In some orders there was only one abbey, and all the other houses were priories, as in the Clugniac, the Gilbertine, and in the Military and the Mendicant orders. In all the orders there were abbeys, which had had distant estates granted to them, on which either the donor had built a house, and made it subject to the abbey; or the abbey had built a house for the management of the estates, and the celebration of divine and charitable offices upon them. These priories varied in size, from a mere cell containing a prior and two monks, to an establishment as large as an abbey; and the dignity and power of the prior varied from that of a mere steward of the distant estate of the parent house, to that of an autocratic head, only nominally dependent on the parent house, and himself in everything but name an abbot. The majority of the female houses of the various orders (except those which were especially female orders, like the Brigittines, &c.) were kept subject to some monastery, so that the superiors of these houses usually bore only the title of prioress, though they had the power of an abbess in the internal discipline of the house. One cannot forbear to quote at least a portion of Chaucer's very beautiful description of his prioress, among the Canterbury pilgrims:-- "That of her smiling ful simple was and coy." She sang the divine service sweetly; she spoke French correctly, though with an accent which savoured of the Benedictine convent at Stratford-le-Bow, where she had been educated, rather than of Paris; she behaved with lady-like delicacy at table; she was cheerful of mood, and amiable; with a pretty affectation of courtly breeding, and a care to exhibit a reverend stateliness becoming her office:-- "But for to speken of her conscience, She was so charitable and so piteous, She would wepe if that she saw a mouse Caught in a trappe, if it were dead or bled; Of smalé houndés had she that she fed With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel bread; But sore wept she if one of them were dead, Or if men smote it with a yerdé smerte; And all was conscience and tendre herte. Ful semély her wimple y-pinched was; Her nose tretis,[59] her eyen grey as glass, Her mouth full small, and thereto soft and red, And sickerly she had a fayre forehed-- It was almost a spanné broad I trow, And hardily she was not undergrow."[60] Her habit was becoming; her beads were of red coral gauded with green, to which was hung a jewel of gold, on which was-- "Written a crowned A, And after, _Amor vincit omnia_. Another nun also with her had she, That was her chapelleine, and priestés three."