Category Archives: nunnery

Amesbury Abbey and Priory

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Queen Aelfthryth founded a nunnery at Amesbury in 979 to atone for her sins – the murder of Edward the Martyr while he was visiting his step-mother at Corfe to ensure that her own son Æthelred (the Unready) became king. Until Æthelred reached adulthood it placed Aelfthryth in a position of considerable power. Whether she had a hand in killing her step-son or not, she founded two abbeys at about the same time. The second was at Wherwell. Amesbury may have been located on the site of an earlier monastic house. It was written by Sir Thomas Malory, for those of you who like Arthurian tales, that Queen Guinevere became abbess at the first of the monastic foundations upon the site.

Amesbury was mentioned in the Domesday book but in 1177 Henry II refounded the nunnery with nuns from Fontevraud. The old nuns were required to co-operate with the change but could, if they wished, be transferred to a different nunnery. Unfortunately things were not so clear cut. The existing abbess did not depart without a fight. She and thirty of her sisters were expelled – apparently they all led scandalous lives- and the abbey became a priory – a daughter house of Fontevraud.

Eleanor of Brittany, Henry II’s granddaughter, was during the reign of her uncle, Richard the Lionheart, a very marriageable young woman indeed. However, when her Uncle John ascended the throne, and personally murdered her brother Arthur of Brittany (who actually should have inherited being the son of John’s older brother Geoffrey) her situation deteriorated. John kept her a prisoner as did his son, Henry III. By the time she died she had been in custody for thirty-nine years. She was buried in Amesbury. The priory had long established royal links and its dedication to St Melor who was a Breton prince murdered by his wicked uncle was a reminder of her own life. There is no memorial to her now and nor is there a memorial to Henry III’s queen, Eleanor of Province whose body was placed before Amesbury’s high altar after her death. She is known to have had her own quarters at the nunnery, having retired there in 1285, even though she was never a Benedictine nun.

It should be added that King John had other links with the priory. During the Barons’ revolt, he hid part of his treasury with the nuns while Henry III visited on several occasions and made several gifts to the sisters. Plantagenet links with the monastic foundation at Amesbury continued down the years. Edward I sent his youngest daughter, Mary, to become a nun there but she does not seem to have had a calling preferring travel, cards and potentially an affair with the Earl of Surrey to prayer. She cannot have been short of company. Many other noble girls were sent to Amesbury to receive an education. Isabel of Lancaster, Henry III’s great granddaughter, became a nun there before 1337 and ended up as prioress.

By the end of the medieval period, Amesbury was still wealthy – Cromwell ranked it in the top five nunneries in the country. A clock was commissioned during the fifteenth century that can still be found in the church.

Inevitably the Dissolution of the monasteries saw the end of Amesbury’s long monastic tradition. The nuns signed the surrender in 1539. The Seymour family acquired much of the foundations lands while the church remained as the parish church for the population of Amesbury. Edward Seymour, who was 1st Earl of Hertford at that time, had the abbey pulled down. Amesbury Abbey is today a seventeenth century mansion and nothing remains of the priory above ground, other than the church.

Romsey Abbey

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In 907 Edward the Elder founded a nunnery at Romsey. His daughter, Elfleda, became its first abbess. The nunnery was rebounded some sixty years later after a period of decline by King Edgar who established a group of Benedictine nuns there. Not that it was all plain sailing- the Danes attacked it once in 993 forcing the nuns to seek sanctuary in Winchester. When they returned, the nunnery was rebuilt from stone and the nuns continued to welcome the daughters of kings and nobles so that they might be educated.

By 1086, another Saxon princess was abbess at Romsey. Edward the Exile’s daughter, Christina, who originally went into exile with her sister Margaret to Scotland was at Romsey. Also in residence, receiving a royal education, were her nieces Edith and Mary. Edith would eventually become Henry I’s wife and take the name Matilda. The nuns continued to thrive during the Norman period. Between 1120 and 1140 work began on the current building including the choir, transepts and a Lady Chapel. The nave which was created at this time was extended between 1150 and 1180.

The nunnery was not without its scandals. In 1160, the abbess, Mary (a daughter of King Stephen) left her post to marry a son of the Earl of Flanders by whom she had two daughters before, according to Matthew Paris, returning to the abbey.

In 1349 the Black Death wrought havoc. At the end, only nineteen of the nuns remained. But the end came in the sixteenth century with the dissolution of the monasteries. The abbey church was saved because it became Romsey’s parish church when the town paid Henry VIII’s commissioners £100.

