These then were the educational attainments of the English nuns in the later middle ages: reading and singing the services of the church, sometimes but not always writing, Latin very rarely after the thirteenth century, French very rarely after the fourteenth century; needlework and embroidery; and perhaps that elementary knowledge of physic, which was the possession of most ladies of their class. It was, in fact, very little more than the education possessed by laywomen of the same social rank outside and there is little trace of anything approaching scholarship. The study of the education of the nuns during this period leads naturally to one of the most vexed questions in the field of monastic history, the extent to which the nunneries acted as girls' schools. There is no doubt that every nunnery was prepared to educate young girls who entered in order to take the veil; if the nunnery were fairly large these _scolae internae_ probably included several novices at a time. At Ankerwyke in 1441 three young nuns complained that they had no governess to instruct them in "reading, song and religious observance," and mention is made of three other sisters "of tender age and slender discretion, seeing that the eldest of them is not more than thirteen years of age"; the Bishop appointed a nun to be their teacher, "enjoining her to perform the charge laid upon her and to instruct them in good manners"[874]. Similarly at Thetford, where there were three novices in 1526, the Bishop found "non habent eruditricem"[875]. At the larger houses, such as Romsey, the _magistra noviciarum_ was a regular obedientiary[876]. [Illustration: PLATE V PAGE FROM _LA SAINTE ABBAYE_ (In the bottom left hand corner the mistress of the novices, with birch in hand, is instructing two young novices; in the bottom right hand corner the abbess and a nun are at prayer.)]