Medieval English nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 / by Eileen Power.

  • Eileen Power
Date:
1922
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medieval English nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 / by Eileen Power. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    This sentiment was, however, set aside in practice from early times; and a glance at any conventual register, such as the famous Register of Godstow Abbey, shows something like a regular system of dowries, dating certainly from the twelfth century. The Godstow Register contains 19 deeds, ranging be¬ tween 1139 and 1278, by which grants are made to the nunnery on the entrance of a relative of the grantor, the usual phrase being that such and such a man gave such and such rent- charges, pasture-rights, lands or messuages, “with” his mother or sister or daughter” to be a nun ”x. One very curious deed dated 1259, shows that the reception of a girl at Godstow was definitely a pecuniary matter. Ralph and Agnes Chondut sold to the nunnery a piece of land called Anfric, for thys quite claime and reles, the seyd abbas and holy mynchons of Godstowe gafe to the seyde raph and Agnes hys wyfe liii° marke, and made Katherine the sustur of the seyd Agnes (wyfe of the seyd raph) Mynchon in the monasteri of Godstowe, with the costys of the hows,...and the seyd holy mynchons of Godstowe shold pay to the seyd raph and Agnes hys wyfe xxv marke of the forseyd liii marke in that day in whyche the foreseyd Katerine should be delyuerd to hem to be norysshed and to be mad mynchon in the same place and in the whyche the seyd penyes shold be payd, and a second instalment at a place to be agreed upon when confirmation of the grant is obtained1 2. That is to say the price of the land was £35. 6s. 8d. together with the cost of receiving 1 The English Register of Godstow Nunnery (E.E.T.S.), introduction, pp. xxv-xxvi. Cf. Cartulary of Buckland Priory (Somerset Rec. Soc.), introd. pp. xxii-xxiii. 2 Reg. of Godstow, u.s. no. 76, pp. 78-9. See also an exceedingly interesting action of quare impedit brought by John Stonor (probably the Lord Chief Justice) against the Prioress of Marlow in 1339, probably merely to secure a record. He had bought the advowsons of the two moieties of the church of Little Marlow and an acre of land with each and conveyed the whole to the Prioress, subject to the provision “ that out of it the said Prioress and nuns shall find Joan and Cecily, sisters of the aforesaid John, and Katherine, daughter of the aforesaid John, nuns of the aforesaid place, 405. a year each during their lives, and also for the sustenance of all the nuns towards their kitchen half a mark of silver each year and for the vesture of the twenty nuns serving God there each year 105. of silver, to be divided equally between them.” After the deaths of the Stonor ladies all the money is to go to the common funds of the house, with certain provisions. Year Books of Ed¬ ward III, years xii and xm, ed. L. O. Pike (Rolls Series, 1885), pp. cxi- cxvii, 260-2. For the appropriation of these money dowries to the use of the individual nuns, see below, Ch. VIII, passim. P.N 2
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