give alms for the maintenance of the ' poor nuns of St. Margaret's priory ' ; from which we may surely infer that he had visited the house and was satisfied with its condition in other respects. [1] Poverty and obscurity are indeed in no sense a reproach to a convent of nuns. Again in the fifteenth century (during which only two names of prioresses can at present be recovered) there is indirect evi- dence of the faithful observance of the Bene- dictine rule in this house. During the epis- copate of Bishop Alnwick a nun of some years' standing at the Augustinian priory of Grace Dieu sought and obtained permission to leave her own monastery and retire to St. Margaret's, Ivinghoe. After she had actually gone there, her original superior sent and fetched her back again ; whereupon she ap- pealed to the bishop. He examined the matter, and finding that she had made the change not from levity of mind, but from a motive always sanctioned by the Church the desire, namely, of passing a minore religione ad majorem, causa arctioris aut durioris vitaeordered that she should be allowed to remain at St. Margaret's. [2] Bishop Alnwick was an energetic visitor of the monasteries in his diocese, [3] and would soon have discovered if the priory of Ivinghoe did not really offer to the nun in question the stricter life which she desired.
Bishop Longland visited the house in 1530 [4]and found there a prioress with three or four nuns. The house was said to be in debt, but under no other reproach, except that one of the ladies had visited her friends without per- mission, and stayed away from her monastery from the Feast of St. Michael till Passion Sunday in the next year. She was enjoined not to go out again without permission from the prioress : and for a penance she was to say the seven penitential psalms every Tues- day, Wednesday, and Saturday, with an addi- tional Pater, Ave and Credo every day. [5]
In 1535 the local, commissioners found five nuns here, of whom two were professed and three only novices : three of these were suffi- ciently attached to their religious life to decline the opportunity of returning to the world, and asked permission to enter another house of the order. There were four ser- vants living in the monastery, which was said to be of competent estate and no longer in debt.[6]
The house was originally endowed with only a small portion of land in the wood of Ivinghoe : to which was added later the church of Merrow in Surrey with lands attached, and ten acres of assart at Hemel Hempstead.[7] The priory is not mentioned in the Taxation of Pope Nicholas : its re- venue is given in the Valor Ecclesiasticus as £14 3s. 1d. clear.[8] The survey of the local commissioners returned it first as worth £13 3s. 1d. and later as £19 8s. 9d. ; the bells, lead, etc., were valued at £8 10s. 6d., and the moveable goods at £l 13s. 4d. The Minis- ters' Accounts only give a total of £10 4s. 1½d. [9]
Prioresses of Ivinghoe
Alice, [10] occurs 1237
Isolt, [11] died 1262
Cicely, [12] elected 1262, resigned 1275
Maud de Hockliffe, [13] elected 1275, died 1296
Isolt de Beauchamp, [14] elected 1296
Sibyl de Hampstead, [15] resigned 1340
Maud de Cheyney,[16] elected 1340
Eleanor Cross, [17] died 1467
Eleanor Symmes, [18] elected 1467
- ↑ Bishop Dalderby knew the nunneries of his diocese pretty well, as he had visited them all early in his episcopate to explain the statute Pro clausura monialium.
- ↑ Ibid. Memo. Alnwick, 69.
- ↑ There is a series of visitations of Bishop Alnwick's still preserved at Lincoln ; they are not all noticed in his Memoranda, and are probably very little known : many of the heads of houses mentioned in them are not found in any of the lists in Dugdale.
- ↑ Visitations of Bishop Longland, 1530. Many of these also are not noticed in his Memoranda. They are in the same form as those of Bishops Aln- wick and Atwater : the bishop sat in the chapter house and interrogated each religious in turn as to the state of the house, so far as she was able to speak of it ; at the end of the conference he delivered his injunctions. Only a summary of the injunctions is usually entered in the Memoranda : but the original visitation report gives the actual answer of every monk or nun in the house and very quaint answers they sometimes are.
- ↑ It is characteristic of Bishop Longland that he does not say ' a -pater, ave, and credo,' but ' the Lord's Prayer, the angelic salutation, and the sym- bol of the apostles.'
- ↑ Dugdale, Mon. iv. 269 ; from Browne Willis.
- ↑ Cal. of Chart. R. i. 27, 1 86.
- ↑ Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 227.
- ↑ Dugdale, Mon. iv. 269.
- ↑ Cal. of Chart. R. i. 226.
- ↑ Linc. Epis. Reg. R. of Gravesend.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid. Inst. Sutton, 119d
- ↑ Dugdale, Mon. iv. 268.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑
Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Chadworth, 153. It is
a tempting conjecture that this may be the Augus-
tinian nun who came in 1447 to Ivinghoe in search
of a stricter life. Her name however is given in
Bishop Alnwick's Memoranda as Margaret Cross. - ↑ Ibid.
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