eremony related to a nun who was to make
profession, but who had before been blessed, and the third ceremony
related to the consecration of a nun who was not a virgin. Such, in
brief, is a sketch of the convent routine and exercises. It will now
be in place to take a more general view of the nun's environment.

As the hospitality of the convent was often extended to strangers,
it will not be without interest to give a list of the contents of a
chamber which was allotted to a "Dame Agnes Browne" in the Priory of
Minster, in Sheppey: "Stuff given her by her friends:--A fetherbed, a
bolster, 2 pyllows, a payre of blankatts, 2 corse coverleds, 4 pare of
shets good and badde, an olde tester and selar of paynted clothes
and 2 peces of hangyng to the same; a square cofer carvyd, with 2 bed
clothes upon the cofer, and in the wyndow a lytill cobard of waynscott
carvyd and 2 lytill chestes; a small goblet with a cover of sylver
parcell gylt, a lytill maser with a brynne of sylver and gylt,
a lytill pese of sylver and a spore of sylver, 2 lytyll latyn
candellstyks, a fire panne and a pare of tonges, 2 small aundyrons, 4
pewter dysshes, a porrenger, a pewter bason, 2 skyllotts (a small pot
with a long handle), a lytill brasse pot, a cawdyron and a drynkyng
pot of pewter."

That, in the mind of the religious recluse, cleanliness was not
associated with godliness was due to the idea of penance. Washing was
regarded as a luxury not to be indulged in excepting at infrequent
intervals or by special permission. This idea of ablutions was
probably derived at first in reaction from the public baths which
were so much in vogue among the Romans, and which were associated in
the public mind with luxury, and were often the scenes of conduct
quite at variance with the principles for which the nuns stood. The
licentiousness which centred around these places brought them into
such ill repute that to the ascetic mind washing did not so much
signify cleanliness as sin. The virtue of dirt did not extend to the
abbesses, who were allowed to wash whenever it was necessary and as
frequently as they pleased. By a similar process of deduction, the
nuns remained untonsured. In the early times, a woman whose hair was
cut short was looked upon as a disreputable character, so that it
was repellent to conventional ideas of propriety to conform to the
practice of the monks in having the head shaved.

The nuns were not always of the most serious disposition