It means that today, despite damage done during the English Civil War, that the church is a beautiful example of Norman architecture with some wonderful Saxon features remaining, including a Saxon rood (cross) inside the church and an even older eleventh century one outside the building. There is also a capital depicting King Alfred’s victory over the Vikings at the Battle of Edington. The sixteenth century reredos screen, that was once on display behind the altar, was removed after 1539 and repurposed, surviving the destruction that occurred in many other churches at the time. Also among the survivals is a fifteenth century cope that was later turned into an altar cloth. It is made from Italian green velvet with hand embroidered stars of silver thread.

A more recent and no less beautiful addition is the Florence Nightingale window which was installed in 2020.

Shouldham Priory

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Shouldham village sign

Guy Beauchamp died in 1360 leaving two young daughters by his wife Philippa Ferrers who was descended from King Edward I. He predeceased his father by almost a decade. Rather than the Warwick estates and earldom passing to Katherine Beauchamp – Guy’s daughter the estate passed to Guy’s brother Thomas who became Earl of Warwick after his father’s death. It’s possible that Guys daughters were forced to become nuns so that their uncle could inherit. One daughter died during infant whilst the other, Katherine, had become a nun at Shouldham by 1369. At that time she was just sixteen.

Shouldham in Norfolk was a Gilbertine priory – a double house containing both monks and nuns separated down the middle of the priory church. It’s founder was Geoffrey FitzPiers – an earl of Essex who made his settlement upon the house circa 1197 during the reign of King Richard I. As well as a large manor and lands he also arranged for the new priory to receive a number of shops in London (Blomefield, An Essay, vol 7, pp.414-15 in Elkins, Holy Women, p.122). FtizPiers was buried there in 1212 with his first wife, Beatrice, who whose body was moved to Shouldham from Chicksands. FitzPiers’ son, William de Mandeville continued to patronise the foundation and was also buried there – it was this Earl of Essex who was noted for siding with the barons against King John . By 1248 Henry III granted a weekly market to the foundation.

A licence paid in 1386 to King Richard II revealed that the Beachamp family gave the priory lands in order for its inhabitants to pray for Guy Beauchamp who died in 1360, for his wife Philippa Ferrers and for Katherine their daughter who was still alive at the time. Katherine was not alone, her aunt Margaret was also a nun at Shouldham. Tilotson described Shouldham as ‘a convenient repository for embarrassing members of the family’ (Tillotson:p.4).

The link to the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick had been created when William Beauchamp, the 9th earl (who was a personal friend of King Edward I and noted for his military campaigns in Wales) married Matilda FitzJohn who was a great-great grand daughter of Geoffrey FitzPiers. Two of the couple’s daughters became nuns at Shouldham. The family continued to be associated with the priory until the reign of Henry VII.

Shouldham became associated with the imprisonment of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March’s daughters Margaret and Joan in 1324 but had been notorious before when Richard Mail bought a case against the prioress and the sisters claiming that they had assault him and ransacked his house.

The priory was dissolved during the reign of King Henry VIII having found to be worth £138, 18s, 1d and was the second wealthiest nunnery in Norfolk which is why it was saved from the first round of dissolution. Its respective wealth was in part because of the earlier patronage of the Beauchamp family. The priory’s Cromwellian visitors were Thomas Legh and John Ap Rice who described impropriety by two nuns. None-the-less the prioress received a pension in 1539 when the house was eventually dissolved. The priory manor remained in Crown hands until the reign of King Edward VI. It was sold in 1553 to Thomas Mildmay.

Blomfield, Francis, An Essay Towards the Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, volume 7, (London, 1807)

Ellins, Sharon K, Holy Women of Twelfth Century England, (1988)

Tillotson, John, H. Marrick Priory, A Nunnery in Late Medieval Yorkshire, (York, University of York, 1989)

‘House of Gilbertines: The priory of Shouldham’, in A History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 2, ed. William Page (London, 1906), pp. 412-414. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/norf/vol2/pp412-414 [accessed 12 January 2022].

Scandalous Watton

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Watton Priory

Gilbert of Sempringham founded the Gilbertine Order. It was the only English founded order and it was also the only one with double houses. Gilbertine nuns followed the Benedictine pattern whilst the monks followed the Augustinian pattern of canons. Not all houses were double but the one at Watton in East Yorkshire was.

http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/images/full/0135e7d751653f793e7b91516ed773c00e0950cf.html

The story was recorded by Ailred of Rievaulx in the early 1160s. Essentially the nun in question was an oblate in that she had been in the priory since she was four years old. Interestingly, the Gilbertines had an age requirement for entry to their order – 24 for men and 20 for women. However, our nun gained admittance as a child at the request of the Bishop of York.

