A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



door of the garden should not be opened before 

 Prime ; that in chapter only three persons 

 should speak — the president, sub-prioress or her 

 substitute, and the sister charged with an 

 offence ; those disobedient to the prioress in 

 chapter were to be put on bread and water for 

 the day ; that all who broke the silence ordered 

 by their rule should acknowledge their fault in 

 chapter and receive regular discipline, and if 

 they did not do so voluntarily they should be 

 charged by the guardian of the order and have 

 the hardest penance ; that those who quarrelled 

 and thus created disorder should not be spoken 

 to and be in penance for three days ; that the 

 sisters were not to come into the parlour to 

 speak to secular persons except with neck and 

 face covered with kerchief and veil as ordained 

 by their order ; that only persons of good fame 

 were to be allowed to enter the priory and were 

 never to eat in the nuns' rooms without the 

 abbot's special permission ; that workpeople 

 such as tailors and furriers employed at the 

 priory must be respectable, and should have a 

 place near the cloister set apart for them, and 

 were never to be called into the rooms ; that 

 nuns who were ill were to be in the infirmary 

 according to the custom formerly observed ; 

 the prioress was forbidden to give leave to the 

 nuns to remain with guests for the night and 

 the dormitory was to be occupied by the sisters 

 only. These rules perhaps suggest precautionary 

 measures rather than indicate great lack of 

 discipline. 



Theorders given by Abbot Thomas 2" (i 349-96) 

 to the Warden or Master of Sopwell show 

 the necessity of more care : henceforth no man, 

 secular or regular, was to be allowed to enter the 

 nunnery without the abbot's permission, and 

 then not before Prime had been sung, and he 

 was not to stay after the bell had been rung for 

 supper at St. Albans ; and the master himself 

 was always to enter and leave in the company of 

 others and not to remain longer than the time 

 fixed above, except in special circumstances. 



There are occasional references to individual 

 nuns that are not without interest. Agnes 

 Paynel figures in the Book of Benefactors of 

 St. Albans^ for her gift of three copes with 

 beautiful orphreys, chasuble, tunic and dalmatic 

 of black satin, powdered with stars and the 

 letters A and P in gold, for her monetary con- 

 tributions to various works of the abbey and a 

 gold ring offered to St. Alban's shrine. Letitia 

 Wyttenham, prioress 1418-35, also ranked as a 

 benefactor ^ on account of her industry in 

 embroidering and mending the vestments of 

 St. Albans. Cecilia Paynel and Margaret Euer, 

 nuns of Sopwell, were admitted to the fraternity 



^ Gesta Jbbat. iii, 519. 



" Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, fol. I04d. 



!>" Ibid. fol. 148 d. 



of St. Albans in 1428 on the same day as the 

 Earl of Warwick's household." Lady Margaret 

 Wynter made regular profession at Sopwell in 

 June 1429,'' and offered a girdle enriched with 

 precious stones worth 10 marks.** Two more 

 nuns mentioned in the 15 th century were of 

 London citizen families, and received bequests, 

 the one ^' of a mark, the other *' of 2 marks a 

 year. 



Visitors of high rank were not uncommon at 

 the time of Margaret Wynter's admission. 

 The Duke of Gloucester in 1427 and Cardinal 

 Beaufort in 1428 called at the nunnery on their 

 way from St. Albans to Langley,^* and the 

 Duchess of Clarence was apparently staying at 

 Sopwell in 1429, when she was received into the 

 fraternity of St. Albans.** One of the convent's 

 guests was the cause of an alarming attack on 

 the priory in 1428.^" William Wawe, the 

 famous robber-captain, expecting to find a 

 certain Eleanor HuUe^^ there, broke into the 

 place with his men one night. After terrifying 

 the nuns with threats they began to plunder, 

 when hue and cry was raised by an energetic 

 man in the village,^* and the robbers made off. 



Abbot William Wallingford on 8 March 

 1480-r commissioned John Rothbury, the 

 archdeacon, and Thomas Ramrugge, sub-prior 

 of St. Albans, to visit the house of Sopwell and 

 remove the prioress, Joan Chapel, from her 

 office on account of her age and infirmities, 

 putting Elizabeth Webbe in her place.*' The 

 abbot must have regretted his choice after- 

 wards. When Rothbury some years later 

 deposed her she brought an action against him 



*' Amundesham, Annates, i, 67. 



^ The title ' Lady ' was used then in a less re- 

 stricted way than at present. 



*^ Amundesham, Jnnaks, i, 40. 



^' Joan Welles, granddaughter of Richard Odyham, 

 grocer of London (Sharpe, Cal. of Wills proved in Ct. 

 ofHusting, London, ii, 474). 



^ Amy daughter of John Godyn, grocer of London 

 (ibid. 564-5). 



^ Amundesham, op. cit. i, 13-28. 



^^ Ibid. 40. From this passage it has been 

 imagined (Dugdale, Mon. iii, 363) that the duchess 

 was a nun at Sopwell, but this appears to be a mistake. 

 She intended in 1429 to settle near Syon Monastery 

 to receive spiritual benefits firom the priests there 

 {Cal. Papal Letters, viii, 149). 



'" Amundesham, op. cit. i, 1 1 . 



'1 This lady was of some influence at the court of 

 Henry V. She was partly instrumental in intro- 

 ducing to the king's notice Thomas Fischborn, the 

 monk of St. Albans who obtained a dispensation to 

 become a secular priest (ibid. 27). In 1417 she was 

 in the service of Queen Joan and received a pension 

 of 50 marks {Cal. Pat. 1416-22, p. 304). She i> 

 mentioned among the benefactors of St. Albans, see 

 Dugdale, Mon. ii, 222. 



^^ Roger Husewyf, who took priest's orders in 

 1430 (Amundesham, op. cit. i, 49). 

 5* Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 239. 



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