Valor Ecclesiasticus Syon’s income from all its perquisites of court was 133li 0s 6d out of a total income of 1944li 11s 5 1/4d,7 so these privileges clearly did much to add to Syon’s great wealth. Building on such grants and privileges, Syon became the wealthiest nunnery in England.
Syon’s foundation charter also manifests the abbess’s power in the Brigittine tradition, stressing her control of the house’s resources. It states that Matilda Newton, whom Henry V preferred as abbess, and her successors, “shall preside over the nuns or sisters aforesaid, and take upon themselves the whole government of the aforesaid monastery, as well in spirituals as temporals, and that they shall do and execute those things which in anywise do or may belong to the abbess of the said place, (excepting only that the same confessor shall preside over the aforesaid religious men in spirituals as is aforesaid).”8 A letter written to the abbess of Syon by a servant makes clear that the authority constructed for her in profession and visitation and reiterated in the foundation charter was recognized in materially significant ways. The servant reports to the abbess that as promised he has “delyuered to maister confessor a bill of all the some of wode in eny lordship that I haue sold & taken money for sethen I was furst offecer.”9 He says that of the total sum he delivered 3li 11s 4d to the Lord of Surrey’s officer since that officer claimed that amount of wood as his. Thus, he continues:
the hole some with that cometh to xvli viiis iiiid[.] [O]f this xvli viiis iiiid[,] xiiili part of xxxili that my ladie alowed me in myn acount is parte ther of as the boke of acount will shewe[.] [T]his will I abide bie[.] [I]f eny persone or persones will sey the contrarie[,] or that I haue done eny extorcion[,] taken eny brybes[,] or mysordered my self wetyngly & wylfully in eny cause othrwyse than a true crysten man or true offecer shuld[,] so lete hym or theym be cald be fore you & your councell & I in lyke case[.] & in eny thyng then so proued contrarie to this my wrytyng take of me what ye will in satesfaccon.10
The letter attests to the abbess’s active involvement in the details of the house’s business, and the servant responds to her as he would to any man of business. The details show that he fully expects the abbess to comprehend accounts, and he clearly thinks that she will be up to date on the state of the house’s possessions. Since Syon was a community in which female education and literacy flourished, the servant’s belief that the abbess would be well equipped to manage the house’s considerable resources was likely accurate.11 The servant’s statement concerning the funds “that my ladie alowed me” reveals both the abbess’s secular dignity in the form of address (“my ladie”) and her authoritative agency in the allocation of resources. The fact that the servant reports to the abbess having delivered the bill of sale to the master confessor underscores her role as the community’s chief administrator of money and property. Furthermore, the servant’s concern with proving he has not taken bribes or otherwise behaved improperly highlights the abbess’s status as an acknowledged judge of morality and equity with the power to punish transgressions.
The Syon servant’s addressing the abbess as “my ladie” also suggests that in daily life, as in visitation practices, the high social status of the Brigittine nuns may have enhanced their independence. St. Birgitta herself was, after all, connected with the royal house of Sweden, a fact that certainly helped her further her efforts to found a new religious order (and that may well have helped to protect her from the worst sort of persecution faced by less well-connected holy women, visionaries, and religious reformers, including Margery Kempe, who identified so closely with Birgitta). Religious identity and social identity are not entirely separable, even though theoretically both men and women religious leave behind their secular identities upon entry into a monastic order. The assertion of female power at Syon is thus simultaneously an assertion of aristocratic privilege, just as the symbolic capital available to Benedictine brides of Christ works in concert with the aristocratic origins of the Barking nuns to enhance their ability to command social and spiritual respect.
English Minoresses share with the Brigittines an aristocratic heritage, tracing their lineage back to Isabella’s own foundation of Longchamp. English communities of Minoresses also possessed privileges nearly as enviable as those of Syon. The London Minoresses, like the Brigittines, enjoyed significant independence from secular authority which bolstered their wealth and their ability to administer their resources. For instance, as a consequence of a 1404 grant by Henry IV, which exempted the community from all lay jurisdiction except in cases of treason or felony touching the Crown, they were entirely outside even the mayor of London’s jurisdiction.12
The Minoresses also had important ecclesiastical freedoms which enhanced their material circumstances. Bulls from 1295 and 1296 exempted the London house “from episcopal and archiepiscopal jurisdictions, payment for chrism, sacraments, and consecration of their church and altars and excommunication by bishops and rectors.” As Martha Carlin observes, “These privileges reduced the nuns’ obligations to and dependence on their parish church (St. Botolph Aldgate) and its rector, the prior and convent of Holy Trinity.” Additionally, in 1303, the London community’s precinct was completely detached from the parish when the prior of Holy Trinity “quitclaimed to the abbess and convent all the priory’s parochial rights in the precinct.”13
The house of Minoresses at Waterbeach was covered by the thirteenth-century papal bulls which applied to the London Minoresses, and in 1343, when the Waterbeach nuns were transferred to Denney, that community received the same exemptions.14 The founder of Denney, Mary de St. Pol, countess of Pembroke and a childless widow who was quite able in managing her own resources, worked to secure that her foundation was, like the London community, independent of external authorities.15 In 1356, thanks to her procurement, Alan de Walshingam, prior of Ely, formally abandoned all claim that he and the convent might have on Denney Abbey and its possessions.16 Such privileges enhanced the Franciscan nuns’ ability to administer their resources and increased their wealth; the London Minoresses, for instance, were among the wealthiest nuns in England.
Throughout the Middle Ages, until about the middle of the fourteenth century, English monasteries, like other landholders, largely relied on direct exploitation of their estates. From 1350 to 1450, though, throughout England the gradual leasing of demesne was the most important change in estate administration.17 Due to low prices of agricultural products and high costs of large-scale farming, landlords increasingly abandoned direct exploitation of lands.18 Religious houses were as subject to these market forces as other landlords, and they likewise turned to leasing their lands rather than exploiting them directly. Setting aside London convents, which drew large portions of their income from money rents for streets of houses and shops, and setting aside a smattering of urban holdings distributed among various other houses, by the later fourteenth century the greatest proportion of nunneries’ incomes was “the money derived from the possession of agricultural land, and in particular the rents paid by tenants in freehold, copyhold, customary and leasehold land.”19 Nuns thus participated in the “commercialisation” of the English economy, which R. H. Britnell argues was the key long-term trend throughout the Middle Ages.20
Extracts from the Court Rolls of Denney preserved in MS BL Add. 5837 provide evidence that the Minoresses’ participation in “commercialisation” led to opportunities for temporal independence on a personal level.21 These records contain detailed evidence for the distribution of resources among individual nuns in that community using the prebend system. In this system, the community as a whole approved division of the convent’s property into portions for which sisters individually received rent. The prebend system thus provided occasions both for women religious to act as a corporate body independent of outside ecclesiastical authority in the distribution of portions and for them to act individually in their own names in the management of portions. For instance, in 10 Henry V, the abbess, Margaret Milly “by the Consent of the whole Convent & Chapter there, doth graunt to Johan Colcestr, & Margert Hyston, Sisters of the Abbey of Denney, one Acre & one Roode of Severall in the Marish
