Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 Part 15

An anch.o.r.ess must not become a schoolmistress, nor turn her anch.o.r.ess-house into a school for children. Her maiden may, however, teach any little girl, concerning whom it might be doubtful whether she should learn among boys, but an anch.o.r.ess ought to give her thoughts to G.o.d only[888].

The gist of the matter was that the children const.i.tuted a hindrance to claustral discipline and devotion. It is plain, however, that in this, as in so many other matters, the reformers were only "beating the air" in vain with their restrictions. Sympathy must be with the needy nuns, for even if discipline were weakened thereby, the reception of children was in itself a very harmless, not to say laudable expedient; and so the neighbouring gentry as well as the nuns considered it.

An a.n.a.lysis of the att.i.tude of medieval visitors to schoolchildren shows us the usual attempt to limit what it was beyond their power to prohibit.

Eudes Rigaud, the great Archbishop of Rouen, habitually removed all the girls and boys whom he found in the houses of his diocese, when he visited them during the years 1249 to 1269. But in England, at least, the nuns very soon became too strong for the bishops, who gradually adopted the policy of fixing an age limit beyond which no children might remain in a nunnery and sometimes of requiring their own licence to be given before the boys and girls were admitted. Since the danger of secularisation could not be removed, it was at least reduced to a minimum, by ensuring that only very young boys and only girls, who had not yet attained a marriageable age, should be received. The age limit varied a little with different visitors and different houses. In the Yorkshire diocese early in the fourteenth century the age limit was twelve for girls; boys are rarely mentioned, but at Hampole in 1314 the nuns were forbidden to permit male children over five to be in the house, as the bishop finds has been the practice. Bishop Gynewell in 1359 allowed girls up to ten and boys up to six at Elstow, but forbade boys altogether at Heynings. Bishop Gray allowed girls under fourteen and boys under eight at Burnham in 1434 and Bishop Stretton in 1367 allowed boys up to seven at Fairwell. The age limit tended, it will be seen, to become higher in the course of time; Alnwick writing to Gracedieu in 1440, forbade all boarders "save childerne, males the ix and females the xiiij yere of age, whom we licencede you to hafe for your relefe"[889]; he allowed boys often at Heynings and Catesby and boys of eleven (an exceptionally high age) at Harrold.

There was a special reason, besides the general interference with discipline, for which the bishops objected to children in nunneries. It seems very often to have been the custom for the nuns to take, as it were, private pupils, each child having its own particular mistress. This custom grew as the practice of keeping separate households grew. Thus at Catesby the Prioress complained to Alnwick that sister Agnes Allesley had "six or seven young folk of both s.e.xes, that do lie in the dorter"; at St Michael's Stamford, he found that the Prioress had seven or eight children, at Gracedieu the cellaress had a little boy and at Elstow, where there were five households of nuns, it was said that "certain nuns"

brought children into the quire. In fact, the nuns would appear to have kept for their own personal use the money paid to them for the board of their private pupils. This was a sin against the monastic rule of personal poverty and the bishops took special measures against such manifestations of _proprietas_. William of Wykeham in 1387 forbids the nuns of Romsey to make wills and to have private rooms or private pupils, giving this specific reason, and at St Helen's Bishopsgate in 1439 Dean Kentwode enjoined "that no nonne have ne receyve noo schuldrin wyth hem ... but yf that the profite of the comonys turne to the vayle of the same howse."

Similarly the number of children who might be taken by a single nun was sometimes limited; Gynewell wrote to G.o.dstow in 1358 "that no lady of the said house is to have children, save only two or three females sojourning with them" and at Fairwell in 1367 no nun might keep with her for education more than one child.

Another habit against which bishops constantly legislated was that of having the children to sleep in the dorter with the nuns. This practice was exceedingly common, for many of the nunneries which took children were small and poor; they had possibly no other room to set aside for them, and no person who could suitably be placed in charge of them. Moreover in some cases adult boarders and servants also slept in the dorter. Alnwick was constantly having to bid his nuns "that ye suffre ne seculere persones, wymmen ne children lyg by nyghte in the dormytory," but At.w.a.ter and Longland in the sixteenth century still have to make the same injunction.

