have respite till the following Easter, for the wool they owed to the king. [1] In 1396 the nuns were in some danger of losing the church of Dorney [2] : but they evidently succeeded in proving their right, as it was part of their property at the dissolution.
The history of the house during the fif- teenth century is obscure : only a few names of abbesses can be recovered. As its whole revenue was under £200 a year, it should have been dissolved under the first Act of Suppres- sion, but on the petition of the local com- missioners the house was continued, and so the surrender was delayed until 19 September, 1539, when it was received by Dr. London. [3] The Deed of Surrender is extant, and takes the common form ' with our unanimous assent and consent.' It is signed by the abbess, Alice Baldwin, and nine nuns. It is probable that some pensions were reserved, but their num- ber and value does not remain on record.
There are several notices in the Episcopal Registers relating to the internal history of the house. In 1281 the nuns of Burnham in- curred the displeasure of Archbishop Peck- ham [4] by refusing to receive a certain Maud de Weston at his request. They seem to have given no satisfactory reason for this refusal except vague suggestions that they could not receive postulants without the consent of their patron [5] ; and when the archbishop pressed the matter they pleaded their poverty. He wrote them a sharp letter in reply, de- claring that he was never one to put pressure on the poor, but showing very clearly that he did not believe their excuses to be true ones. [6] He accused them indeed plainly of pride, or some other personal motives, and added that if they did not give him some lawful and ade- quate reason for refusing his candidate, he would provide for their alleged poverty by sending others in addition.
In 1300 Bishop Dalderby visited the house to explain the statute Pro clausura monialium. He ordered them, as he did all the convents of nuns in his diocese, to keep strictly within their enclosure and to admit no secular person within the cloister door on any excuse. [7] It is probable however that the nuns of Burn- ham paid no more heed to these admonitions than did their sisters in other houses.
In 1311 a certain nun, Margery of Hedsor, left the house and forsook the habit of reli- gion : she was excommunicated in conse- quence, and the sentence was renewed at intervals until 1317.[8] In that year she brought in a plea that she had been compelled by her father to enter the monastery when under age, and had been previously contracted in marriage to Roger Blacket of Rickmans- worth. The real truth of the matter is not known, as the results of the inquiry which followed are not given ; but it is instructive to note that the bishop gave orders that the sentence of excommunication should be re- moved, if the plea was proved on examination to be a true one. [9]
In 1339 two nuns of Burnham were trans- ferred to Goring ' for the peace and quiet of the house.' [10] Such occasional notices as these, though they must be duly recorded in a detailed history of the monastery, really tell us very little of its inner life, and may be even misleading if they are made too much of. Far more serious evidence than this, as regards the general tone of the house, is found in the visitation reports of Bishops Grey and Atwater. It seems that early in the fifteenth century the nuns of Burnham, like those of Elstow in Bedfordshire, had attempted to increase their revenues by taking in a number of ladies as boarders, and with much the same results : the house had become secularized. When Bishop Grey visited the abbey between 1431 and 1436, he ordered the removal of all secu- lars whatsoever.[11] The order was probably obeyed only for a time, for Bishop Atwater in 1519 called attention to the same point. He enjoined the abbess again on no account to allow secular women to lodge in the monas- tery ; and not even young children (infantes) were to be admitted to the dormitory of the nuns. Other signs of worldliness appear in the injunction that the nuns should not use girdles ornamented with gold or silver, nor wear any rings except that which was the sign of their profession.[12] He allowed them how-
- ↑ Close 12 Edw. III. pt. iii., m. 28 d.
- ↑ Cal. of Pap. Letters, iv. 529.
- ↑ P.R.O. Deed of Surrender, 37.
- ↑ Epist. Johannis Peckham (Rolls Ser.), i. 189.
- ↑ The archbishop says, ' If you say that the earl of Cornwall forbids you to receive any one without his consent, know that we do not believe it, as he is a devout man and has always been a friend of ours.'
- ↑ 'Now you make a plea of poverty, which we suspect because it comes so late.' Ibid.
- ↑ Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, 10d.
- ↑ Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, 233, 288d.
- ↑ Ibid. 361d.
- ↑ Ibid. 368d. One of the nuns named is Margery de Louches, and an abbess of that name resigned in the same year. But it seems unlikely that it was actually the abbess who was sent away : there would surely have been some notice of the fact in the entry, if it had been the case. Perhaps it was a relative of the late abbess.
- ↑ Ibid. Memo. Gray, 203.
- ↑ Visitations of Atwater(Alnwick Tower,Lincoln).
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