Where would I be without Layton and Legh – today on the 22 December 1535 the dastardly pair of monastic visitors were beginning their northern visitation at Lichfield (yes – I know its the Midlands but to Thomas Cromwell it was the north). Layton paused en route at Chicksand in Bedfordshire where the Gilbertine nuns “refused to admit him as visitor.” (I bet that went down well). He found two of the nuns were “not barren; one of them impregnavit supprior domus, another a serving-man.” How he discovered this if the Gilbertine prioress refused him admittance is open to speculation. He must have taken himself off to the local tavern and listened to the gossip. Rumour had it that one of the nuns was bricked up alive – its always good to go with the stereotype and offers us our festive ghost story- not that this prevented the prioress receiving a pension when the priory was finally suppressed in 1538.
‘Henry VIII: December 1535, 21-25’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 9, August-December 1535, ed. James Gairdner (London, 1886), pp. 340-350. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol9/pp340-350 [accessed 6 December 2016].