256 Death of the Earl of Sali$hur)i : Gilhertines at ISt. Mnrfjaret's. 



partition. This four-fold company the founder's biographer 

 likened to the sheet " knit at the four corners " and " let down to 

 Peter at his prayers" (Acts, x., 11 ; xi., 5); and to the four-horse 

 "chariots of Amminadib," [ = " My j^eople is vnlling") in the Song 

 of Songs (vi., 12), Dugd. Man., vii., p. *ix., after p. 946. The women 

 cooked for the canons, and passed their food in at a trap- hole. 

 At Watton a walled partition nearly 5 feet thick has been dis- 

 covered. It ran through the entire length of the Church to a 

 height above the level of the eye, and one roof doubtless spanned 

 the two sections, so that both sexes might hear the sermons and 

 tlie service. It was provided with another turntable, so that after 

 mass the canon celebrating, or the sacristan, returned the chalice 

 to the custody of the nuns. On fourteen principal festivals the 

 doorway in the partition was opened — as also for funerals — to 

 allow the nuns to join the united procession of the house. (Lina 

 Eckstein, Woman fonder Monasticism, 1195, pp. 220 — 1). Such 

 was the arrangement at Sempringham in Lincolnshire, and in the 

 most fully developed of his other houses. Of the thirteen Gilbertine 

 houses founded in the lifetime of the saint, nine were establishments 

 for both sexes ; but four of them contained canons only. I believe 

 these last were at Old Malton, in Yorkshire, where the maximum 

 allowed was thirty-five canons and brethren ; Newstedon Ancholme,in 

 Lincolnshire, where there migh t be thirteen ; Mattersey, or Maresey, 

 in Notts, where there were from six to ten canons ; and St. Leonard's 

 Clattercote, in Cleydon, Oxfordshire, where a few canons had a 

 leper hospital. The earlier (mixed) foundations were all in 

 Lincolnshire or Yorkshire with the exception of Chicksand (one of 

 the houses for both sexes) in Bedfordshire. Gilbert's contem- 

 porary biographer reckoned that there were at the time of the 

 founder's death 2200 persons in the order of Sempringham.^ 

 Capgrave adds that of these 700 were canons, or brethren, and 

 1500 were nuns, or sisters," in the thirteen houses. This seems a 



^ Cotton MS., Cleop. B., 1. Printed in Dugd. Monast., vii., p. *x. after 

 p. 946). 



- Capgrave, Nova Legenda Anc/lie (ed. Horstman), i., 492. Dugd. Mon., 

 vii., p. *lviii. 



