Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LIFE AND THOUGHT Edited by G. G. COULTON, M.A. Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge and University Lecturer in English MEDIEVAL ENGLISH NUNNERIES CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, MANAGER LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY } CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. MADRAS } TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED [Illustration: PLATE I PAGE FROM _LA SAINTE ABBAYE_ (At the top of the picture a priest with two acolytes prepares the sacrament; behind them stand the abbess, holding her staff, her chaplain and the sacristan, who rings the bell; behind them a group of four nuns, including the cellaress with her keys. At the bottom is a procession of priest, acolytes and nuns in the quire.)] MEDIEVAL ENGLISH NUNNERIES c. 1275 to 1535 BY EILEEN POWER SOMETIME FELLOW AND LECTURER OF GIRTON COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE [Illustration: MADAME EGLENTYNE (From the Ellesmere MS.)] CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1922 TO M. G. J. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN GENERAL PREFACE There is only too much truth in the frequent complaint that history, as compared with the physical sciences, is neglected by the modern public. But historians have the remedy in their own hands; choosing problems of equal importance to those of the scientist, and treating them with equal accuracy, they will command equal attention. Those who insist that the proportion of accurately ascertainable facts is smaller in history, and therefore the room for speculation wider, do not thereby establish any essential distinction between truth-seeking in history and truth-seeking in chemistry. The historian, whatever be his subject, is as definitely bound as the chemist "to proclaim certainties as certain, falsehoods as false, and uncertainties as dubious." Those are the words, not of a modern scientist, but of the seventeenth century monk, Jean Mabillon; they sum up his literary profession of faith. Men will follow us in history as implicitly as they follow the chemist, if only we will form the chemist's habit of marking clearly where our facts end and our inferences begin. Then the public, so far from discouraging our speculations, will most heartily encourage them; for the most positive man of science is always grateful to anyone who, by putting forward a working theory, stimulates further discussion.