and cloister ... are foully defiled ... and whereas, through their inordinate noise divine service is frequently troubled—­therefore we strictly command and enjoin you, Lady Abbess, that you remove the dogs altogether and that you suffer them never henceforth, nor any other such hounds, to abide within the precincts of your nunnery.’[18] But it was useless for any bishop to order Madame Eglentyne to give up her dogs, she could not even be parted from them on a pilgrimage, though they must have been a great nuisance in the inns, especially as she was so fussy about their food.

For Chaucer’s prioress, we must admit, was rather a worldly lady, though her pretty clothes and little dogs were harmless enough on modern standards and one’s sympathies are all against the bishops.  She probably became more worldly as time went on, because she had so many opportunities for social intercourse.  Not only had she to entertain visitors in the convent, but often the business of the house took her away upon journeys and these offered many opportunities for hobnobbing with her neighbours.  Sometimes she had to go to London to see after a law-suit and that was a great excursion with another nun, or perhaps two, and a priest and several yeomen to look after her.  Sometimes she had to go and see the bishop, to get permission to take in some little schoolgirls.  Sometimes she went to the funeral of a great man, whom her father knew and who left her twenty shillings and a silver cup in his will.  Sometimes she went to the wedding of one of her sisters, or to be godmother to their babies; though the bishops did not like these worldly ties, or the dances and merry-makings which accompanied weddings and christenings.  Indeed her nuns occasionally complained about her journeys and said that though she pretended it was all on the business of the house, they had their doubts; and would the bishop please just look into it.  At one nunnery we find the nuns complaining that their house is L20 in debt ’and this principally owing to the costly expenses of the prioress, because she frequently rides abroad and pretends that she does so on the common business of the house although it is not so, with a train of attendants much too large and tarries too long abroad and she feasts sumptuously, both when abroad and at home and she is very choice in her dress, so that the fur trimmings of her mantle are worth 100s’![19]

As a matter of fact there was nothing of which the church disapproved more than this habit, shared by monks and nuns, of wandering about outside their cloisters; moralists considered that intercourse with the world was at the root of all the evil which crept into the monastic system.  The orthodox saying was that a monk out of his cloister was like a fish out of water; and it will be remembered that Chaucer’s monk thought the text not worth an oyster.  Indeed most of the monks managed to swim very well in the air, and the nuns too persisted in taking every sort