Bokyngham in 1387 ordered that a seemly place outside the cloister should be set apart for the children at Heynings; the reason was that (as Gynewell had expressly stated on visiting this house forty years before) "the convent might not be disturbed." Indeed little attempt was made by the nuns to keep the children out of their way. They seem to have dined in the refectory, when not in the separate rooms of their mistresses, for Greenfield forbids the Prioress and Subprioress of Sinningthwaite (1315) to permit boys or girls to eat flesh meat in Advent or s.e.xagesima, or during Lent eggs or cheese, in the refectory, "contrary to the honesty of religion," but at those seasons when they ought to eat such things, they were to be a.s.signed other places in which to eat them. There are references, too, to disturbances and diversions created by the children in the quire. At Elstow in 1442 Dame Rose Waldegrave said that "certain nuns do sometimes have with them in time of ma.s.s the boys whom they teach and these do make a noise in quire during divine service"[890]. To us the picture of these merry children breaking the monotony of convent routine is an attractive one; more attractive even than the pet dogs and the Vert-Verts. But to stern ecclesiastical disciplinarians it was not so attractive, and their constant restriction, though it never succeeded in turning out the children, must have kept down the number who were admitted.

The evidence which has so far been considered shows that, though the reception of children to be boarded and taught in nunneries was fairly common, it was subjected to well marked limitations. There remains to be considered one more question the answer to which is in some sort a limitation likewise. What exactly did the nuns teach these children? We are hampered in answering this question by the difficulty of obtaining exact contemporary evidence. Most modern English writers content themselves with a glib list of accomplishments, copied without verification from book to book, and all apparently traceable in the last resort to Fuller and John Aubrey, the one writing a century, the other almost a century and a half after the nunneries had been dissolved. Fuller (whom Tanner copies) says:

Nunneries also were good Shee-schools, wherein the girles and maids of the neighbourhood were taught to read and work; and sometimes a little Latine was taught them therein. Yea, give me leave to say, if such Feminine Foundations had still continued ... haply the weaker s.e.x (besides the avoiding modern inconveniences) might be heightened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been obtained[891].

Aubrey, speaking of Wiltshire convents says:

There the young maids were brought up ... at the nunneries, where they had examples of piety, and humility, and modesty, and obedience to imitate, and to practise. Here they learned needle-work, the art of confectionary, 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.[892]

One would have thought the familiar note of the _laudator temporis acti_ to be plainly audible in both these extracts. But a host of modern writers have gravely transcribed their words and even, taking advantage no doubt of Aubrey's "etc." (much virtue in etc.), improved upon them. In the work of one more recent writer the list has become "reading, writing, some knowledge of arithmetic, the art of embroidery, music and French 'after the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,' were the recognised course of study, while the preparation of perfumes, balsams, simples and confectionary was among the more ordinary departments of the education afforded"[893].

Another adds a few more deft touches: "the treatment of various disorders, the compounding of simples, the binding up of wounds, ... fancy cookery, such as the making of sweetmeats, writing, drawing, needlework of all kinds and music, both vocal and instrumental"[894]. The most recent writer of all gives the list as "English and French ... writing, drawing, confectionary, singing by notes, dancing, and playing upon instruments of music, the study also of medicine and surgery"[895]. Though the historian must groan, the student of human nature cannot but smile to see music insinuate itself into the list and then become "both instrumental and vocal"; confectionery extend itself to include perfumes, balsams, simples, and the making of sweetmeats; arithmetic appear out of nowhere; and (most magnificent feat of the imagination) dancing trip in on light fantastic toe. From this compound of Aubrey, memories of continental convents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and familiarity with the convent schools of our own day, let us turn to the considered opinion of a more sober scholar, who bases it only upon contemporary evidence:

"No evidence whatever," says Mr Leach, "has been produced of what was taught in nunneries. That ... something must have been taught, if only to keep the children employed, is highly probable. That the teaching included learning the Lord's Prayer, etc. by heart may be conceded.

