INTRODUCTION i. THE NUNNERY OF ST. MARY CLERKENWELL The nunnery of St. Mary Clerkenwell was situated north-west of the city of London, between the road leading from Smithfield to St. Albans by Islington (the modern St. John Street Road) and the river Fleet, then a considerable ravine, the ' hollow burn ', of which the site is now approximately marked by Fairingdon Road. South of the nunnery lay the priory of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. Considerable remains of the nunnery survived the Dissolution only to be swept away at the end of the eighteenth century, when the rapid growth of the metropolis destroyed many of the vestiges of medieval London which had been spared by the Great Fire owing to their positions beyond the fringes of the areas destroyed. The main lines of the convent's plan can be reconstructed, and show that the cloister lay on the north side of the church, a feature found also at St. Mary Overy's, Southwark, where, as at Clerkenwell, the quieter side would be away from the sunnier south. Representations of some of the architectural details of various periods can still be seen, thanks to water-colour sketches of the late eighteenth century and to the early interest shown in the Gothic manner by Brayley and Carter, who drew some of their architectural examples from the nunnery.1 The nunnery church was partially on the site of the present St. James's, but it stretched farther to the west, a fact which misled the Ordnance Survey into misplacing the position of the cloister. The church had been parochial long before the Dissolution, as was the case at St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and did not become a parish church as a result of that event, as has been generally assumed.2 The curious position of the incumbent as ' curate ' after the. Dissolution may be a clue to the position of the parish priest in medieval times as a dependant of the prioress. Under an act of 28 April 31 Henry VIII, on 21 March 1550 the bishop of London acquired jurisdiction over the site of the late monastery of Clerkenwell and the church and parish of Clerkenwell, which had hitherto been exempt.8 St. Mary's was founded in the reign of Stephen, just after its neighbour, 1 W. O. Hassall, ' The Conventual Buildings of St. Mary, Clerkenwell', Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, N.S., viii, part ii. The topographical index of architectural drawings made under the auspices of the Royal Institute of British Architects is of great use in locating original drawings. • Miss E. Jeffries Davis, ' The Transformation of London ', Tudor Studies, p. 304. References to the parish are too numerous to give here. • Col. Pat. Rolls, 1549-51, p. 171. As Clerkenwell had certainly not been exempt in the sense of exempt from visitation by the bishop, this would apparently refer to exemption from visitation by the archdeacon. vii Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 24 Sep 2021 at 11:45:59, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000000960 viii INTRODUCTION the priory of St. John. This date is considerably later than that which is usually given by writers on either house, but it was satisfactorily established by J. H. Round.1 The founder of both houses was Jordan de Briset, whose family were among the most munificent of the early benefactors of the nunnery.2 Like St. John the Baptist's, Holywell, the nunnery has generally been regarded as a Benedictine one.3 In both cases, however, the nuns seem to have been really Augustinian, although in several documents they are distinctly called Benedictine. The truth seems to be that the importance attached to the name of the order, in this and other houses of women, was less than has been generally assumed. Unless important interests were at stake, words with very different meanings could be confused in the middle, as in other, ages. The most comprehensive statement of the privileges of the nunnery is to be found in a bull of Urban III of 19 October 1186, which rather inexplicably is omitted from the cartulary. It is found in Archbishop Warham's Register, having been copied into it as a result of a visitation of Sittingbourne, though it is concerned not only with Sittingbourne church but with the property and privileges of the nunnery in general.4 It is interesting both in view of the rarity of early Papal bulls in favour of nunneries, and for the positive informa- tion it gives about the position of St. Mary's. In confirming grants to the nuns made by various benefactors, it summarises the endowments which the nunnery had received almost