Sins of the Blood

by Margaret Frazer

  Then there are the nuns’ dowries. The Church officially condemns any fee being charged, expected, or paid by her family when a girl becomes a novice or takes her final vows, but because she can be expected to be a charge on the nunnery for the rest of her life, a valuable freewill gift from her family is not considered amiss. A single large sum of money is always acceptable, but even better is a grant of property passing permanently into the nunnery’s hands, or else a regular tithe from some property that is paid to St. Frideswide’s while the actual property remains in other hands. A grant of this type ceases to be considered among the nunnery’s spiritualities and becomes part of its temporalities.

  Temporalities make up the larger portion of the nunnery’s income. While many of these are derived from its nuns’ dowries or else were given by St. Frideswide’s founding widow, most have been gifted to the nunnery by various benefactors over the years, some as thanks offerings, others to pay for the nuns’ eternal prayers for their souls.

  Of course the nunnery’s half of the manor of Prior Byfield has always been its largest and most profitable holding, providing much of the nunnery’s food as well as money from fines and court fees, but there is also substantial income in kind and coin from a quarter of a distant manor, deeded to the nunnery during the late King Henry IV’s reign by a knight, for prayers for his son killed during one of the northern rebellions. Other temporalities are as small as the yearly payment of two shillings from the rent of a shop in Banbury (given by a cordwainer for prayers for the soul of his late wife who had been named Frideswide in honor of the saint) to the extremely profitable ownership of a mill near Towcester (given by the wealthy Godfreys when their kinswoman Alys entered St. Frideswide’s, their unspoken expectation being that she should eventually rise to prioress on the strength of their gift). Three cottages in Headington near Oxford have brought in a yearly comfortable rent for two generations now, while the latest gift of significant size are several tenements in several towns, given (to the nuns’ awe) by the present queen, Margaret of Anjou, wife to Henry VI. (Regrettably, the queen is not an actual patron of St. Frideswide’s but gave the properties at the behest of the duchess of Suffolk, cousin to Dame Frevisse. Seized from the king’s uncle, they might be considered a tainted gift but have been welcomed and accepted nonetheless.)

  Other grants have included fifteen shillings yearly from the rent of five tenants of Lord Fenner; a length of first quality black-dyed wool cloth each autumn from Dame Amicia’s merchant family in Northampton; title to a shop in Abingdon, given by Dame Frevisse’s aunt when her niece entered St. Frideswide’s; four acres of land in a manor owned by Dame Claire’s brother as a thanks offering for the nuns’ prayers when finally his second wife provided his long-awaited son and heir; and so on, in a complicated weave of grants and incomes accumulated and dealt with over the decades since the priory’s founding, all of it making for complex, unavoidable interaction with the world beyond the cloister’s walls, as evidenced as you ride through the nunnery’s outer gateway from the road into the outer yard.

  The Outer Yard

  The nunnery’s outer yard is a wide space surrounded with the workaday buildings necessary to the nunnery’s worldly needs. Hence, the protective wall and stone-built gateway wide enough for loaded haywains to pass through but closed by heavy gates that can be barred with an iron-bound timber. Not that there has been any need for barring the gates for a long while now. Times have been quiet in the middle of England through this first half of the 1400s, but about the time St. Frideswide’s was being built in the 1300s there were some outbreaks of violence that made walls and gateways a comfort. Most notorious and long remembered was the Folville family in Nottinghamshire with their criminal career of murder and plundering. None of their exploits came near here, but the stories (undoubtedly growing with the telling) were reason enough – along with reports of distant Scottish incursions in the far north and French raids along the south coast, mixed with occasional armed peasant protests here and there against their lords (the bishop of Worcester earned his people’s particular ire more than once) or the government – to justify the protection of walls and gates at the time. And however peaceful England may be at present, there is of course always the possibility that in the fullness of time things could become unsettled again. One never knows.

  But at present the harvestings from the nunnery’s demesne land and the tithes in kind from farther away are brought and kept here in peace.