Probably Fuller is right in guessing that it included reading; but it is only a guess. One would guess that it included sewing and spinning.

As for its including Latin, no evidence is forthcoming and it is difficult to see how those who did not know Latin could teach it[896]."

Direct evidence is therefore absolutely lacking; all we can do is to deduce probabilities from what we know of the education of the nuns themselves, and it must be conceded that this was not always of a very high order. It is quite certain, from the wording of some of the visitation injunctions, that the quality and extent of the teaching must have varied considerably from house to house. It was probably good (as the education of women then went) at the larger and more fashionable houses, mediocre at those which were small and struggling. Latin could not have been taught, because, as has already been pointed out, the nuns at this period did not know it themselves; but the children were probably taught the _Credo_, the _Ave_ and the _Pater Noster_ in Latin by rote. They may have been taught French of the school of Stratford atte Bowe, as long as that language was fashionable in the outside world and known to the nuns, but it died out of the convents after the end of the fourteenth century.

It seems pretty certain that the children must have been taught to read.

"Abstinence the abbesse myn a.b.c. me taughte," says Piers Plowman; the Abbess of St Mary's Winchester buys the matins books for little Bridget Plantagenet; and it will be remembered that the nuns of G.o.dstow were said about 1460 (fifteen years after Alnwick visited the house and gave permission for children to be boarded there) to be "for the more party in Englyssh bokys well y-lernyd." Caesarius of Heisterbach has a delightful story, repeated thus in a fifteenth century _Alphabet of Tales_:

Caesarius tellis how that in Freseland in a nonrie ther was ii little maydens that lernyd on the buke, and euer thai strafe whethur of thaim shulde lern mor than the toder. So the tane of thaim happened to fall seke and sho garte call the Priores vnto hur & sayd: "Gude ladie!

suffre nott my felow to lern vnto I cover of my sekenes, and I sall pray my moder to gif me vj d & that I sall giff you & ye do so, ffor I drede that whils I am seke, that sho sall pas me in lernyng, & that I wolde not at sho did." And at this wurde the priores smylid & hadd grete mervayle of the damysell conseyte[897].

Whether girls were taught to write, as well as to read, is far more doubtful. It is probable that the nuns did not always possess this accomplishment themselves, nor did sober medieval opinion consider it wholly desirable that girls should know how to write, on account both of the general inferiority of their s.e.x, and of a regrettable proclivity towards clandestine love letters[898]. Still, writing may sometimes have formed part of the curriculum; there is no evidence either way. For drawing (by which presumably the art of illumination must be meant) there is no warrant; a medieval nunnery was not a modern "finishing" school.

So much for what may be called book learning. Let us now examine for a moment the other accomplishments with which nunnery-bred young ladies have been credited. We may, as Mr Leach suggests, make a guess at spinning and needlework, though here also there is no evidence for their being taught to schoolgirls. Jane Scroupe, into whose mouth Skelton puts his "Phyllyp Sparowe," was apparently being brought up at Carrow, and describes how she sewed the dead bird's likeness on her sampler,

I toke my sampler ones, Of purpose, for the nones, To sowe with stytchis of sylke My sparow whyte as mylke.

