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 of Waterbeche, called the Lughallough, for their Lives, without Rent.”22 This extract shows that the nuns, rather than stewards or ministers of the Franciscan order, allocated the portions, which then belonged to Joan and Margaret to manage however they saw fit.
An entry in the court records from 2 Henry V indicates that Joan Colchester already held other property as well—“one Place lying in Lugfen, abutting on the High Barke, & of another in Rushfen, late Jeffrey Burwell’s.” The entry shows that she claimed to hold these properties “freely of her own Purchase,” and that the property was held of the abbey and convent of Denney “by the service of 4s 1d. ob. yearly.”23 That Joan purchased this property and then held it by paying a yearly fee to the house suggests that the portion may well have been property which she bought before becoming a nun and brought with her as an entry gift, and which the house subsequently returned to her for her to administer personally. It is also possible that she bought the property after becoming a nun with entry gift funds remaining in her control after her profession.
Some sisters at Denney seem to have formed lasting business relationships with members of the surrounding community through managing their portions. In 6 Henry V, Edmund Bartlett took to farm of Isabell Winter “one close, called Hetes Holt, with Oysers” for a term of ten years, paying 9s per annum.24 Evidently, Isabell and Edmund had a satisfactory relationship, because in 5 Henry VI he takes “a Close called Letysʒere nigh the Depe” for a term of ten years “by the Assent of Isabell.”25 For this he agrees to render “to the aforesaid Isabell” 12s per annum.26
In developing and cultivating such relationships, nuns worked to ensure their own financial security. Successful, long-term business relationships also made nuns known in the community at large as competent, independent agents in charge of resources. Such status counteracts, at least to some extent, the frequently asserted “myth of women’s financial incompetence,”27 a myth to which ecclesiastical officials frequently had recourse in seizing control of nunneries’ resources and in imposing additional layers of masculine supervision. The experience of success thus opens a locus of resistance to discourses of feminine inferiority and dependence both spiritual and temporal.
The business relationships of Minoresses with others outside the convent were not always satisfactory. Legal documents recording these troubled relationships do have the advantage, however, of highlighting the ways in which the Minoresses made visible “demonstrated or desired identities.”28 Beginning in 1452, Denney had a long-running dispute with Thomas Burgoyne, whose manor of Impington adjoined their manor at Histon, regarding the convent’s property and perquisites there. After Thomas Burgoyne died in 1470, the abbess Joan Ketteryche brought a case in chancery against Alys Burgoyne and John Burgoyne, Thomas’s executors.29 Ketteryche claimed that Thomas “ordeynyd by his wille and testament that his executors shulde paye and restore any Iniuries and wrongges don by hym.”30 The abbess said that the executors should therefore make satisfaction because Thomas had prevented Denney’s tenants from attending Denney’s courts, had stopped the convent’s officers from “takyng of weyff and straye” in some of their fields, had prohibited their tenants from feeding and pasturing cattle in particular fields, and had impounded the cattle, only releasing them upon payment of a fine of 1d for “every fote of the bestes.”31 Furthermore, Thomas Burgoyne was “justice of peasse and keper of the bookes withynne the saide counte of Cambridge,” and he “by feynyd accions” caused Denney’s tenants and servants to be indicted before himself. When writs were served “for the removing of the same,” Thomas would claim “ther were noo suche recordes.”32
It is quite proper that Joan pursued this case, since female superiors had legal responsibility for their houses’ holdings and possessions, and, by virtue of their office, were legal subjects. Female superiors were permitted to leave their monasteries to do homage on behalf of their communities to temporal lords, although only to temporal lords “since all ecclesiastical overlords would be expected to receive proctors in these cases.”33 In spite of the juridical status they had through their offices, though, the fact that female superiors were women religious complicated matters. In his commentary on the papal bull Periculoso, which required strict active and passive claustration for nuns, the fourteenth-century canonist Dominicus de Sancto Gemiano desired to limit the involvement of female superiors in legal cases, since such involvement would take them out of the cloister. He affirms the “unique right of the abbess to leave her cloister to render homage or fealty” but also “cites Roman law authority to support the case that women in general should not be compelled to appear in courts of law.”34 The abbesses of such nunneries as Shaftesbury, St. Mary’s Winchester, Wilton, and Barking had baronial status as landholders; as Eileen Power drily observes, though, “the privilege of being summoned to parliament was omitted on account of their sex” even though “the duty of sending a quota of knights and soldiers to serve the King in his wars was regularly exacted.”35
The way in which Joan Ketteryche’s case plays out shows that she took her responsibilities for her house’s property quite seriously and that she did not see her rights to pursue the case as being in any respect curtailed by her status as a bride of Christ. Although the result was not a total victory for Joan, it does reinforce her authority over resources. The abbess did not recover all of the money—some £883—she sought in damages,36 but she and John