Page:Medieval English nunneries c. 1275 to 1535.djvu/37

Rh of different convents among the citizens of London. Between the years 1258 and the Dissolution, 52 wills contain references to one or more nuns related to the testators. From these it appears that the most popular house was Clerkenwell in Middlesex, which is mentioned in nine wills. Barking in Essex comes next with eight references, and St Helen's Bishopsgate with seven ; the house of Minoresses without Aldgate is five times mentioned , Haliwell in London and Stratford-atte-Bowe outside, having five and four references respectively, Kilburn in Middlesex three , Sopwell in Hertfordshire two , Mailing and Sheppey in Kent two each. Other convents are mentioned once only and in some cases a testator leaves legacies to nuns by name, without mentioning where they are professed. All these houses were in the diocese of London and either in or near the capital itself; they lay in the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Essex, Hertford and Bedford It was but rarely that city girls went as far afield as Denny in Cambridgeshire, where the famous fishmonger and mayor of London, John Philpott, had a daughter Thomasina.

Thus the nobles, the gentry and the superior rank of burgess—the upper and the upper-middle classes—sent their daughters to nunneries. But nuns were drawn from no lower class; poor girls of the lowest rank—whether the daughters of artisans or of country labourers—seem never to have taken the veil. A certain degree of education was demanded in a nun before her admission and the poor man's daughter would have neither the money, the