Throughout the middle ages a struggle went on between the Church, which forbade the exaction of dowries, and the convents which persisted in demanding them, sometimes in so flagrant a manner as to incur the charge of simony. The earliest prohibition of dowries in English canon law occurred at the Council of Westminster in 1175[1] and was repeated at the Council of London in 1200[2] and at the Council of Oxford in 1222[3]; this last had been anticipated by a decree of the fourth Lateran Council. The history of the struggle to apply it is to be gathered from visitational records. Archbishop Walter Giffard, visiting Swine in 1268, finds that Alicia Brun and Alicia de Adeburn were simoniacally veiled[4]; Bishop Norbury has to rebuke the Prioress of Chester for the simoniacal receipt of bribes to admit nuns[5]; Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury has heard that the Prioress of Cannington received four women as sisters of that house for £20 each, falling into the pravity of simony[6]; William of Wykeham writes to the nuns of Romsey in 1387 that
in our said visitations it was discovered and declared that, on account of the reception of certain persons as nuns of your said monastery, several sums of money were received by the Abbess and Convent by way of covenant, reward and compact, not without stain of the pravity of simony and, if it were so, to the peril of your souls,
and he proceeds to forbid the exaction of a dowry "on pretext of any custom (consuetudinis) whatsoever, which is rather to be esteemed a corruption (corruptela)," a significant phrase, which shows that the practice was well established[7]. Bishop Bucking-
- ↑ "Nullus praelatus in recipiendo monacho, vel canonico, vel sanctimoniali pretium sumere vel exigere ab hiis, qui ad conversionem veniunt, aliqua pacti occasione praesumat. Si quis autem hoc fecerit anathema sit." Wilkins, Concilia, i, p. 477.
- ↑ "Monachi etiam sub pretio non recipiantur in monasterio...Si quis autem exactus pro sua receptione aliquid dederit, ad canonicos ordines non accedat." Ib. p. 508.
- ↑ "Praeterea statuimus, praesenti concilio approbante, ut nullus de cetero pro receptione alicujus in religionis domum pecuniam vel quicquam aliud extorquere praesumat; adeo ut si pro paupertate domus ingrediens debeat vestire seipsum praetextu vestimentorum ultra justum pretium eorum ab eo nihil penitus recipiatur." Ib. p. 591.
- ↑ Reg. of Walter Giffard (Surtees Soc.), p. 147.
- ↑ Reg. of Roger de Norbury (Will. Salt Archaeol. Soc. Collections, i), p. 259.
- ↑ Reg. of Ralph of Shrewsbury (Somerset Rec. Soc.), p. 684.
- ↑ MS. Register at New College, f. 87d.
