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The Religious Life of Women in Sixteenth-century Yorkshire (Presidential Address)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Claire Cross
Claire Cross*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of York
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Extract

On 17 September 1523 a very wealthy widow, Dame Joan Thurscross, made her will in Hull. Her benefactions included £30 for new vestments to her parish church of St Mary’s, £35 to hire a priest for seven years to sing for her soul, the souls of her three husbands, of her parents, and of her son, £4 to the building works at the White Friars’, £12 for a priest to perform an obit in St Leonard’s convent in Grimsby, where she had been born, small presents to her god-daughter and other nuns at Sixhills, £20 for mending the causeway between Beverley and Anlaby, thirteen white gowns for thirteen poor women, and silver masers or standing pieces for Sixhills Nunnery, Kirkstall Abbey, and the Charterhouse of Hull. It is impossible to read this very individual will and not recognize the bequests, however conventional in themselves, as being the carefully thought out intentions of the testatrix. With its emphasis upon Masses for the dead and stress on die necessity of good works it furnishes a poignant example of late medieval piety.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 27: Women in the Church , 1990 , pp. 307 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990

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References

1 Borthwick Institute, York, Prob. Reg. 9, fols 272r-3r (Thurscross). Spelling in all quotations has been modernized.

2 Meads, D. M., ed., Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby (London, 1930), pp. 39’40 Google Scholar.

3 Burton, J.E., The Yorkshire Nunneries in ihe Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Borthwick Paper, 56 (York, 1979)Google Scholar.

4 Borthwick, Archbp Reg. 28, fols 95r-6r, 96r-v, 99r; CP G 216; W. Browne, ed., Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, III, Yorkshire Archaeological Society (hereafter YAS), Record Series, 51 (1914), pp. 111-12.

5 Prob. Reg. 11, pt 2, fols 559v-60r (Nandike); Prob. Reg. 13, pt 1, fol. 270r-v (Thomlinson).

6 Power, E., Medieval Women, ed., Postan, M.M. (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 96’7 Google Scholar; LP, 12(2), no 549; Miscellanea III, YAS Record Series, 80 (1931), pp. 82-7.

7 Misc. III, pp. 81-2,101,125-6; W. Dugdale, Monaisticon, 4 (London, 1846), pp. 324-6, PRO, E 164/31 fol. 53.

8 Prob.Reg. 13, pt 1, fols 335v-6r; J.W. Clay, ed., Testamenta Eboracensia, SS, 106(1902), p.256 (Conyers); Leeds Record Office (hereafter LRO), RD/AP1/8/140; J. Raine, ed., Richmond Wilis, SS, 26 (1853), pp. 191-3 (Burghe).

9 Borthwick, C P G 216.

10 Archbp Reg. 28 fols 95r-6r; Prob. Reg. 9, fols 329v-30r (Proctor), fol. 368V (Lorde); Prob. Reg. 11, pt 1, fol. 186r (Hungate).

11 Prob. Reg. 9, fol. 133V (Normavale), fol. 195r (Tonge), fols 405r-6v (Rither), fol. 412r-v (Fairfax); Prob. Reg. 10 fols 17v-19r (Bradford), fol. 84r-v (Marshall); Prob. Reg. 11, pt 1, fol. 105r-V (Whitfeld); Archbp Reg. 28 fol. 174r-v (Gurnell).

12 Archbp Reg. 28, fols 95r-r; Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, III, pp. 111-12; Borthwick, CP G 216.

13 Archbp Reg. 28, fol. 99r; G. W. O. Woodward, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (London, 1966), p. 39; Borthwick, Mon. Misc. 7.

14 LP, 13(1), p. 575; J. W. Clay, Yorkshire Monasteries: Suppression Papers, YAS Record Series, 48 (1912), pp. 87-91.

15 G. W. O. Woodward, ‘The Benedictines and Cistercians in Yorkshire in the sixteenth century’(Trinity College, Dublin, Ph.D. thesis, 1955), pp. 311, 315, 316-17; Clay, Suppression Papers, pp. 140-1; LP, 13 (1), g 646 (17, 18).