Confectionery does not seem very probable, for at this period the cooking for the convent was nearly always done by a hired male cook and not (as laid down in the Benedictine rule) by the nuns themselves, who were apt to complain if they had to prepare the meals. For "home medicine" there is absolutely no evidence, though all ladies of the day possessed some knowledge of simples and herb-medicines and the girls may equally well have learned it at home as among the nuns. It is probable that the children learned to sing, if the nuns took them into the quire; but for this there is no definite evidence, nor has any doc.u.ment been quoted to prove that they learned to play upon instruments of music. It is true that the flighty Dame Isabel Benet "did dance and play the lute" with the friars of Northampton[899] and that "a pair of organs" occurs twice in Dissolution inventories of nunneries[900], but an organ is hardly an instrument of secular music to be played by the daughter of the house in a manorial solar; and Dame Benet's escapade with the lute was a lapse from the strict path of virtue. Finally to suggest that the nuns taught dances verges upon absurdity. That they did sometimes dance is true, and grieved their visitors were to hear it[901]; but what Alnwick would have said to the suggestion that they solemnly engaged themselves to teach dancing to their young pupils is an amusing subject for contemplation. Evidence for everything except the prayers of the church and the art of reading is non-existent; we can but base our opinion upon conjecture and probability; and the probability for instrumental music is so slight as to be non-existent. If it be argued that gentlewomen were expected to possess these arts, it may be replied that the children whom we find at nunneries probably had opportunity to learn them at home, for they seem sometimes to have spent only a part of the year with the nuns. It is true that board is sometimes paid for the whole year, and that little Bridget Plantagenet stayed at St Mary's Winchester for two or three years, while her parents were absent in France; moreover we have already heard of poor Elizabeth and Jane Knyghte, left for over five years at Cornworthy. But an a.n.a.lysis of the Swaffham Bulbeck accounts shows that the children (if indeed they are children) stayed for the following periods during the year 1483, viz., two for forty weeks, one for thirty weeks, one for twenty-six weeks, two for twenty-two weeks, one for sixteen weeks, one for twelve weeks and one for six weeks. It is much more likely that girls were sent to the nuns for elementary schooling than for the acquirement of worldly accomplishments.

As has already been pointed out, it is difficult to get any specific information as to the life led by the schoolchildren in nunneries. But by good fortune some letters written by an abbess shortly before the Dissolution have been preserved and give a pleasant picture of a little girl boarding in a nunnery. The correspondence in question took place between Elizabeth Sh.e.l.ley, Abbess of St Mary's Winchester, and Honor, Viscountess Lisle, concerning the latter's stepdaughter, the lady Bridget Plantagenet, who was one of the twenty-six aristocratic young ladies then at school in the nunnery[902]. Lord Lisle was an illegitimate son of Edward IV, and had been appointed Lord Deputy of Calais in 1533; and when he and his wife departed to take up the new office, they were at pains to find suitable homes for their younger children in England. A stepson of Lord Lisle's was boarded with the Abbot of Reading and his two younger daughters, the ladies Elizabeth and Bridget Plantagenet, were left, the one in charge of her half-brother, Sir John Dudley, and the other in that of the energetic Abbess of St Mary's Winchester. It must be admitted that the correspondence between the abbess and Lady Lisle shows a greater preoccupation with dress than with learning. The Lady Bridget grew like the gra.s.s in springtime; there was no keeping her in clothes.

"After due recommendation," writes the abbess, "Pleaseth it your good ladyship to know that I have received your letter, dated the 4th day of February last past, by the which I do perceive your pleasure is to know how mistress Bridget your daughter doth, and what things she lacketh. Madam, thanks be to G.o.d, she is in good health, but I a.s.sure your ladyship she lacketh convenient apparel, for she hath neither whole gown nor kirtle, but the gown and kirtle that you sent her last.

