But for the matins books, sandwiched uncomfortably between gowns and hosen, there is no clue here as to what the Lady Bridget was learning.
The tenor of the next letter, written about seven months later, is the same, for still the noble little lady grew:
"Mine singular and special good lady," writes the Abbess, "I heartily recommend me to your good ladyship; ascertaining you that I have received from your servant this summer a side of venison and two dozen and a half of pee-wits."
(What flesh-days there must have been in the refectory!)
"And whereas your ladyship do write that you sent me an ermine cape for your daughter, surely I see none; but the tawny velvet gown that you write of, I have received it. I have sent unto you, by the bringer of your letter, your daughter's black velvet gown; also I have caused kirtles to be made of her old gowns, according unto your writing; and the 10_s._ you sent is bestowed for her, and more, as it shall appear by a bill of reckoning which I have made of the same. And I trust she shall lack nothing that is necessary for her."
Another letter shows that the wardrobe difficulty was no whit abated, but the Abbess dealt with it by the rather hard-hearted expedient of sending poor Bridget away on a visit to her father's steward at Soberton in Hampshire, in her outgrown clothes, in order that he might be moved to amend her state. Clearly it was not always easy to get what was requisite for a schoolgirl from a gay and busy mother, disporting herself across the sea:
"This is to advertise your ladyship," says the Abbess, "Upon a fourteen or fifteen days before Michaelmas, mistress Waynam and mistress Fawkenor came to Winchester to see mistress Bridget Lisle, with whom came two of my lord's servants, and desired to have mistress Bridget to sir Anthony Windsor's to sport her for a week. And because she was out of apparel, that master Windsor might see her, I was the better content to let her go; and since that time she came no more at Winchester: Wherein I beseech your ladyship think no unkindness in me for my light sending of her: for if I had not esteemed her to have come again, she should not have come there at that time."
The reason why lucky little Bridget was enjoying a holiday appears in a letter from the steward, Sir Anthony Windsor, to Lord Lisle, in which he not only takes a firm line over the dress problem (as the Abbess foresaw), but seems also to cast some aspersion upon the nunnery; the nuns, he evidently thought, had no idea how to feed a growing girl, or how to spoil her, as she ought to be spoiled: