house, and he had to pay an entrance fee of L200 in modern money; and then he had to give Eglentyne her new habit and a bed, and some other furniture; and he had to make a feast on the day she became a nun, and invite all the nuns and all his own friends; and he had to tip the friar, who preached the sermon; and, altogether, it was a great affair.[2] But the feast would not come at once, because Eglentyne would have to remain a novice for some years, until she was old enough to take the vows.  So she would stay in the convent and be taught how to sing and to read, and to talk French of the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe with the other novices.  Perhaps she was the youngest, for girls often did not enter the convent until they were old enough to decide for themselves whether they wanted to be nuns; but there were certainly some other quite tiny novices learning their lessons; and occasionally there would be a little girl like the one whose sad fate is recorded in a dull law-book, shut up in a nunnery by a wicked stepfather who wanted her inheritance (a nun could not inherit land, because she was supposed to be dead to the world), and told by the nuns that the devil would fly away with her if she tried to set foot outside the door.[3] However, Eglentyne had a sunny disposition and liked life in the nunnery, and had a natural aptitude for the pretty table manners which she learnt there, as well as for talking French, and though she was not at all prim and liked the gay clothes and pet dogs which she used to see at home in her mother’s bower, still she had no hesitation at all about taking the veil when she was fifteen, and indeed she rather liked the fuss that was made of her, and being called Madame or Dame, which was the courtesy title always given to a nun.

The years passed and Eglentyne’s life jogged along peacefully enough behind the convent walls.  The great purpose for which the nunneries existed, and which most of them fulfilled not unworthily, was the praise of God.  Eglentyne spent a great deal of her time singing and praying in the convent church, and, as we know,

Ful wel she song the service divyne,
Entuned in hir nose ful semely.

The nuns had seven monastic offices to say every day.  About 2 a.m. the night office was said; they all got out of bed when the bell rang, and went down in the cold and the dark to the church choir and said Matins, followed immediately by Lauds.  Then they went back to bed, just as the dawn was breaking in the sky, and slept again for three hours, and then got up for good at six o’clock and said Prime.  After that there followed Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, spread at intervals through the day.  The last service, compline, was said at 7 p.m. in winter, and at 8 p.m. in summer, after which the nuns were supposed to go straight to bed in the dorter, in which connexion one Nun’s Rule ordains that ’None shall push up against another wilfully, nor spit upon the stairs going up and down, but if they tread it out forthwith’![4] They had in all about eight hours’ sleep, broken in the middle by the night service.  They had three meals, a light repast of bread and beer after prime in the morning, a solid dinner to the accompaniment of reading aloud in the middle of the day, and a short supper immediately after vespers at 5 or 6 p.m.