Value of literary evidence 499 Autobiographies and biographies of nuns 500 Popular poetry (_chansons de nonnes_) 502 Popular stories (_fabliaux_, _exempla_) 515 Didactic works addressed to nuns 523 Satires and moral treatises 533 Secular literature in general 555 APPENDICES I. ADDITIONAL NOTES TO THE TEXT: A. The daily fare of Barking Abbey 563 B. School children in nunneries 568 C. Nunnery disputes 581 D. Gay clothes 585 E. Convent pets in literature 588 F. The moral state of Littlemore Priory in the sixteenth century 595 G. The moral state of the Yorkshire nunneries in the first half of the fourteenth century 597 H. The disappearance or suppression of eight nunneries prior to 1535 602 I. _Chansons de Nonnes_ 604 J. The theme of the nun in love in medieval popular literature 622 K. Nuns in the _Dialogus Miraculorum_ of Caesarius of Heisterbach 627 II. VISITATIONS OF NUNNERIES IN THE DIOCESE OF ROUEN BY ARCHBISHOP EUDES RIGAUD (1248-1269) 634 III. FIFTEENTH CENTURY SAXON VISITATIONS BY JOHANN BUSCH 670 IV. LIST OF ENGLISH NUNNERIES, C. 1275-1535 685 BIBLIOGRAPHY 693 INDEX 704 LIST OF PLATES PLATE I Page from _La Sainte Abbaye_ FRONTISPIECE (Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 39843. Folio 6vº.) TO FACE PAGE II Abbess receiving the pastoral staff from a bishop 44 (From _The Metz Pontifical_, 82(b)vº and 90vº, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.) III Page from _La Sainte Abbaye_ 144 (Folio 29.) IV Brass of Ela Buttry, the stingy Prioress of Campsey ([dagger] 1546), in St Stephen's Church, Norwich 168 (From _Norfolk Archaeology_, Vol. VI; Norf. and Norwich Archaeol. Soc. 1864.)