Piously disposed, as we may charitably suppose them to have been, or perchance for the welfare of their souls—as it was usual, in that age, to make bargains with Heaven to build religious houses as the price of exemption from the pains of purgatory—the Earl and Countess built the nunnery in the precincts of the court, and filled it with nuns of the order of St. Clare, brought over from some Continental convent by Queen Blanche, "to serve God, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Francis," for which they had a licence from King Henry III. Stow informs us that the frontage of the convent was fifteen perches twenty-seven feet in length, with all needful interior appliances, and garden land; doubtless a pleasant home for the Sisters, with its outlook over the Essex fields and the river Thames, with its quaintly-fashioned vessels passing up and down. It was well endowed by its founders, but had other benefactors as well, and had messuages in the Vintry, Wood Street, Lad Lane, Lombard Street, Christ Church Lane, Shirburgh Lane, etc. The Sisterhood also held the Manor of Apuldercome, and had a grant from William Walshe, 7 Edward IV., of a messuage, called Harteshorn, in the parish of St. Mary Matfelon. The original licence for the foundation is dated 21 Edward I. A charter was granted to "the sisters Minoresses, without Aldgate," quitting them of tallage of their land in the City, dated 9 Edward II.; and in the fourteenth of the same reign, another to "the Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Mary of the order of St. Clare, without the walls of the City," confirming the holding of certain lands and messuages "gotten of divers well-affected persons." Other charters of confirmation were granted to the Sisterhood, 2 Henry IV., and 1, 16, 25 Henry V. The Sisters of St. Clare flourished here for a period of 246 years, praying, fasting, and mortifying the flesh, with intervals possibly of laughing, feasting, and enjoyment of their pleasant home; or it may be, as we know is often the case, even with the Angelic sex, when thrown together for days and years, the fasting and feasting and prayer might be mixed up with ingredients of wrangling, envy, and jealousy, until it all came to an end, when the ruthless Tudor king laid his sacrilegious hands on the monastic establishments, and spared not even the homes of the gentler sex, and the house of the Sisters Minoresses was surrendered by Dame Elizabeth Salvage, 1539. During these two-and-a-half centuries the Sisters witnessed many important events in the annals of England; the deposition and murder of kings Edward II. and Richard II., the usurpation of Henry VI. and Richard III., the Wars of the Roses, the rise of Lollardism, the Interdict of the Kingdom under John, the Reformation, the introduction of the press, and the birth of English literature under Chaucer and Gower. It may be that the prioress who rode to Canterbury with Chaucer's pilgrims was the head of the Aldgate Minoresses.