How many of the literary critics, who chuckle over her, know that she never ought to have got into the Prologue at all?  The Church was quite clear in its mind that pilgrimages for nuns were to be discouraged.  As early as 791 a council had forbidden the practice and in 1195 another at York decreed, ’In order that the opportunity of wandering may be taken from nuns we forbid them to take the path of pilgrimage.’  In 1318 an archbishop of York strictly forbade the nuns of one convent to leave their house ’by reason of any vow of pilgrimage which they might have taken.  If any had taken such vows she was to say as many psalters as it would have taken days to perform the pilgrimage so rashly vowed.’[22] One has a melancholy vision of poor Madame Eglentyne saying psalters interminably through her tretys nose, instead of jogging along so gaily with her motley companions and telling so prettily her tale of little St Hugh.  Such prohibitions might be multiplied from medieval records; and indeed it is unnecessary to go further than Chaucer to understand why it was that bishops offered such strenuous opposition to pilgrimages for nuns; one has only to remember some of the folk, in whose company the prioress travelled and some of the tales they told.  If one could only be certain, for instance, that she rode all the time with her nun and her priests, or at least between the Knight and the poor Parson of a town!  But there were also the Miller and the Summoner and (worst of all) that cheerful and engaging sinner, the Wife of Bath.  It is really quite disturbing to think what additional details the Wife of Bath may have given the prioress about her five husbands.

This then was Chaucer’s prioress in real life, for the poet who drew her was one of the most wonderful observers in the whole of English literature.  We may wade through hundreds of visitation reports and injunctions and everywhere the grey eyes of his prioress will twinkle at us out of their pages, and in the end we must always go to Chaucer for her picture, to sum up everything that historical records have taught us.  As the bishop found her, so he saw her, aristocratic, tender-hearted, worldly, taking pains to ‘countrefete there of court’; liking pretty clothes and little dogs; a lady of importance, attended by a nun and three priests; spoken to with respect by the none too mealy-mouthed host—­no ‘by Corpus Dominus’ or ‘cokkes bones’ or ’tel on a devel wey’ for her, but ‘cometh neer, my lady prioress,’ and

My lady Prioresse, by your leve
If that I wiste I sholde yow nat greve,
I wolde demen that ye tellen sholde
A tale next, if so were that ye wolde. 
Now wol ye vouche-sauf, my lady dere?

He talks to no one else like that, save perhaps to the knight.  Was she religious?  Perhaps; but save for her singing the divine service and for her lovely address to the Virgin, at the beginning of her tale, Chaucer can find but little to say on the point;