  Foremost among the varied buildings around the yard is the great timber-framed barn, rising high-roofed over everything else and measuring 100 feet by 27 feet. The doors opposite each other in the middle of the long walls are wide enough and high enough to let the rumbling wagons enter with their high-piled loads of grain still in the sheaf, brought straight from the fields where it was cut and stood to dry. By the end of harvest in a good year, the sheaves are piled to the high rafters, giving comfortable surety of enough food to see nunnery folk through the months to come. In a bad year, the empty places under the rafters are warning that great care will have to be taken against the hunger likely to come. Between the barn’s facing doors is a stone floor where, through the winter months, the grain is gradually threshed from its sheaves, beaten with flails to loosen the grain from the stalks, then winnowed in the cross-draught through the doors to be rid of the chaff so there’s nothing but the grain itself to be taken to the mill for grinding to flour for the nunnery’s use. As a tithe from Lord Lovell, the nuns pay only a quarter the usual cost to have their grain ground at his mill. For that they are grateful – but have always hoped he would simply grant them the mill.

  Other buildings around the yard have uses as specific as the granary barn. There are two stables, one for such guests as visit St. Frideswide’s, the other for the nunnery’s own horses – only the steward’s good ambler kept just for riding, the rest more often employed hauling carts and such field work (pulling the harrow, for instance) as does not need the sturdier oxen.

  There is likewise a cattle byre. As with the horses, when the time for pasturing is past the nunnery’s cows and oxen are kept where their manure can be collected, being too valuable to let go to waste. Mixed and rotted with the straw of their bedding, it is spread on the fields and ploughed in to nourish the soil. This is among the reasons that a good haying is so important every summer: the more cattle being kept through the winter means more manure for the fields, as well as more calves and all the benefits of abundant milk.

  The dairy is where the dairy maids, after the twice-daily milking (for as long as the cows are in milk after calving in the spring), are responsible for not only the immediate milk but for turning it into butter and the various sorts of cheeses for present and future use in the nunnery. The dairy is a good place to work for village girls looking for an independent income.

  The valuable hay, after drying in the fields, is carted in and stored in the lofts above stables and byre for convenience in feeding the livestock through the winter.

  There are also a pigsty, a sheep pen, and a dovecot, sheltering other sources of meat (and in the case of sheep, more milk and cheese) for the nunnery. Open-sided sheds serve for storing carts and other equipment, and there is the necessary woodstore, while enclosed sheds serve other purposes, such as the carpenter’s shop, and protect goods such as seeds stored for spring planting and the wool-clip. The latter is not, as yet, large in the case of St. Frideswide’s, but does bring in some added income when sold to a local wool merchant.

  The Steward's Duties

  Charged with overseeing all of this and more is the nunnery’s steward, for many years now the highly valued Master Naylor. As steward, he is the link between the cloistered nuns and the outside world they depend on for their worldly existence, and on him much of the nunnery’s prosperity depends. The venal steward is a stock villain in stories and plays, but Master Naylor is honest beyond reproach, trusted, and regarded with great respect. As the nunnery’s highest officer outside the cloister, h
e has high status and accompanying wages that include use of a dwelling near the gateway of the outer yard where he lives with his wife, two sons, and two daughters. His children have grown up in St. Frideswide’s, and his elder son is well along in training to be his father’s successor as steward here some day.

  The house is the usual timber-framed wattle and daub, and of ample size, reflecting his position. The ground floor has both a room for general living and a kitchen, with a steep stairway up to the first floor that is divided between a bedchamber for the parents and daughters and a separate one for the sons. A ladder leads up to storage under the roof. The maidservant sleeps in the kitchen. The parlor furnishings are minimal but enough and of good quality, with not only stools for general sitting but a tall-backed chair for Master Naylor’s particular comfort, a cushioned settle, and Mistress Naylor’s spinning wheel. A painted hanging of the Virgin and child in a flowery bower brightens one white-plastered wall. In the kitchen are the expected work table and utensils and a locked aumbry keeping the precious spices and other costly things such a household can afford; and while wooden platters, bread trenchers, and pottery goblets do well enough for daily use, a wall-shelf displays the family’s cherished polished pewterware against a modest length of green damask cloth.

