Page:Medieval English nunneries c. 1275 to 1535.djvu/60

36 Stil. The case of Margaret de Prestewych has been preserved in the register of Robert de Stretton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield; and it is satisfactory to know that one energetic girl at least succeeded in making good her protests and in escaping from her prison. In her eighth year or thereabouts, according to her own petition to the Pope, her friends compelled her against her will to enter the priory of the nuns of Seton, of the order of St Augustine, and take on her the habit of a novice. She remained there, as in a prison, for several years, always protesting that she had never made nor ever would willingly make any profession. And then, seeing that she must by profession be excluded from her inheritance, she feigned herself sick and took to her bed. But this did not prevent her being carried to the church at the instance of her rivals and blessed by a monk, in spite of her cries and protests that she would not remain in that priory or in any other order. On the first opportunity she went forth from the priory without leave and returned to the world, which in heart she had never left, and married Robert de Holand, publicly after banns, and had issue. The bishop, to whom the case had been referred by the Pope, found upon inquiry that these things were true, and in 1383 released her from the observance of her order.

Within a few years of this high spirited lady's escape the case of little Clarice Stil engaged the attention of the King's court. The dry-as-dust pages of the medieval law-books hide many jewels for whoever has patience to seek them, but none brighter than this story. It all arose out of a writ of wardship sued by one David Carmayngton or Servyngton against Walter Reynold, whom he declared to have unjustly deforced him of the wardship of the land and heir of Robert Stil, the heir being