And also she hath not one good partlet to put upon her neck, nor but one good coif to put upon her head. Wherefore, I beseech your ladyship to send to her such apparel as she lacketh, as shortly as you may conveniently. Also the bringer of your letter shewed to me that your pleasure is to know how much money I received for mistress Bridget's board, and how long she hath been with me. Madam, she hath been with me a whole year ended the 8th day of July last past, and as many weeks as is between that day and the day of making this bill, which is thirty three weeks; and so she hath been with me a whole year and thirty three weeks, which is in all four score and five weeks. And I have received of mistress Katherine Mutton, 10_s._, and of Stephen Bedham, 20_s._; and I received the day of making this bill, of John Harrison, your servant, 40_s._; and so I have received in all, since she came to me, toward the payment for her board, 70_s._ Also, madam, I have laid out for her, for mending of her gowns and for two matins books, four pair of hosen, and four pairs of shoes, and other small things, 3_s._ 5_d._ And, good madam, any pleasure that I may do your ladyship and also my prayer, you shall be a.s.sured of, with the grace of Jesus, who preserve you and all yours in honour and health. Amen."

But for the matins books, sandwiched uncomfortably between gowns and hosen, there is no clue here as to what the Lady Bridget was learning.

The tenor of the next letter, written about seven months later, is the same, for still the n.o.ble little lady grew:

"Mine singular and special good lady," writes the Abbess, "I heartily recommend me to your good ladyship; ascertaining you that I have received from your servant this summer a side of venison and two dozen and a half of pee-wits."

(What flesh-days there must have been in the refectory!)

"And whereas your ladyship do write that you sent me an ermine cape for your daughter, surely I see none; but the tawny velvet gown that you write of, I have received it. I have sent unto you, by the bringer of your letter, your daughter's black velvet gown; also I have caused kirtles to be made of her old gowns, according unto your writing; and the 10_s._ you sent is bestowed for her, and more, as it shall appear by a bill of reckoning which I have made of the same. And I trust she shall lack nothing that is necessary for her."

Another letter shows that the wardrobe difficulty was no whit abated, but the Abbess dealt with it by the rather hard-hearted expedient of sending poor Bridget away on a visit to her father's steward at Soberton in Hampshire, in her outgrown clothes, in order that he might be moved to amend her state. Clearly it was not always easy to get what was requisite for a schoolgirl from a gay and busy mother, disporting herself across the sea:

"This is to advertise your ladyship," says the Abbess, "Upon a fourteen or fifteen days before Michaelmas, mistress Waynam and mistress Fawkenor came to Winchester to see mistress Bridget Lisle, with whom came two of my lord's servants, and desired to have mistress Bridget to sir Anthony Windsor's to sport her for a week. And because she was out of apparel, that master Windsor might see her, I was the better content to let her go; and since that time she came no more at Winchester: Wherein I beseech your ladyship think no unkindness in me for my light sending of her: for if I had not esteemed her to have come again, she should not have come there at that time."

The reason why lucky little Bridget was enjoying a holiday appears in a letter from the steward, Sir Anthony Windsor, to Lord Lisle, in which he not only takes a firm line over the dress problem (as the Abbess foresaw), but seems also to cast some aspersion upon the nunnery; the nuns, he evidently thought, had no idea how to feed a growing girl, or how to spoil her, as she ought to be spoiled:

Also mistress Bridget recommendeth her to your good lordship, and also to my lady, beseeching you of your blessing. She is now at home with me, because I will provide for her apparel such things as shall be necessary, for she hath overgrown all that she ever hath, except such as she hath had of late: and I will keep her here still if it be your lordship's and my lady's pleasure that I shall so do, and she shall fare no worse that I do, for she is very spare and hath need of cherishing, and she shall lack nothing in learning, nor otherwise that my wife can do for her.

Apparently she never went back to the nunnery, and a few years later it was dissolved:

And when (s)he came to Saynte Marie's aisle Where nonnes were wont to praie, The vespers were songe, the shryne was gone, And the nonnes had pa.s.syd awaie.