  The kitchen opens into a high-walled garden exclusively for the family’s use, with graveled paths between beds of vegetables, herbs, and even flowers. A small arbor gives shaded seating, and on dry days the laundry is laid out to dry on the lavender hedge.

  Upstairs, the master’s and mistress’ tall bedstead is hung about with red and green stripped woolen curtains and covered by a red coverlet Mistress Naylor has embroidered with a pattern of twining green vines and imaginary yellow flowers. A truckle bed rolled out from underneath it serves for the daughters, while their brothers in the smaller other room share a standing bed. In both chambers, chests keep clothing and belongings, while daily clothing hangs ready to hand over wall poles. At the head of the stairs a table holds a basin and pitcher for washing, with a white towel on a roller above it.

  This all makes for a very comfortable life, but one for which Master Naylor works extremely hard year round and in all weathers. Overseeing and managing the nunnery’s day-to-day business with the world is a multiform job, concerned not only with supervising the immediate desmesne land and the nearby village with its manor court and all, but with all of St. Frideswide’s widespread properties. This latter part of his duties entails him traveling to see personally how well or ill all may be going, and to deal with such troubles as inevitably happen, and – of perhaps greatest importance – to oversee the quarterly gathering and auditing of financial accounts of all properties and income, to present to St. Fridewide’s prioress, with whom he works closely.

  All this is meant to keep the nunnery’s income as high as possible and prevent fraud at any level. Besides that, although much of the priory’s income now comes in coin rather than kind, still what comes in kind must either be conveyed to the nunnery or – if in excess of the nunnery’s needs or if the transport looks to be too costly – sold. Those decisions must be made at the steward’s discretion and with the prioress’ agreement.

  Beyond that, with the money then in hand there are the purchases that must be made of needed goods and foodstuffs not otherwise available to the priory. Since the nunnery’s fishpond cannot supply all the fish needed for fast days and through Lent, barrels of dried and salted fish must be purchased and their transport paid for; and while the nunnery’s garden provides herbs for seasonings, and its orchards fresh fruit, and its beeskeeps honey, other spices (including salt), actual sugar, and dried fruits such as raisins (all expensive) have to be acquired and brought from much farther afield. And while ale is the principal drink, cider and wine are desirable, too, and must be bought and brought in casks, the nunnery’s orchard not providing sufficient fruit for cider and there no longer being vineyards in England. All this is in Master Naylor’s charge and can take him as far as London upon occasion.

  The Inner Gateway and Priest's Chamber

  At the far end of the outer yard is a second gateway. Opening into the nunnery’s inner yard, it is heavily gated like the first and stone-built below, but its upper storey is timber-framed, the single chamber there the home of the priory’s resident priest. Every nunnery must have its own priest, both as spiritual advisor and because the nuns cannot perform Mass or give the sacraments, and for these many years Father Henry has been St. Frideswide’s priest. He is not the most learned of men, but sincere in his faith and performs his duties well without trying to impose his will on the nuns. A wise man that way. In return, the nuns care for his comfort. His single room above the gateway, reached by a stairway from the inner yard, is simply but amply furnished, with table, two stools, a plain bedstead, a reading desk, a short shelf with his few books (including the devotional and instructional Festial and Archbishop Thoresby’s Instructions), a footed chest that keeps safe and readily to hand the instruments of his priestly office, and a prie dieu below a wall-hung crucifix. Although the chamber is unceilinged and open to the roof, and the windows – one each to east and west, overlooking inner and outer yards – are unglassed and can only be shuttered against bad weather, there is the great boon of a fireplace, and his allotment of firewood is generous, as is his share of food from the nunnery kitchen, brought to him by a servant. His life is the most private in all of St. Frideswide’s, but here in his chamber over the gateway, poised between the priory’s outer and inner life, he lives ready to hand for anyone’s need.

