RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



have respite till the following Easter, for the 

 wool they owed to the king. J In 1 396 the nuns 

 were in some danger of losing the church of 

 Dorney 2 : but they evidently succeeded 

 in proving their right, as it was part of their 

 property at the dissolution. 



The history of the house during the fif- 

 teenth century is obscure : only a few names 

 of abbesses can be recovered. As its whole 

 revenue was under 200 a year, it should have 

 been dissolved under the first Act of Suppres- 

 sion, but on the petition of the local com- 

 missioners the house was continued, and so 

 the surrender was delayed until 19 September, 

 1539, when it was received by Dr. London. 3 

 The Deed of Surrender is extant, and takes 

 the common form ' with our unanimous assent 

 and consent.' It is signed by the abbess, Alice 

 Baldwin, and nine nuns. It is probable that 

 some pensions were reserved, but their num- 

 ber and value does not remain on record. 



There are several notices in the Episcopal 

 Registers relating to the internal history of the 

 house. In 1281 the nuns of Burnham in- 

 curred the displeasure of Archbishop Peck- 

 ham 4 by refusing to receive a certain Maud 

 de Weston at his request. They seem to have 

 given no satisfactory reason for this refusal 

 except vague suggestions that they could not 

 receive postulants without the consent of 

 their patron 5 ; and when the archbishop 

 pressed the matter they pleaded their poverty. 

 He wrote them a sharp letter in reply, de- 

 claring that he was never one to put pressure 

 on the poor, but showing very clearly that he 

 did not believe their excuses to be true ones. 6 

 He accused them indeed plainly of pride, or 

 some other personal motives, and added that 

 if they did not give him some lawful and ade- 

 quate reason for refusing his candidate, he 

 would provide for their alleged poverty by 

 sending others in addition. 



In 1300 Bishop Dalderby visited the house 

 to explain the statute Pro clausura monialium. 

 He ordered them, as he did all the convents of 

 nuns in his diocese, to keep strictly within 

 their enclosure and to admit no secular person 

 within the cloister door on any excuse. 7 It 



1 Close 12 Edw. III. pt. iii., m. 28 d. 



2 Cal. of Pap. Letters, iv. 529. 



3 P.R.O. Deed of Surrender, 37. 



4 Epist. Johannis Peckham (Rolls Ser.), i. 189. 



5 The archbishop says, ' If you say that the 

 earl of Cornwall forbids you to receive any one 

 without his consent, know that we do not believe 

 it, as he is a devout man and has always been a 

 friend of ours.' 



6 'Now you make a plea of poverty, which we 

 suspect because it comes so late.' Ibid. 



' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, lod. 



is probable however that the nuns of Burn- 

 ham paid no more heed to these admonitions 

 than did their sisters in other houses. 



In 1311 a certain nun, Margery of Hedsor, 

 left the house and forsook the habit of reli- 

 gion : she was excommunicated in conse- 

 quence, and the sentence was renewed at 

 intervals until 1317." In that year she 

 brought in a plea that she had been compelled 

 by her father to enter the monastery when 

 under age, and had been previously contracted 

 in marriage to Roger Blacket of Rickmans- 

 worth. The real truth of the matter is not 

 known, as the results of the inquiry which 

 followed are not given ; but it is instructive 

 to note that the bishop gave orders that the 

 sentence of excommunication should be re- 

 moved, if the plea was proved on examination 

 to be a true one. 9 



In 1339 two nuns f Burnham were trans- 

 ferred to Goring ' for the peace and quiet of 

 the house.' 10 Such occasional notices as 

 these, though they must be duly recorded in 

 a detailed history of the monastery, really tell 

 us very little of its inner life, and may be even 

 misleading if they are made too much of. 

 Far more serious evidence than this, as regards 

 the general tone of the house, is found in the 

 visitation reports of Bishops Grey and Atwater. 

 It seems that early in the fifteenth century 

 the nuns of Burnham, like those of Elstow in 

 Bedfordshire, had attempted to increase their 

 revenues by taking in a number of ladies as 

 boarders, and with much the same results : 

 the house had become secularized. When 

 Bishop Grey visited the abbey between 1431 

 and 1436, he ordered the removal of all secu- 

 lars whatsoever." The order was probably 

 obeyed only for a time, for Bishop Atwater in 

 1519 called attention to the same point. He 

 enjoined the abbess again on no account to 

 allow secular women to lodge in the monas- 

 tery ; and not even young children (infantes) 

 were to be admitted to the dormitory of the 

 nuns. Other signs of worldliness appear in 

 the injunction that the nuns should not use 

 girdles ornamented with gold or silver, nor 

 wear any rings except that which was the sign 

 of their profession. 12 He allowed them how- 



o Line. Epis. Reg. Memo. Dalderby, 

 233, 288d. Ibid. 36id. 



Ibid. 368d. One of the nuns named is Mar- 

 gery de Louches, and an abbess of that name re- 

 signed in the same year. But it seems unlikely 

 that it was actually the abbess who was sent away : 

 there would surely have been some notice of the 

 fact in the entry, if it had been the case. Perhaps 

 it was a relative of the late abbess. 



" Ibid. Memo. Gray, 203. 



> Visitations of Atwater(Alnwick Tower,Lincoln). 



383 



