Dame Petronilla and Dame Margaret! how little they could have thought when they penned their simple accounts that they would have given such pleasurable information five hundred years after their time! How little they could ever have dreamed of the pleasant light their jottings would have thrown on so many of their doings and their little ways! They were kind, prudent, charitable souls, without a doubt, and if they might at times have used better ink than they did, that fault was a point of holy parsimony. And if they might have given here and there just a little more information on certain points, they are willingly forgiven and more than forgiven, for what they have left to posterity. Their souls, oft so troubled and vexed by the many cares incidental to the office of a conventual Martha, have long doubtless been in peace, and their spirits no longer vexed by Richard the "Hyrenmonger" and the two Johns, the senior and junior plumbers. What would they think, could they to-day revisit the scene of their former labours and cares? The old home they evidently loved so well is past repairing now, and not even the kindly help of that old servant and friend of the convent, Henry Smith, could avail to suggest the best way of setting about reparation.
All the larger nunneries and probably most of the smaller ones, to whatever Order they belonged, opened their doors for the education of young girls, who were frequently boarders. In fact the female portion of the population, the poor as well as the rich, had in the convents their only schools, nuns their only teachers, in pre-Reformation times. Chaucer, in describing the well-to-do miller of Trompington, says--
"A wyf he hadde, come of noble kyn; Sche was i-fostryd in a nonnery ... Ther durste no wight clepe hir but _Madame_ What for hir kindred and hir nortelry That sche had lerned in the nonnerye."
John Aubrey, too, writes almost as an eye-witness of the Wiltshire convents that "the young maids were brought up ... at nunneries, where they had examples of piety, and humility, and modesty, and obedience to imitate and to practise. Here they learned needlework, the art of confectionery, surgery (for anciently there were no apothecaries or surgeons--the gentlewomen did cure their poor neighbours: their hands are now too fine), physic, writing, drawing, etc. Old Jacques could see from his house the nuns of the priory (St. Mary's, near Kington St. Michael) come forth into the nymph-hay with their rocks and wheels to spin: and with their sewing work. He would say that he had told threescore and ten: but of nuns there were not so many, but in all, with lay sisters and widows, old maids and young girls, there might be such a number. This," he concludes, "was a fine way of breeding up young women, who are led more by example than precept; and a good retirement for widows and grave single women to a civil, virtuous, and holy life."