Whether girls were taught to write, as well as to read, is far more doubtful. It is probable that the nuns did not always possess this accomplishment themselves, nor did sober medieval opinion consider it wholly desirable that girls should know how to write, on account both of the general inferiority of their sex, and of a regrettable proclivity towards clandestine love letters[898]. Still, writing may sometimes have formed part of the curriculum; there is no evidence either way. For drawing (by which presumably the art of illumination must be meant) there is no warrant; a medieval nunnery was not a modern "finishing" school.
So much for what may be called book learning. Let us now examine for a moment the other accomplishments with which nunnery-bred young ladies have been credited. We may, as Mr Leach suggests, make a guess at spinning and needlework, though here also there is no evidence for their being taught to schoolgirls. Jane Scroupe, into whose mouth Skelton puts his "Phyllyp Sparowe," was apparently being brought up at Carrow, and describes how she sewed the dead bird's likeness on her sampler,
I toke my sampler ones, Of purpose, for the nones, To sowe with stytchis of sylke My sparow whyte as mylke.
Confectionery does not seem very probable, for at this period the cooking for the convent was nearly always done by a hired male cook and not (as laid down in the Benedictine rule) by the nuns themselves, who were apt to complain if they had to prepare the meals. For "home medicine" there is absolutely no evidence, though all ladies of the day possessed some knowledge of simples and herb-medicines and the girls may equally well have learned it at home as among the nuns. It is probable that the children learned to sing, if the nuns took them into the quire; but for this there is no definite evidence, nor has any document been quoted to prove that they learned to play upon instruments of music. It is true that the flighty Dame Isabel Benet "did dance and play the lute" with the friars of Northampton[899] and that "a pair of organs" occurs twice in Dissolution inventories of nunneries[900], but an organ is hardly an instrument of secular music to be played by the daughter of the house in a manorial solar; and Dame Benet's escapade with the lute was a lapse from the strict path of virtue. Finally to suggest that the nuns taught dances verges upon absurdity. That they did sometimes dance is true, and grieved their visitors were to hear it[901]; but what Alnwick would have said to the suggestion that they solemnly engaged themselves to teach dancing to their young pupils is an amusing subject for contemplation. Evidence for everything except the prayers of the church and the art of reading is non-existent; we can but base our opinion upon conjecture and probability; and the probability for instrumental music is so slight as to be non-existent. If it be argued that gentlewomen were expected to possess these arts, it may be replied that the children whom we find at nunneries probably had opportunity to learn them at home, for they seem sometimes to have spent only a part of the year with the nuns. It is true that board is sometimes paid for the whole year, and that little Bridget Plantagenet stayed at St Mary's Winchester for two or three years, while her parents were absent in France; moreover we have already heard of poor Elizabeth and Jane Knyghte, left for over five years at Cornworthy. But an analysis of the Swaffham Bulbeck accounts shows that the children (if indeed they are children) stayed for the following periods during the year 1483, viz., two for forty weeks, one for thirty weeks, one for twenty-six weeks, two for twenty-two weeks, one for sixteen weeks, one for twelve weeks and one for six weeks. It is much more likely that girls were sent to the nuns for elementary schooling than for the acquirement of worldly accomplishments.