A word should perhaps be added as to the "piety and breeding," which Lady Bridget and other little schoolgirls learned from the nuns, for good sentimentalists of later days often looked back and regretted the loss of a training, presumably instinct with religion and morality. It is well nigh impossible to generalise in this matter, so greatly did convents differ from each other. St Mary's Winchester was of very good repute, and for this we have not only the testimony of the local gentlemen, who were commissioned to visit it by Henry VIII in 1536, but also of the visitation which was held by Dr Hede in 1501. Undoubtedly the aristocratic young ladies who went there did not lack the precept and example of pious and well bred mistresses. The statement of the commissioners at Polesworth that the children there were "right virtuously brought up" has often been quoted. So also has the plea of Robert Aske, who led the ill-fated Pilgrimage of Grace, by which the people of Yorkshire sought to bring back the old religion, and in particular the monastic houses; in the abbeys, he said, "all gentlemen (were) much succoured in their needs, with many their young sons there a.s.sisted and in nunneries their daughters brought up in virtue"[903]. Less well-known is the tribute of the reformer Thomas Becon (1512-67), the more striking in that he was a staunch Protestant, who had suffered for his faith. Although he refers in disparagement to the nunneries of his own day, his description of the relations between nuns and their pupils cannot be founded solely upon an imaginary golden age:

"The young maids," he writes, "were not enforced to wear this or that apparel; to abstain from this or that kind of meats; to sing this or that service; to say so many prayers; to shave their heads; to vow chast.i.ty; and for ever to abide in their cloister unto their dying day. But contrariwise, they might wear what apparel they would, so that it were honest and seemly and such as becometh maidens that profess G.o.dliness. They might freely eat all kinds of meats according to the rule of the gospel, avoiding all excess and superfluity, yea, and that at all times. Their prayers were free and without compulsion, everyone praying when the Holy Ghost moved their hearts to pray; yea, and that such prayers as present necessity required, and that also not in a strange tongue, but in such language as they did right well understand. To shave their heads and to keep such-like superst.i.tious observances as our nuns did in times past and yet do in the kingdom of the pope, they were not compelled. For all that they were commanded to do of their schoolmistresses and governesses was nothing else than the doctrine of the gospel and matters appertaining unto honest and civil manners; whom they most willingly obeyed. Moreover, it was lawful for them to go out of the cloister when they would, or when they were required of their friends; and also to marry when and with whom they would, so that it were in the Lord. And would G.o.d there were some consideration of this matter had among the rulers of the christian commonwealth, that young maids might be G.o.dly brought up, and learn from their cradles 'to be sober-minded, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, housewifely, good, obedient to their husbands'"[904].

These eulogies are all necessarily tinged by the knowledge that the nunneries either were about to disappear, or had disappeared, from England. They had filled a useful function and men were willing to be to their faults a little blind. It cannot be doubted that the gentry and the substantial middle cla.s.s appreciated them; up to the very eve of the Dissolution legacies to monastic houses are a common feature in wills.

Only an inadequate conclusion, however, is to be reached from a study of tributes such as those of the commissioners at St Mary's Winchester and Polesworth and of Robert Aske. If we turn to pre-Reformation visitation reports, which are free from the desire to state a case, the evidence is more mixed. It is only reasonable to conclude that many nunneries did indeed bring children up, with the example of virtue before their eyes, and the _omnia bene_ of many reports reinforces such a conclusion. But it is impossible also to avoid the conviction that other houses were not always desirable homes for the young, nor nuns their best example. When Alnwick visited his diocese in the first half of the fifteenth century there were children at G.o.dstow, where at least one nun was frankly immoral and where all received visits freely from the scholars of Oxford; nor was the general reputation of the house good at other periods. There were children also at Catesby and at St Michael's Stamford, which were in a thoroughly bad state, under bad prioresses. At Catesby the poor innocents lay in the dorter, where lay also sister Isabel Benet, far gone with child; and they must have heard the Prioress screaming "Beggars!" and "Wh.o.r.es!" at the nuns and dragging them round the cloister by their hair[905]. At St Michael's Stamford, all was in disorder and no less than three of the nuns were unchaste, one having twice run away, each time with a different partner. The visitation of Gracedieu on the same occasion shows too much quarrelling and misrule to make possible a very high opinion of its piety or of its breeding. If we turn to another set of injunctions, the great series for the diocese of York, it must be conceded that though the gentry of the county doubtless found the convents useful as schools and lodging houses, it is difficult to see how Aske's plea that "their daughters (were) brought up in virtue" could possibly have been true of the fourteenth century, when the morals and manners of the nuns were extremely bad. There is not much evidence for the period of which Aske could speak from his own knowledge; but at Esholt, where two children were at school in 1537, one of the nuns was found to have "lyved incontinentlie and vnchast and ... broght forth a child of her bodie begotten" and an alehouse had been set up within the convent gates, in 1535[906]. The only safe generalisation to make about this, as about so many other problems of medieval social history, is that there can be no generalisation. The standard of piety and breeding likely to be acquired by children in medieval nunneries must have differed considerably from time to time and from house to house.

