idiot, should depart or not[1]. At Nuncoton in 1440 a nun informed Bishop Alnwick that two old nuns lay in the fermery and took their meals in the convent's cellar "and likewise the infirm, the weak minded (imbecilles) and they that are in their seynies do eat in the same cellar"[2]. Complaints of the presence of idiots were fairly frequent. It is easy to understand the exasperation of Thetford over the case of Dorothy Sturges, when one finds Dame Katherine Mitford complaining at the same visitation that Elizabeth Haukeforth is "aliquando lunatica"[3]; but a few years later Agnes Hosey, described as "ideota," gave testimony with her sisters at Easebourne and excited no adverse comment[4]. In an age when faith and superstition went hand in hand a mad nun might even bring glory to her house; the tale of Catherine, nun of Bungay, illustrates this. In 1319 an inquiry was held into the miracles said to have been performed at the tomb of the saintly Robert of Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose canonisation was ardently desired by the English; among these miracles was the following:
Sir Walter Botere, chaplain, having been sworn, says that the miracle happened thus, to wit that he saw a certain Catherine, who had been (so they say) a nun of Bungay, in the diocese of Norwich, mad (furiosam) an led to the tomb of the said father; and there she was cured of the said madness and so departed sane; and he says that there is public talk and report of this.
Three other witnesses also swore to the tale[5]. Even cases of violent and dangerous madness seem at times to have occurred, judging from a note at Alnwick's visitation of Stainfield in 1440, in which it is said that all the nuns appeared separately before the Bishop, "with the exception of Alicia Benyntone, who is out of her mind and confined in chains"[6].
Lay and ecclesiastical opinion alike condemned another practice, which seems to have been fairly widespread in medieval England, that of forcing into convents children too young to realise their fate, or even girls old enough to resist, of whom