The nun became enamoured of either a lay brother or one of the canons. The attraction was reciprocated. They arranged to meet. The inevitable happened. The nun was found to be pregnant. The nun was beaten and imprisoned and when her lover captured she was forced to castrate him herself. He was returned to the male side of the house at Watton and disappears from the story.

However, the nun returned to her prison, was visited by the now deceased archbishop and two women who took the baby leaving the teenage nun in her original state of virtue. At which point she was allowed out of prison – a miracle having occurred.

It would have to be said that the Gilbertines had strict rules about segregating the canons from the nuns. Nonetheless the priory at Watton which was one of the most important Gilbertine Foundations was said to have many secret passages.

Watton was where Marjory Bruce, the eleven year old daughter of Robert the Bruce, was imprisoned by Edward I in 1306. She regained her freedom after the Battle of Bannockburn.

G. Constable, ‘Aelred of Rievaulx and the Nun of Watton: an episode in the early history of the Gilbertine order’, Medieval women, ed. D. Baker, SCH, subsidia, 1 (1978), 205–26

Armathwaite nunnery

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https://historyofwomenreligious.org/women-religious-bibliography/medieval/ (Bibliography)

Armathwaite can be found in the Eden Valley near Croglin. It’s said to have been founded by William Rufus in 1089. Unfortunately Rufus wa snot known for his links with the Church and it’s now generally thought that the charter was a forgery. The nuns of Armathwaite weren’t the only ones to make their founding patron or history seem more important or to gain more definite legal ownership of property so let’s not hold a spot of light forgery against them.

Edward IV accepted their documents which included freedom from toll throughout England and there was also a claim for sanctuary. Someone claiming sanctuary had to be inside the boundary of the nunnery – there’s a pillar near the nunnery to bolster this.

Detective work finds the nunnery in 1200 mentioned in the St Bees charter when Roger de Beauchamp gives the monks lank near that belonging to the nuns of Armathwaite.

The Scottish Wars of Independence were not kind to the nuns which was why Edward II gave them leave to pasture their cattle in Inglewood Forest and excused them a debt for food purchased because their lands and income had been virtually destroyed by marauding Scots.

It’s generally accepted that nunneries weren’t so well supported as their male counterparts. Although there were some foundations and patronage by royalty and the nobility the bulk of funds seem to have come from local gentry often in the form of will bequests:

“From the fourteenth century wills on record in the diocesan registers, we learn that this nunnery had some friends and received bequests as well as the other religious institutions in the county. In 1356 Dame Agnes, the consort of Sir Richard de Denton, bequeathed 10s. and in 1358 John de Salkeld 40s. to the prioress and her sisters of ‘Hermythwayt.’ Richard de Ulnesby, rector of Ousby or Ulnesby, was good enough in 1362 to bequeath them a cow which he had in that parish, while a citizen of Carlisle, William de London, in 1376, and a country gentleman, Roger de Salkeld, in 1379, made them bequests of money.”

‘Houses of Benedictine nuns: The nunnery of Armathwaite’, in A History of the County of Cumberland: Volume 2, ed. J Wilson (London, 1905), pp. 189-192. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cumb/vol2/pp189-192 [accessed 22 February 2021].

History Jar Challenge 13

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Fair Rosamund Clifford, the mistress of King Henry II by Dante Gabriel Rosetti. In 1174 Henry II acknowledged his relationship with Rosamund having probably turned to her when Queen Eleanor was pregnant with the couple’s final child – John. She retired to Godstow Nunnery where she had been educated in 1176. Fable says that Henry hid his mistress from Queen Eleanor in a maze at Woodstock but that Eleanor found her and offered her a choice between a dagger and a bowl of poison. Rosamund drank the poison. The story does not appear before the fourteenth century. rosamond’s tomb was moved from inside Godstow Church on the orders of Hugh of Lincoln but the tomb itself was only finally lost with the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Royal mistresses since 1066, this week, if you please. We’ll leave Elizabeth I’s romantic attachments to one side and Queen Anne’s as well. Some monarchs are remarkably discreet, others less so. Henry VII for example was not known for his mistresses – but his account book reveals payment to “dancing girls” …they may just have been dancing. Other mistresses have achieved notoriety and in the case of Henry VIII’s mistresses, in many instances, the Crown itself. You may find yourself dealing with potentially bigamous monarchs as well this week. Good luck.

