ter looked into various disorders that had
grown up among the abbesses and sisters. The various methods of procedure
and the things forbidden give us some idea of the abuses that prevailed.
The abbess was required in the injunction issued about 1283 not to
exercise an autocratic power but only a constitutional one, being guided
by the advice of her chapter. It was forbidden to any men except the
confessor, and the doctor in case of illness of a nun, to enter the
convent; all conversation with outsiders was to take place in the presence
of witnesses and in an appointed place. The nuns were forbidden to visit
the laity in Romsey, and other like ordinances were enjoined.

Philippa de Stokes and Clementia de Guildeford were infirm, and
Clementia's successor, Alicia de Wynterseshull, was poisoned soon after
her election, but no evidence could be produced to convict the murderer.

Many episcopal visitations took place during the fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries. The injunctions issued at many of them are in
existence: these deal only with what is blameworthy, not with that which
calls for no reproof. Some of the things objected to seem to us very
trivial. On one occasion the nuns were forbidden to keep pet animals, as
the abbess was charged with giving her dogs and monkeys the food intended
for the sisters. Sometimes the abbess was forbidden to take into the
convent more than a certain number of nuns. In 1333 there were ninety-one,
but after a time the numbers decreased, and at the dissolution there were
only twenty-six. The injunctions of 1311 were very strict, some of them
deal with the locking of doors, forbid the presence of children, whether
boy or girl, in the dormitory or in the choir.

Romsey, like many other religious houses, suffered severely at the time of
the Black Death. The number and names of the ninety-one nuns voting in
1333 at the election of Johanna Icthe has come down to us. The pestilence
reached Weymouth from the east in August, 1348, and of it died the abbess
Johanna, two vicars, one prebendary, and no doubt many of the sisters, as
in 1478 the number of nuns had dropped from ninety-one to eighteen, and
after this there were never more than twenty-six nuns at Romsey. The
reduction in the nuns not only decreased the importance of the abbey but
led to a terrible relaxation of discipline.

The worst scandal arose when Elizabeth Broke was abbess. The evidence
given before Dr. Hede, Commissary