The house was evidently at this time a fashionable seminary for young ladies. It must be remembered that it was a general custom among the English nobility and gentry to send their children away to the household of a lord, or person of good social standing, in order to learn breeding and it was not uncommon to send boys to the household of an abbot. In 1450 Thomas Bromele, Abbot of Hyde, thus entertained in his house eight "gentiles pueri," there were many "pueri generosi" at Westacre in 1494, and Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, is stated by Parsons to have had, among his 300 servants, "multos nobilium filios"[882]. It was doubtless much in the same way that the children of lords, knights and gentlemen were put in the charge of the Abbess of St Mary's Winchester, a great lady, who had her own "gentlewoman" to attend upon her and her own private household. It is probable that the nuns taught these children, but the boys who went as wards to abbeys seem often to have taken their tutors with them, or at least to have been taught by special tutors. At Lilleshall, for instance, the commissioners found four "gentylmens sons and their scolemaster"[883] and it is significant that when little Gregory Cromwell was sent to be brought up by Margaret Vernon, Prioress of Little Marlow, he was taught by a private tutor and not by the nun. Other references to the children received in nunneries confirms the impression that they were of gentle birth. At Polesworth, as at St Mary's, Winchester, the commissioners specified "gentylmens childern and studiounts." At Thetford a daughter of John Jerves, _generosus_, is mentioned in 1532 and two daughters of Laurens Knight, _gentleman_, were at Cornworthy, c. 1470. The accounts of Sopwell in 1446 mention the daughter of Lady Anne Norbery; at Littlemore in 1445 the daughter of John FitzAleyn, steward of the house, and the daughter of Ingelram Warland are boarders. Among the Carrow boarders, who may be set down as children, are the son and two daughters of Sir Roger Wellisham, the daughter of Sir Robert de Wachesam, a niece of William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, and girls with such well-known names as Fastolf, Clere, Baret, Blickling, Shelton and Ferrers, though the last two may be adult boarders. The Gracedieu boarders nearly all bear the names of neighbouring gentry and one was the daughter of Lord Beaumont. In the course of time, as the urban middle class grew and flourished, the daughters of the well-to-do _bourgeoisie_ were sometimes sent to convents for their education. Thus among the Carrow boarders we find a daughter of John de Erlham, a merchant and citizen of Norwich, and Isabel Barber, daughter of Thomas Welan, barber, who afterwards, however, became a nun. It is plain from the wills which have been preserved that the wealthy Norwich burgesses were in the habit of sending their daughters as nuns to Carrow, and it is a natural