23 December – Of Samuel Pepys, three nuns, a turkey and that man Cromwell.

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pepysWith only two days of my metaphorical advent calendar to go I really should be getting a bit more festive – so with no further ado allow mw to introduce the turkey – property of one Samuel Pepys. In 1660 Mrs Pepys was troubled by the art of spit roasting the aforementioned bird. In fact you can read every single 23rd December that Pepys ever recorded should you feel the urge by following the link:

http://samuelpepystoday.com/?day=1123

 

A swift search of the net reveals that in the UK ten million turkeys are eaten each Christmas. I had thought it was a relative new comer to the Christmas table. After all, you only have to think of Ebenezer Scrooge and the prize goose that graced the Cratchets’ table to realise that the turkey has not always been the bird of choice but apparently, and I really am sorry about this because I had hoped to avoid him today, that the first turkey arrived in England in 1526 and, yes, the first monarch to eat turkey was Henry VIII though it was Edward VII who made them into a popular festive meal.  For more about festive birds read the History Extra article here.

Since it’s proved impossible to bypass the terrible Tudor I should probably also mention that Dr Legh, one of Cromwell’s monastic visitors, was wandering around Huntingdonshire on his way north on the 23 December 1535. He took it upon himself to visit Hinchinbrooke  Priory.  Sadly the prioress, Alice Wilton, was very unwell and the sight of Legh was enough to finish her off.  Legh promptly took charge of the keys and the money coffers before asking Cromwell what he should do next.

There being only three nuns in addition to the prioress and it being a poor establishment the priory was swiftly suppressed. Ownership passed on to Richard  Cromwell who was the son of Morgan Williams who married Katherine Cromwell, Thomas Cromwell’s sister. Richard took his uncle’s name and benefited from his uncle’s patronage to the tune of several large chunks of monastic land including Hinchinbrooke Priory and Ramsey Abbey.  Hinchinbrooke was to become famous as the birthplace a couple generations down the line of  Oliver Cromwell.
‘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].

‘Houses of Benedictine monks: The priory of Hinchinbrook’, in A History of the County of Huntingdon: Volume 1, ed. William Page, Granville Proby and H E Norris (London, 1926), pp. 389-390. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hunts/vol1/pp389-390 [accessed 7 November 2016].

The nuns of Nun Appleton Priory

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augustinian nunThe 5th December 1539 was a busy one for Cromwell and reveals todays group of figures – though sadly no pictures -the Cistercian nuns of Nun Appleton Priory. Cromwell received letters confirming the surrender of St Albans Abbey and Nun Appleton Priory in Yorkshire. There are plenty of men listed in these documents and they would be relatively easy to write about.  They were Cromwell’s administrators who took the opportunity to line their own pockets and assure their own futures with the dissolution.

 

It is much more difficult to find out about the women involved in this episode. The prioress was Anna Lankton. There is also a list of nuns and the fact that they received pensions. The sub prioress and Margaret Carter were supposed, during the visitation by Layton, to have been found guilty of giving birth but both women were beyond child-bearing age and both were in receipt of their pensions suggesting that Dr Layton may have been prone to exaggeration, not least because Bishop Lee of York had also visited the nunnery the previous year and found nothing worthy of note.

 

“Elinore Normavell, subprioress, Agnes Ardyngton, and Agnes Sympson, 46s. 8d.; Joan Gore, Isabel Gascoyn, Janet Watson, Marg. Carter, Eliz. Carter, Magdalen Kylbourne, Agnes Anger, Dorothy Man, Anne Jonson, Margery Elton, and Alice Sheffelde, 40s. each; Agnes Snaynton, 3l.; Janet Fairefax, Agnes Asselaby, Eliz. Parker, and Ellen Bayne, 33s. 4d. each. Signed by Hendle, Legh, Belassys, and Watkyns, commissioners.”

 

Anna Lankton features in an Andrew Marvell poem as the aunt and jailor of the heroine, Isabel Thwaites who married into the Fairfax family.  The poem is dedicated to General Fairfax. There’s no evidence that there’s any truth in the poem entitled “Upon Appleton House,”  though Isabel Thwaites did  marry into the Fairfax family. In later times General Fairfax and Lady Fairfax would be buried in nearby Bilborough.

 

And that’s your lot for today- not necessarily terribly exciting but an insight into the difficulty finding out more about the fate of England’s Tudor nuns who are, to a large extent, invisible unless they appear in court records, on pension lists or their burials are recorded.

 

 

‘Letters and Papers: December 1539, 1-5’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 14 Part 2, August-December 1539, ed. James Gairdner and R H Brodie (London, 1895), pp. 226-233. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol14/no2/pp226-233 [accessed 17 August 2016].

