the rich citizens of London and elsewhere; Sir Richard de la Pole, of a great Hull merchant house (soon to be ennobled), mentions in his will two sons and two daughters, one of whom was a nun at Barking while the other received a legacy towards her marriage[1]; Hugh de Waltham, town clerk, mentions three daughters, one at St Helen's[2]; John de Croydon, fishmonger, leaves bequests to one son and four daughters, one at Clerkenwell[3]; William de Chayham kept Lucy, Agnes and Johanna with him, but made Juliana a nun[4]. The will of Joan Lady Clinton illustrates the proportion in which a large family of girls might be divided between the convent and the world; in 1457 she left certain sums of money to Margaret, Isabel and Cecily Francyes, on condition that they should pay four pounds annually to their sisters Joan and Elizabeth, nuns[5]. It was not infrequent for several members of a family to enter the same convent, as the lists of inmates given in visitation records, or in the reports of Henry VIII's commissioners, as well as the evidence of the wills, bear witness[6]. The case of Shouldham, already quoted, shows that different generations of a family might be represented at the same time in a convent[7], but it was perhaps not usual for so many sisters to become nuns as in the Fairfax family; in 1393 their brother's will introduces us to Mary and Ahce, nuns of Sempringham, and Margaret and Eleanor, respectively prioress and nun of Nunmonkton[8]. Margaret (of whom more anon) took convent life easily; it is to be feared that she had all too little vocation for it. Sometimes these family parties in a nunnery led to quarrels; the sisters foregathered in chques, or else they continued in the cloister the domestic arguments of the hearth; there was an amusing case of the kind at Swine in 1268[9], and some years later (in 1318) an Archbishop of York had to forbid
- ↑ Test. Ebor. i, p. 9, dated 1345. Cf. will of Roger de Moreton "civis et mercerus Ebor." 1390; two of four daughters nuns at St Clement's, York (ib. i, p. 133).
- ↑ Sharpe, op. cit. i, p. 400, dated 1335.
- ↑ Ib. i, p. 501, dated 1349.
- ↑ Ib. i, p. 503, dated 1348.
- ↑ Testamenta Vetusta, i, p. 286.
- ↑ See above, p. 7. There were two Welbys, two Lekes and two Paynelles at Stixwould; Alnwick's Visit. MS. f. 76. Other references might be multiplied.
- ↑ Cf. also Sharpe, op. cit. i, p. 238; and Reg. of Bishop Ginsborough (Worc. Hist. Soc), p. 51.
- ↑ Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtees Soc.) i, pp. 187 ff. (will of Sir John Fayrfax, rector of Prescot, 1393).
- ↑ See below, p. 302.
