d been setting strongly in the other
direction.

The addition of literary and pedagogic duties to the religious routine
and manual labor of the convents made the lives of the nuns extremely
busy, for, in addition to their reading theological and classical
literature, they had the duty of copying and embellishing manuscripts.
It was not unusual for a nun to become proficient in Latin
versification and to correspond in that language with others of a
similar literary taste and training. These women were thus often
highly qualified to teach the subjects which were then included in
polite education. For many centuries theirs were the only schools for
girls. The suppression of the convents was, educationally, a disaster
to England. They were not merely schools for book learning, but such
little knowledge as was current in regard to the treatment of various
disorders and the care of the sick was obtained in the convent
schools. The general custom of bleeding people for every form of
illness, as well as to prevent possible sickness, made necessary some
kind of bandage ready prepared to apply to the wound, and it was a
common practice for nuns to make such bandages and to present them as
gifts to friends. The convent pupils were also taught the finer sorts
of cooking, such as the preparation of special dishes and the making
of sweetmeats and pastry. Needlework, as the most characteristic
employment of women of refinement, music, both vocal and instrumental,
and writing and drawing, entered into the curricula of the convents.

The educational record of the various convents at the time of their
suppression shows that this act of Henry VIII., whatever other
justification it may have had, cannot be supported on the ground that
the convents were not performing a useful service to society in the
education of the youth of the country. Gasquet, in his _Suppression
of the Monasteries_, says: "In the convents, the female portion of the
population found their only teachers, the rich as well as the poor,
and the destruction of the religious houses by Henry was the absolute
extinction of any systematic education for women during a long
period." Thus, at Winchester Convent the list of ladies being educated
within the walls at the time of the suppression shows that these
Benedictine nuns were training the children of the first families in
the country. Carrow, in Norfolk, for centuries gave instruction to
the daughters of the neighboring gent