King’s Mead Priory, Derby

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DSC_0491The Benedictine nunnery of King’s Mead in Derby dedicated to the Virgin Mary was the only Benedictine foundation in Derbyshire and its inhabitants were initially under the spiritual and temporal guidance of the abbot of Darley Abbey – an Augustinian foundation.  History reveals that in the twelfth century there was a warden who acted as chaplain to the nuns as well as looking after the nuns’ business affairs. The nunnery grew its land holdings over the next hundred or so years so that it included three mills at Oddebrook. One of the reasons that this may have occurs was because Henry III gave the nuns twelve acres of land. Because the king had shown an interest it is possible that more donors followed suit in an effort to win favour. Equally donors such as Lancelin Fitzlancelin and his wife Avice who gave land and animals to the nunnery in 1230 or Henry de Doniston and his wife Eleanor could expect a shorter term in Pergatory after their deaths because the nuns would be expected to hold them in their prayers as a result of the land transaction.

 

By 1250 the nuns of King’s Mead and the abbot of Darley Dale were out of sorts with one another. It was decided that the nuns should go their own way and that the abbot of Darley Dale would cease interfering with their business. The land holdings of both organisations were perused and a division occurred.  The nuns were required to give some land to Darley Abbey but it was at this time that the church and living of St Werburgh in Derby along with other agricultural land was signed over to the nuns.

The pattern is similar to countless other monastic foundations across the country, so too are the difficulties that befell the nuns. Sadly they ended up so deeply in debt due to cattle morrain that by 1327 that they had to ask the king for protection as they were not able to offer hospitality to visitors to Derby. This raises an interesting question. Who exactly were the nuns petitioning? Edward II reigned from 1284 until 1327 but he was forced by his wife Isabella of France and her lover Roger Mortimer to hand over his crown to his son, Edward, in January 1327 before being whisked off to Berkeley Castle where he died on the 21st September 1327 (if history is to be believed) due to an unfortunate accident with a hot poker. The petition must therefore have been addressed to King Edward III but realistically it was Mortimer who was in charge at this point in proceedings.

 

Things looked as though they were improving with the appointment of a new prioress, Joan Touchet, and custodians who could make the books balance. However the priory was still struggling seven years later. Joan was still in charge in 1349 but she died that year. It was the year of the Black Death.

 

After this time the nunnery seems to have ticked along without cause for concern. A possible reason for this could well have been the charter from Henry IV granting the nuns payment of one hundred shillings every year from the town of Nottingham. Another reason could well have been the fact that it was Derbyshire’s only nunnery so it had the monopoly on educating the daughters of Derbyshire’s leading lights.

 

Things start to look uncertain for King’s Mead with the reign of Henry VI. The County History reveals the tale of the abbot of Burton demanding the back payment of twenty-one years rent. The prioress, a lady called Isabel de Stanley wasn’t having any of it:

 

Wenes these churles to overlede me or sue the law agayne me ? They shall not be so hardy but they shall avye upon their bodies and be nailed with arrowes; for I am a gentlewoman comen of the greatest of Lancashire and Cheshire; and that they shall know right well.

 

With hind sight, it may have been a bit of a foolish thing for the abbot of Burton to do though he can’t have known that Henry VI would end up murdered in the Tower or that the only Lancastrian claimant left standing would be the  step son of one Thomas Stanley. The name Stanley should be ringing bells by now! The prioress was related to Thomas Stanley who just so happened to be Margaret Beaufort’s husband and she of course just so happened to be Henry Tudor’s mother…

 

Not that being cosy with the Tudors was something that would serve future prioresses of King’s Mead very well. The Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, identifies Joan Curzon as prioress and gives the annual value of King’s Mead as £18 6s. 2d. and that the priory was in debt. The nuns of King’s Mead had already had a bit of a shock before the arrival of the visitors. The year before a fake visitor called James Billingford, who claimed to be the queen’s cousin arrived to inspect the barns. He was shown to be a fraud but it wasn’t long before Layton and Legh, Cromwell’s unfunny double act, arrived to poke into King’s Mead’s shady corners. They found nothing apart from a fragment of Thomas of Canterbury’s shirt which was venerated by the pregnant ladies of Derby. Interestingly, despite being the only nunnery in Derbyshire King’s Mead was not given a stay of execution. Perhaps the Prioress didn’t know that Cromwell was open to financial gifts or perhaps the sisters couldn’t afford to pay. In any event the nunnery was suppressed in 1536.

 

In 1541 the site fell into the ownership of the Fifth Earl of Shrewsbury and by the nineteenth century nothing remained apart from the name Nun Street.