16 LP, 15 p. 553; Clay, Suppression Papers, pp. 91-3,93-4, 143-8, 155-7.

17 Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 11, pt 1, fol. 363V (Norman); Clay, Suppression Papers, p. 167 n.; Prob. Reg. 13, pt 2, fol. 705r-V (Lord).

18 Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 11, pt 2, fols 559v-60r (Nandike), fol. 715V (Foster); Prob. Reg. 13, pt 1, fol. 270r-v (Thomlinson), fols 335v-6r (Conyers); pt 2, fol. 705r-v (Lorde); Prob. Reg. 15, pt 1, fol. 357V (Thorne); LRO, RD/AP1/43/19; Raine, Richmond Wills, pp. 143-4 (Harkey); LRO, RD/AP1/8/140; Raine, Richmond Wills, p. 193 (Burghe).

19 Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 11, pt 2, fols 559v-60r (Nandike); Prob. Reg. 13, pt 1, fol. 270r-v (Thomlinson); pt 2, fol. 705r-v (Lorde); Prob. Reg. 18, fol. 152v(Ward);LRO RD/AP1/43/19 (Harkey), RD/AP1/8/140 (Burghe); Dobson, R. B. and Donaghey, S., The History of Clementhorpe Nunnery, York Archaeological Trust (London, 1984), p. 27 Google Scholar.

20 Dickens, A. G., The Marian Reaction in the Diocese of York: Part II, the Laity, Borthwick Paper, 12 (York, 1957), pp. 16’19 Google Scholar; VCH, Yorkshire, 3 (London, 1913), pp. 178-82; Borthwick, CP G 2216 (Bashford), PRO, E 164/31 f 53.

21 Walker, J. W., ed., Chartularies of the Priory of Monk Bretton, YAS, Record Series, 66 (1924), pp. vi’vii, 5’7 Google Scholar; Aveling, H., Northern Catholics: The Catholic Recusants of the North Riding of Yorkshire (London, 1966), p. 253 Google Scholar.

22 Borthwick Prob. Reg. 9, fol. 170r (Roclif), fol. 354V (Harman), fol. 382r (Harrison);Prob. Reg. 11, pt 2, fols 620V-1r (Huntingdon).

23 H. Aveling, Post Reformation Catholicism in East Yorkshire 1558-1790 (East Yorkshire Local History Society, 1960), p. 20; and see also, Rowlands, M. B., ‘Recusant women 1560-1640’, in Prior, M., ed., Women in English Society, 1500-1850 (London, 1985), pp. 150’1 Google Scholar.

24 Bossy, J. A., The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 (London, 1975), esp. pp. 1’48 Google Scholar.

25 Mush, J., ‘Life of Margaret Clitherow’, in Morris, J., ed.. The Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers related by Themselves, ser. 3 (London, 1877), pp. 390’2 Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., pp. 375, 393-4.

27 H. Aveling, Northern Catholics, pp. 255-6; M. B. Rowlands, ‘Recusant Women’, in Prior, ed., Women in English Society, pp. 168-74.

28 Borthwick, CP G 1041.

29 Aveling, Post Reformation Catholicism, p. 17; Meads, ed., Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, pp. 4-36.

30 Ibid., pp. 74-5. In form Lady Margaret’s diary closely resembles that of Samuel Ward, which he began keeping when still a student at Cambridge in 1595: Knappen, M. M., ed., Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward (Chicago, 1933)Google Scholar.

31 Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, p. 86.

32 Ibid., pp. 62, 67, 68, 69, 77, 87, 88, 97, 98, 114, 129, 163, 170, 181.

33 Ibid., pp. 73, 151.

34 For a rather different point of view see E. Macek, ‘The emergence of a feminine spirituality in The Book of Martyrs’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 19 (1988), pp. 63-80.