CHAPTER VII

ROUTINE AND REACTION

Where is the pain that does not become deadened after a thousand years? or what is the nature of that pleasure or happiness which never wearies by monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains are short in proportion as they are keen; of any others, which are both intense and lasting, we can form no idea.... To beings const.i.tuted as we are, the monotony of singing Psalms would be as great an affliction as the pains of h.e.l.l and might even be pleasantly interrupted by them.

JOWETT, Introduction to Plato's _Phaedo_.

St Benedict's common sense is nowhere more strikingly shown than in his division of the routine of monastic life between the three occupations of divine service, manual labour and reading. Not only has this arrangement the merit of developing the different sides of men's natures, spirit, body and brain, but it fulfils a deep psychological necessity. The essence of communal life is regularity, but no human being can subsist without a further ingredient of variety. St Benedict knew well enough that unless he provided the stimulus of change within the Rule, outraged nature would seek for it outside. Hence the careful adjustment of occupations to combine variety with regularity. The services were the supreme joy and duty of the monk and nun and the life of the convent was centred in its church. But these services were not excessively long and were divided from each other by periods of sleep by night and of work, or study, or meditation by day, after the manner which Crashaw inimitably set forth in his _Description of a Religious House and Condition of Life_:

A hasty portion of prescribed sleep; Obedient slumbers, that can wake and weep, And sing, and sigh, and work, and sleep again; Still rolling a round sphere of still-returning pain.

Hands full of hearty labours; pains that pay And prize themselves; do much, that more they may, And work for work, not wages; let tomorrow's New drops wash off the sweat of this day's sorrows.

A long and daily-dying life, which breathes A respiration of reviving deaths.

The monastic day was divided into seven offices and the time at which these were said varied slightly according to the season of the year. The night office began about 2 a.m., when the nuns rose from their beds and entered their choir, where Matins were said, followed immediately by Lauds. The next service was Prime, said at 6 or 7 a.m., and then throughout the day came Tierce, s.e.xt, None, Vespers, and Compline, with an interval of about three hours between them. The time of these monastic Hours (as they were called) changed gradually after the time of St Benedict, and later None, which should have been at 3 p.m., was said at noon, leaving the nuns from about 12 midday to 5 p.m. in the winter and 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the summer for work. Compline, the last service of all, was said at 7 p.m. in winter and at 8 p.m. in summer, after which the nuns were supposed to retire immediately to bed in their dorter, where (in the words of the Syon _Rule_) "none shal jutte up on other wylfully, nor spyt up on the stayres, goyng up or down, nor in none other place repreuably, but yf they trede it out forthwyth"![907] They had in all about eight hours sleep, broken in the middle by the night service; and they had three meals, a light repast of bread and beer after Prime in the morning, a solid dinner to the accompaniment of reading aloud, and a short supper immediately after vespers at 5 or 6 p.m.[908]

Except for certain specified periods of relaxation, strict silence was supposed to be observed for a large part of the day, and if it were necessary for the nuns to communicate with each other, they were urged to do so in an abbreviated form, or by signs. Thus in 1319 Bishop Stapeldon of Exeter wrote to the nuns of Polsloe