  Inner Yard and Guesthalls

  Beyond the gateway is the inner yard, far smaller than the outer yard, cobbled and compactedly surrounded by stone-built buildings. On its far side from the gate are the nunnery’s church and the west range of the cloister’s buildings, but the yard is most often called the guesthall yard because here is also the guesthall that is an invariable part of any Benedictine monastery, charged as they all are by the Benedictine Rule to provide shelter and food for travelers who ask it.

  The present guesthall is fairly new and was of some pride to the nuns when it was built. The priory’s original guesthall stood to the right of the gate as visitors came in. Built along with the nunnery’s earliest buildings, it was simply a single long space, stone-floored, with an open hearth in the middle. Trestle tables could be set up for meals and cleared away for pallets and bedding to be laid out on the floor at night, with actual beds behind a simple wooden screen at one end provided for better visitors.

  Better visitors – those able and hopefully willing to favor the nunnery with gifts and patronage – are important to St. Frideswide’s, and during Domina Edith’s time as prioress the nuns undertook the expense of a new guesthall, helped (as they had hoped) by donors’ gifts toward it, including the Fenner family paying the masons’ wages for two months (other months’ wages the nuns met themselves), Dame Emma’s brothers giving cartage for the roofing slate partly donated by Dame Perpetua’s aunt, Dame Frevisse’s uncle providing the timbers for the roof, other patrons with interest if not actual family in St. Frideswide’s giving what they could in various amounts including welcome money, so that all in all the new guesthall was not so costly to the nuns as it might have been and has indeed been a boon for them and their guests both wealthy and poor.

  The old guesthall now turns a long blank wall to the inner yard. With its former doorway blocked and a new one made into the outer yard, it has become the guesthall’s stable.

  The new guesthall is to the left of the gate, a long building on an undercroft that has the guesthall kitchen at one end and storage at the other. Guests go up half a flight of stone stairs into the hall itself that is still a long open room where most guests eat and sleep, but there is an actual fireplace rather than an open hearth and at one end of the hall a private chamber for the use of particularly esteemed guests, pleasantly furnished with curtained bed and other amenities. Likewise there are several smaller, plainer rooms for t
hose who may come to the nunnery ill or hurt and needing to be apart while tended to and prayed for by the nuns. As hoped, the new guesthall has proved worth the cost and trouble of having it built.

  At the end of the yard near the new guesthall is a well that makes a pleasant gathering place for guests. Beyond it, a high stone wall closes that end of the yard away from the nuns’ orchard, while at the yard’s other end a small door leads through the wall there into the walled area needed for homely tasks necessary to the nuns’ daily life but not reasonably done inside the cloister. Principally, the laundry is here, with its kettles and steam and drying racks, but there are sheds and shelters for other things, too, including the drying of herbs in great quantities, the brewing of ale, and such messy kitchen chores as killing and plucking chickens and cleaning fish.

  Cloister

  On the far side of the inner yard, across from the gateway and guesthall, are the west front of St. Frideswide’s church with its wide door welcoming worshipers, whether guests or those who work here, freely into its nave (the farthest the public is generally allowed to go in the nunnery). Abutting the church’s south wall and stretching the rest of that side of the yard is the long outer wall of the cloister’s west range, blank toward the yard on the ground floor except for a few windows far too small for passage of anything but light, and a single door that is the world’s way into the cloister itself.

  That door is the final barrier between the nuns and the outer world. It is of wood, sturdy, iron-banded, unadorned. In large nunneries there would be someone on duty during the days to deal with those who come to the door, but St. Frideswide’s is far from large enough to warrant that; ringing the wall-hung bell there – or thumping heavily – will bring a nun in answer from somewhere in the cloister. A small, shuttered window at eye level allows a glimpse and speech between someone within and someone without, while a heavy wooden bar on the inside assures there will be no ready entry for those unwelcomed.