of the Prior of Canterbury, is still
extant. There were various charges against her, that she allowed some of
the sisters to wear long hair, did not prevent the nuns going into the
town and drinking at the taverns, treated some with great severity, did
not keep the convent accounts accurately, suffered sundry roofs to get out
of order, and that she was much under the influence of the chaplain,
Master Bryce. Some years before this she had been charged with adultery;
this she seems to have denied with oaths, and finally, when she could
brazen it out no further, she confessed to adultery and perjury and
resigned her office, the only thing she could do; but the most remarkable
part of the story is still to come: the sisters being required to fill the
vacant post by the election of an abbess, almost unanimously re-elected
Elizabeth Broke. Two only, Elizabeth herself and one other, did not vote
for her. The bishop thereupon restored her to her position as abbess, but
to mark his displeasure with her he forbade her to use the abbatial staff
for seven years. The remaining years of her rule were not satisfactory.
The sisters took advantage of the scandal she had caused to act in an
insubordinate way towards her. The next abbess was Joyce Rowse, but she
was utterly unable to reinstate the old discipline--we hear of her
revelling with some of the sisters in the abbess's quarters. Bishop
Fox in his injunctions in 1507 forbade sundry priests to hold any
communication with the abbess or with any of the nuns. William Scott was
forbidden to gossip with the nuns at the kitchen window. Nature it would
seem was much the same in the sixteenth century as it is now, and the
convent servants loved gossip as much as ours do.

The abbess, finding that she could not maintain her authority in the
abbey, resigned, and Anne Westbrooke, formerly mistress of the convent
school, was appointed to succeed her in 1515. She died in 1593, and was
succeeded by the last abbess, Elizabeth Ryprose; she seems to have been
a capable woman, and tried hard to do her duty. But it was too late to
purify the abbey. Various nuns were reprimanded or punished in 1527 by the
vicar-general. Alice Gorsyn confessed to having used bad language and
having spread false and defamatory stories about the sisters; on her
confession she was admitted to penance, but it was ordered that if she
transgressed again in like manner she was to wear a tongue made of red
cloth under her chin