Leo Santifaller: Ergänzungsband 2/1. Festschrift zur Feier des 200 jährigen Bestandes des HHStA 2 Bände (1949)
IV. Quellen und Quellenkunde - 31. R. B. Pugh (London): Fragment of an account of Isabel of Lancester, nun of Amesbury, 13331334
490 Pugh, to have their own subordinates. Their two grooms, commonly employed as messengers and perhapsshared between the two, wereat one time receiving 3d. a day. There is also a reference to Lambrist’s ‘assistants’ who helped to cut Isabel’s black tunics. Colswein and Lambrist are not known to have received wages themselves but they were given pieces of heliotrope cloth to make them summer surcoats. Besides these two officials ladies and other gentlemen were attached to the household. Thomas the gardener and John Scot, the cook, were regular wage-earners. W. de Guildford, a groom of the kitchen, was paid for only six weeks’ work; he was perhaps borrowed temporarily from the convent. John de Holt who shared in auditing the accounts and viewing the stock at Berwick may have been in some way retained. Gunnora the washerwoman and Adam the fool are mentioned. A group of women attendants comes to notice, and it is stated that they received certain foodstuffs on the day on which they decided to live at their own charges. This distribution of food was made through Lady A. Corneis, who was perhaps a kind of overseer of the others. Other ladies are named. M. Maltravers mended a child’s surplice and made Isabel some long sleeves (manicule) of linen (tela de Aillesham)1). She was possibly a sister of the convent; for a nun called Mary Maltravers had made her profession with Isabel in 13272). A Lady A. Swalef’ (doubtless of Swallowfield, Berkshire) bought rushes against Isabel’s return from Kenilworth. Other payees mentioned were more probably employed on commission. Such were Thomas Florak (a member of a south Wiltshire family) who bought a silken casket in London, Nicholas Bristoli’ and sundry other letter-carriers, and Richard de Malvern, who made Isabel a summer tunic. Among those, however, whose services were specially remunerated none is so interesting as Master W[alter] de Longstock, a native (we may suppose) of Longstock in King’s Somborne. The account shows that around Candlemas letters were sent to him at Oxford concerning the sickness of Lady Blount, one of Isabel’s friends; that at Ascensiontide he obtained for Isabel two electuaries and a potion (potus); and that on another occasion he received a letter at Winchester about Isabel’s own sickness. It is obvious that he was tolerably intimate with the Lancaster family; for there is a reference to a visit that he paid to Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire; and he sent Isabel a present of pomegranates and lent her a groom. It is known from other evidence that he was instituted rector of Berwick St. James on 30th October 13343) and that on 26th November next he obtained licence to study at a university for two years4). The licence must have been for post-graduate study, presumably at Oxford, and from the nature of his commissions in medicine. We may imagine that he was regarded by Isabel as her medical adviser or at least as one sufficiently in touch with physicians to procure professional advice from them. Like many another nun Isabel had several children staying with her. They had rooms of their own in her apartments. One of them, for whom four pairs of shoes were bought, was called Elizabeth. Another, known as ‘the Hastings child’, was twice put into the charge of Isabel’s ladies during their mistress’s absence and during a third absence was entrusted to Lady A. Corneis. This little girl was perhaps the ‘Isabel de Hastyng’ for whom three pairs of shoes were bought and the daughter of that Lady Hastings at whose manor of East Tytherley, Hampshire, Isabel of Lancaster appears to have stayed5). All the children had their surplices mended for them and fringes put upon their tunics at Isabel’s expense. Like many of her kind Isabel held her episcopally enjoined claustration not worth an oyster. She visited her relatives frequently. In 1331-2 she had spent ninety-six days 1) Aylsham, Norfolk, was a centre of linen manufacture. See R. Blomefield: History of Norfolk (1805-10), VI, 283; L. F. Salzman: English Industries of the Middle Ages (1913), 166. 2) Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, XVIII, 286-7. 8) Reg. Wyvill Ep. Sár., II, Pt. II, f. 33. 4) ib., Pt, I, f. 29. 5) Isabel de Hastings held this manor in 1333. (Victoria County History of Hampshire, IV, 515.)
