No account of English monastic life would be complete without some special reference to the nuns and nunneries. It is, it may be first observed in passing, altogether wrong to apply the word "convent" exclusively to houses of nuns, as is so frequently done in these days. The title "convent" as well as that of "monastery" and "abbey" was applicable to any house of either monks or nuns, and the exclusive use of the word for a religious house of women is, indeed, of quite modern origin.
It is unfortunate that our information in regard to the inner life of the nuns in pre-Reformation England is so scanty. Beyond the delightful picture we get of the social life of the nuns of Kington in Old Jacques' recollections, as recorded by John Aubrey, and the charming portrait of the prioress who
"Was so charitable and so pitous ... and al was conscience and tendre herte,"
in Chaucer's tales, there is but little information to be obtained about the nuns of England; of the simple, hard, yet happy lives they led in their cloistered homes, and of the ample charity they dispensed to all in their immediate neighbourhood.
[Illustration: ELIZABETH HARVEY ABBESS OF ELSTOW]
Of course, so far as the usual forms, manners, and customs of cloister life are concerned, what has been already said of the monastic method of life generally, applies to nuns, with certain necessary reservations, as well as to monks and canons. It will be useful, however, to furnish the reader with some account of certain special features of female religious life. One of the most charming mediæval pictures of that life is given in an account of the abbesses of the Benedictine nunnery of Wherwell, in Hampshire. It records the unblemished life and good deeds of the abbess Euphemia, who ruled the house from A.D. 1226 to 1257, and is translated from the chartulary of the abbey by the Rev. Dr. Cox in the second volume of the _Victoria History of the County of Hampshire_. The account is too delightful not to be given in full.
"On the 6th of the Kalends of May, in the year of grace 1257, died the blessed mother abbess, Euphemia, most worthy to be remembered, who, by our affection and good fellowship, and with divine sanction, succeeded the late abbess Maud of sweet memory. It is, therefore, most fitting that we should always perpetuate the memory, in our special prayers and suffrages, of one who ever worked for the glory of God, and for the weal of both our souls and bodies. For she increased the number of the Lord's handmaids in this monastery from forty to eighty, to the exaltation of the worship of God. To her sisters, both in health and sickness, she administered the necessaries of life with piety, prudence, care, and honesty. She also increased the sum allowed for garments by 12_d._ each. The example of her holy conversation and charity, in conjunction with her pious exhortations and regular discipline, caused each one to know how, in the words of the Apostle, to possess her vessel in sanctification and honour. She also, with maternal piety and careful forethought, built, for the use of both sick and sound, a new and large infirmary away from the main buildings, and in conjunction with it a dormitory with the necessary offices. Beneath the infirmary she constructed a watercourse, through which a stream flowed with sufficient force to carry off all refuse that might corrupt the air.