to the end of the reign of Henry II. The privileges include all liberties and immunities granted by King Henry, and provide for the free election of the prioress according to the Rule of St. Benedict, the protection of the community from various unreasonable demands which might be made on them by bishops or archdeacons, and the exemption of this property from the payment of certain tithes. Special reference is also made to the necessity for obtaining the consent of the chapter or ' the better and wiser part' of the community to any alienation of land or churches which the prioress might wish to make. Further information regarding the early endowments of the nunnery is given by a series of royal charters of the late twelfth century. Four of these, dated c. May 1176, 1181-2 and 20 March 1190, are especially useful. No. 10, a charter of c. May 1176 (but possibly as late as April 1179) shows that by that date the nuns not only had been granted property in Clerkenwell and London, 1 J. H. Round, ' The Foundation of the Priories of St. Mary and St. John, Clerkenwell', Archaeologia, lvi. 223-8, an article ignored by most subsequent writers in a way which much annoyed the author. Actually Tanner had already shown that Jordan de Briset could not have died as early as stated in the cartulary of St. John's ; Notitia (1744), p. 299, note a . a W. O. Hassall, ' The Family of Jordan de Briset', Genealogists' Magazine, ix, no. 15, p. 21. 3 The nuns of Clerkenwell are called canonesses in the will of a minor canon of St. Paul's, Husting Roll, 122 (39). In Urban Ill's bull of 19 October 1186 they are Benedictine and in a bull of pope Nicholas V (1447-55), Lambeth MS., 644, 45. But in 1420 and 1424 they are ' ordinis sancti Augustini', in Register of Chichele, i. 194 and 220. * W. O. Hassall ' Two bulls for St. Mary, Clerkenwell', Eng. Hist. Rev., lvii (1942), 97. The bull was missed by Dr. W. Holtzmann in his Papsturhunden in England. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 24 Sep 2021 at 11:45:59, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000000960 INTRODUCTION ix but also at Muswell, Chester, Fulbourn, Steeple, Grateley, Kingston in Cambridgeshire, Wanstead, Mountnessing, Tittleshall in Norfolk, and [Stoke] Newington. A charter x of Henry II, apparently contemporary with No. 10, cannot be later then July 1176. It omits several of the grants included in no. 10, but is very important as it includes a number which are not in this and thereby provides an earlier terminus ante quern than would otherwise have been deducible from these general confirmations. No. 9 thus confirms grants at Blandford, Winchester, Tottenham, Shoebury, Haslingfield and Langford. The charter of 1181 also mentions Danebottom and Tollington at Islington, Willingale, Fyfield, Weston in Suffolk, Radwell in Hertfordshire, Wratting and Pershore. Urban Ill's bull of 19 October 1186 adds Sittingbourne, Tottenham, Shoebury, North Weald Bassett, Blandford, Winchester, Dunmow, Langford, Haslingfield, Stanstead and the church of St. Mary Staining in London. Richard I's confirmation does not mention any parishes not mentioned in the earlier confirmations, except Reed in Hertfordshire, Boston in Lincolnshire, and Cadmore End in Buckinghamshire: the last two are not heard of again. But at an early date the nuns began to concentrate their property, and they soon retained none in many of the parishes mentioned in these charters.2 A considerable number of the deeds in the cartulary are grants made by members of the family of the founder. Most of these were made before the end of the twelfth century : for they are summarised in a final concord between prioress Ermengarde and Lecia de Munteni. This final concord has been reproduced in full elsewhere.3 It is dated 27 April 1197, and deals with lands in Clerkenwell, St. Sepulchre's, Stoke Newington, Steeple and Wanstead. It has much in common with no. 83, including 10 marks consideration, and differs only in its greater precision. For the first century of the nunnery's existence the story of its endowment is told in considerable detail in the cartulary. The last half century is also known in some detail through the survival in the records of the Augmentation Office of a number of account rolls.4 Like the cartulary, these account rolls can be supplemented by occasional documents which happen to survive. But for the intervening period comparatively little can be learnt from the muni- ments of the nunnery, except through the evidence contained in a selection of documents added at the end of the cartulary at various dates.