A HISTORY OF 
lars male or female above the age of twelve 
were to be admitted ; the nuns were not to 
go into Bedford or Elstow; only suitable 
persons were to be professed. 
Bishop Grey? admonished the nuns to in- 
crease their numbers, that the divine office 
might not be neglected ; but none was to be 
admitted unless she could read and sing, and 
then only with the consent of the ‘ greater 
and wiser’ part of the convent. No seculars 
except young children were to be allowed 
in the monastery ; an apostate nun was to 
be brought back. This was the last visita- 
tion before the well known injunctions of 
Bishop Longland in 1530.3 The tone of these 
makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion 
that the house had become thoroughly secu- 
larised. The ladies had for the most part 
given up the most distinctive features of their 
common life ; they had forsaken the use of 
the refectory, and lived more like pensioners 
in a boarding-house, having their little private 
‘households,’ where they received and ate 
with their friends. They were accustomed 
to wear scarlet stomachers, ‘voyded shoes’ 
and low-necked dresses like those of secular 
women, and ‘cornered crests’ instead of veils. 
The lady abbess when she walked in proces- 
sion was followed by a train of servants, and 
leant upon the arm of one of them. The 
‘ chapelayne,’ Dame Katherine Wingate, had 
been wont to absent herself from matins, and 
to take her meals in the abbess’s buttery with 
the steward. Nevertheless the bishop evi- 
dently thought the case was not past remedy, 
and it is noteworthy that after all nothing 
worse than secularity is implied in these in- 
junctions. He reminds them that ‘ the more 
secret religious persons be kept from the sight 
and visage of the world and strangers, the 
more close and entire their mind and devo- 
tion shall be to God’ ; and so orders a door 
at least 5 feet high to be erected at the lower 
end of the choir, so that the nuns might 
neither see nor be seen by strangers at office 
time ; and the cloister door between the 
monastery and the church, as well as the 
1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Repingdon, 231. Rules 
of diet were also given at this visitation. No money 
was to be exacted from those seeking admission to 
the community. Two older nuns were to be 
responsible for all the money of the convent; the 
collector of rents was to give an account upon oath 
twice a year. A sacristan and a precentor were to 
be chosen from the nuns of good reputation: none 
convicted of immorality was to be admitted to any 
office. The sick nuns in the infirmary were to be 
duly visited, and the rest to sleep in the dormitory. 
2 Ibid. Memo. Grey, 203d. 
3 Arch, xlvii. 51-3. 
BEDFORDSHIRE 
outer door towards the court, were to- be 
kept shut as far as possible. There were to 
be no more ‘households’ kept except the 
abbess’s, and a ‘misericorde’ where four or 
five of the sisters with ‘one sad lady of the 
elder sort,’ nominated by the abbess, might 
take their meals in turn and meet their friends. 
The rest were to go to the ‘fratry.’* 
How far these injunctions produced any 
effect it is impossible to say. The house was 
not mentioned by Layton in the letter® in 
which he records his visit to Bedfordshire. 
It did not fall under the Act of 1536, and 
was not surrendered until 26 August 1539.° 
The deed of surrender is still extant ; it con- 
tains the ordinary formula, the same as that 
of Wardon and Chicksand, and has no signa- 
tures, but only the seal. The pension lists 
of 1539-40" assign £50 to the abbess, 
Elizabeth Boyvill, and smaller sums to 
twenty-three nuns besides. If there were so 
many at this time, we may conclude that the 
house held perhaps twice as many in the 
thirteenth century, but there is no record of 
the original number. The usual officials are 
named from time to time: the prioress, the 
sacristan, afterwards called the ‘chapelayne,’ 
the chantress. It appears that in the thir- 
teenth and fourteenth centuries there were a 
few lay brothers attached to the house, but it 
is not clear what was their exact status.® 
The original endowment of the abbey in- 
cluded the vills of Elstow and Wilshampstead 
with 5 hides and 14 virgates in Maulden, and 
the church of Hitchin in Hertfordshire.® Small 
portions of land in Buckinghamshire, Leices- 
tershire, Gloucestershire and Northampton- 
4 It should be noted that there is no suggestion 
of actual immorality at this time, or at any other, 
except in Bishop Repingdon’s injunctions (see 
above). But on the other hand the recurrence of 
the same corrections makes it clear that the stan- 
dard of life in the house had never been high since 
the thirteenth century, and though there were 
doubtless always some of the ‘ sadder sort,’ as at 
the end, yet they were in the minority. 
5 Wright, Suppression of Monasteries, Letter 42. 
6 Deed of Surrender (P.R.O.), No. 88. 
7 L.and P. Hen. VIII. (P.R.O.), xv.1032, No. 80. 
8 Pat.6 Edw. I. m. 7d. Commission of oyer 
and terminer touching the persons who assaulted 
Brother Henry of Elstow at Elstow. Cal. of Pap. 
Letters, iii. 276 (1349), Walter Woodward, lay 
brother of Elstow, having left his order, desires to 
be reconciled to it. 
® Inspeximus, 11 Edward II., of the charter of 
Henry I., which grants the abbess in her lands 
sac and soc, toll and team, and infangetheof, and 
all the customs, services and liberties that the free 
churches of the king’s demesne have. (Dugdale, 
Mon. iii. 413) 
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