!
With drawn sword he comes to the church and sees the flames pouring
from the doors; no man can come within a shaft's throw of the fire.
Bernier sees a rich marble pavement, and upon it lies his mother, with
her tender face laid on the ground and her psalter burning upon her
breast. Then says the boy, 'I am on a foolish errand. Never will any
succour avail her now. Ha! sweet mother, yesterday you kissed me; you
have but a poor heir in me, for I can neither aid nor help you. God,
who will judge the world, keep your soul!'"[1369]

So ends this terrible episode; but that chivalry in this matter at least suffered no change from the twelfth to the fourteenth century Froissart's account of the burning of this same Origny-Saint-Benoit by the peerless John of Hainault and his troops in 1339 will show[1370]. If the code of knighthood and the fear of God could not save the nuns from mischances such as these, it is plain that no injunctions against the breach of their enclosure could have done so. These were the risks of war, which nuns shared in common with all unhappy women. But the siege of Origny and even the outrage at Goring were still exceptional events; and the Church found its chief problem not in these unwelcome incursions, but in the number of welcome visitors who hung about the nunneries. "The Lord deliver them from their friends" was in effect the bishop's prayer. The expulsion of these friends was a necessary corollary to the enclosure movement; and, like the injunctions to nuns to keep within their cloister, the injunctions to lay folk to keep outside remained a dead letter. John of Ayton's conclusion is true here also:

Why, then, did the holy fathers thus labour to beat the air? Yet
indeed their toil is none the less to their own merit; for we look not
to that which is, but to that which of justice should be.