Page:Medieval English nunneries c. 1275 to 1535.djvu/33

Rh The same consideration preoccupies Madame Eglentyne at her supper: "in curteisye was set ful muche hir lest." Good manners, elegant deportment, the polish of the court, all that we mean by nurture, these are her aim:

Her pets are the pets of ladies in metrical romances and in illuminated borders; "smalehoundes," dehcately fed with "rosted flesh, or milk and wastel-bread." Her very beauty

conforms to the courtly standard. Only the mention of her chanting of divine service (through the tretys nose) differentiates her from any other well-born lady of the day; and if Chaucer had not told us whom he was describing, we might never have known that she was a nun. It was in these ideals and traditions that most of the inmates of English convents were born and bred.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, another class rose into prominence and, perhaps because it was originally drawn to a great extent from the younger sons of the country gentry, found amalgamation with the gentry easy. The development of trade and the new openings for the employment of capital had brought about the rise of the English merchant class. Hitherto foreigners had financed the English crown, but during the first four years of the Hundred Years' War it became clear that English merchants were now rich and powerful enough to take their place; and the triumph of the native was complete when, in 1345, Edward III repudiated his debts to the Italian merchants and the Bardi and Peruzzi failed. Henceforth the Enghsh merchants were supreme; on the one hand their trading ventures enriched them; on the other they made vast sums out of farming the customs and the war subsidies in return