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
492 Pugh, company and in circumstances that suggest that she may even have been staying with the Earl at Kenilworth or Tutbury and once with Lady M. FitzWalter. She is stated to have purchased black thread and white, linen cloth, a silken girdle, scores of silk and two types of purse—a bursa of silk and an aloer1) with figures upon it (cum imaginibus). She may have made these purchases as Isabel’s agent but it is also possible that they were presents. It is a reasonable conjecture that she, her namesake and Lady M. FitzWalter were all nuns 2). Isabel deserved her friends for she was a generous woman. The account is full of references to gifts that she had made. Some of these were clearly payments for services performed or returns made for kindnesses received. Others, however, strike one as examples of natural benevolence. A few gifts of the latter kind have been already mentioned. In addition the reeve of Berwick was excused the arrears of his account by his mistress’s ‘courtesy’. The parkers of Everleigh, Wiltshire, and of Hungerford were given Is. 6d. apiece; William de Walkington, a friend and executor of her brother, a girdle and silken purse 3) Mary of Lancaster received on the day of her ‘dispensation’ 4) a valuable cup and ewer, an ouch with emeralds (smaraydes) and a cameo, and at her wedding another cup and ewer. Three ‘doddes’ 5) of Cornwall were bought for clothing as many poor. The convent of Amesbury, however, and its individual members profited most. The two fratres who received cash payments were probably brethren of the priory. William le Noble, a third brother, was given a doe when he celebrated his first mass. He is no doubt the same as Brother William of Amesbury at whose first mass a sum of money and a silken purse were offered. The cooks of the convent, when they distributed a pittance of flesh, the prioress’s own cook and the nuns’ sacrist were all remunerated at sundry times. Several feasts of the Church occasioned offerings or the purchase of wine or delicacies: Isabel’s own consecration (or rather its anniversary), the anniversaries of Eleanor of Castile (28 November)6), of the Princess Mary and of ‘Lady C. Mar’ 7), the Eve of All Saints, Christmas, the feast of St. Stephen, Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter Even. We may guess too that some of the great persons for whom special provision was made were really paying visits to the priory rather than to Isabel. The convent would have been glad enough to allow a rich inmate to bear part of the cost of entertaining the proctor of the Abbess of Fontevrault, for whom gobbets of dragée and other dainties were bought. Sir John de Mauduit and Sir Robert Selyman, who came in like manner within the time of the account, were also very possibly on business; for they were great men of the locality. Mauduit was a keeper of the peace for Wiltshire from March 1332 8). He had been sheriff in 1332-3 9) and Selyman was escheator in the same year for a group of counties which included Wiltshire 10). For them Isabel laid in three gallons of must and gave Selyman a girdle and a purse. Such services alone would have encouraged the prioress to turn a blind eye to Isabel’s worldly if innocent life. But there were other reasons for doing so. The Earl of Lancaster *) O. F. Aloiere-a purse. 2) A Mary FitzGautier was consecrated with Isabel in 1327 (Wilts. Arch. Mag., loc. cit.) 3) For Walkington see A. Hamilton Thompson: The History of the Hospital of the New College of ... St. Mary in Leicester (Leicester 1939), 39. 4) Presumably the day on which she was dispensed from the pains of marriage within the forbidden degrees. 5) Presumably ‘duds’—an article of clothing, a coarse cloak. s) The reference in the account is to the mother of Mary, Edward I’s daughter. This must be Eleanor of Castile. One would much sooner have expected it to be to Eleanor of Provence, Edward I’s mother, who entered the convent in her old age and died there on 25th June 1290. 7) Unidentified. 8) Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1330-4, 294, 296. 9) Public Record Office Lists and Indexes No. IX (List of Sheriffs for England and Wales), 152. 10) Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1327—37, 317.
