A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Sewardsley, that on the death of her mother she 

 claimed her share of the inheritance, intending to 

 provide fit maintenance for herself among the 

 nuns, but finding the convent unable to support 

 her she had licence to leave ; she was excluded 

 from inheritance with her sisters on account of 

 her religious profession, and entered the monastery 

 of Holywell, London, where she had remained 

 for fourteen years, and borne herself chastely ; 

 she now desired, however, to return to Sewards- 

 ley. i The poverty from which the inmates of 

 the house must have suffered did not lessen as 

 time went on. Bishop Dalderby in the year 

 1300 granted an indulgence to those who should 

 bestow alms on the house,'* and the hard and 

 difficult conditions of the life there may possibly 

 be accountable for the lapse of another sister, 

 Joan de Fynnemere, who in that same year is 

 said to have abandoned her habit and returned to 

 a secular life. The bishop ordered sentence of 

 greater excommunication to be pronounced 

 against her.^ An indulgence to those who 

 should come to the help of the poor nuns of 

 Sewardsley was again granted by the bishop in 

 1319.* The sisters obtained a licence from the 

 diocesan to beg for alms in consequence of the 

 poverty of their house in 1366,^ and in 1378 

 Bishop Bokyngham sanctioned the appropriation 

 to the prioress and convent of the church of 

 Easton Neston, his grant reciting that the value of 

 their lands had been so affected by the pestilence 

 that they were insufficient to maintain the num- 

 ber of sisters at first instituted.^ The poor terms 

 on which the Prioress Maud and the convent 

 leased a great part of their property to John 

 Shepherd of Holcot for life shows the desperate 

 straits to which they were reduced.' The bishop 

 of Lincoln at last, in January, 1459—60, at the 

 request of Sir Thomas Greene their patron, 

 appropriated the nunnery to the comparatively 

 substantial Cluniac abbey of Delapr<5, the income 

 of the former being insufficient to maintain the 

 inmates or repair their buildings.^ From this 

 time to the dissolution, when there was a prioress 

 and four nuns here, the abbey appears to have 

 been responsible for the maintenanceof the priory 

 subjected to it. 



This priory was associated in the year 1470 

 with a case of alleged witchcraft. In February 

 Jaquetta, duchess of Bedford, appeared before 



1 Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Sutton, f. 93d. 



2 Ibid. Dalderby, f. l+d. 



3 Ibid. f. 16. * Ibid. f. 398. 



3 Ibid. Bokyngham i. f. 38. « Ibid. ii. f. 168. 



^ Anct. D. B. 3266. The lease included a 

 house in Sewardsley, lands at Holcot and Easton 

 Neston, a cartload of straw yearly from their grange, 

 a flagon of ale for two weeks, easement for a cock and 

 six hens in their close, and the services of a boy to 

 keep sheep from Martinmas to Holy Cross Day. The 

 rent in return for this accommodation should be 

 4/. 4a'. yearly. 



* Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Chad worth, f. 53. 



the council at Westminster and complained that 

 one Thomas Wake, esq., had in the time of the 

 late troubles caused her to be accused of witch- 

 craft, inasmuch as he had brought before the king 

 and his lords at Warwick an image of lead made 

 like a man-at-arms of the length of a man's 

 finger broken in the middle and fastened with a 

 wire, saying that it was made by her to use in 

 witchcraft and sorcery, and had entreated John 

 Daunger, parish clerk of Stoke Bruerne, North- 

 amptonshire, to say that there were two other 

 images made by her, one for the king and one 

 for the queen. Thereupon the king had ordered 

 the examination of Wake and Daunger, and in 

 the great council of 19 January she had been 

 cleared of the slander, and she now prayed that 

 the restitution of her fame might be placed on 

 record. In his examination. Wake stated that 

 the image had been shown to various persons 

 and had been exhibited in the nunnery of 

 Sewardsley.' 



With the exception of the visit paid by the 

 bishop's official in 1300^" no record exists of a 

 visitation which throws further light on the in- 

 ternal conditions of the house. ^^ During the 

 rule, which lasted from 1426-31, Bishop Gray 

 issued a commission to inquire concerning 

 alleged excesses of the prioress and her nuns ; 

 the result has apparently not been recorded. ^^ In 

 1530 Agnes Carter was elected prioress on the 

 death of Eleanor Scaresbrig, who had been ap- 

 pointed by the diocesan five years previously,'^ 

 but the election was declared void by the bishop 

 on the ground of her manifest unfitness. She is 

 described as ' mulier corrupta, apostate, et unius 

 prolis mater, et eo pretextu ad hujusmodum 

 officium indigna.''* 



The four commissioners for Northamptonshire 

 religious houses, Edmund Knightley, John Lane, 

 Robert Burgoyne, and George Giffard, visited 

 Sewardsley in May, 1536, as we may gather 

 from a joint letter sent from Northampton to 

 Cromwell on 19 May, as well as from a letter 

 of Giffard of the same date.'^ Elizabeth the last 

 prioress of this nunnery received a small pension 

 *^f £,5-^^ The site and lands of the priory, to- 

 gether with the rectory of Easton Neston, were 

 granted on lease to Thomas Broke of London, '^ 

 but in 1550 came into the possession of Richard 

 Fermor.'* 



9 Pat. 9 Edw. IV. pt. 2, m. 5. 



1" Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Dalderby, f. 16. 



'^ Cistercian houses v ere exempt from visitation, 

 but in the ease of nunneries of that order the bishop 

 frequently claimed and managed to exercise the 

 office. 



'^ Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Gray, f. 173d. 



13 Ibid. Inst, of Longlands, f. 93. 



1* Cited by Bridges from the register of Longlands, 

 Hist. ofNorthants, i. 296. 



15 L. and P. Hen. Fill. x. 916, 917. 



" Misc. Bks. (Aug. Off.), 232, f. 42. 



" Ibid. 209, f. 38. '8 Pat. 4 Edw. VI. pt. 9. 



126 



