Susanna GREGORY: An Order for Death

The Warden of the Franciscans in 1354 was probably William Pechem, while John de Daventre is mentioned in a document dated to 1348.

The Prior of the Carmelites at the time was William de Lincolne. John Horneby became an important man in the Carmelite Order, and was a Regius professor of theology. The Carmelite Order arrived in Cambridge in the 1290s, where they built a church on Milne Street (probably near where King’s Chapel stands today). Humphrey de Lecton was the first Carmelite to earn a doctor’s degree in Cambridge. If he were buried in the town, it is likely to have been in a graveyard in the conventual church, although he was probably not honoured with as splendid a tomb as the one described here.

With the blessing of the King, Ralph de Norton was elected Prior of the Austin community at Barnwell in 1349, after his predecessor died of the plague. His election was contested five months later by a man called Simon of Seez, who had been granted the position by the Pope at Avignon. This led to some lively politicking on Ralph’s part, but that is another story. Ralph had two brother monks called John and Simon Lynne, while a man named William Walcote was also a Cambridge Austin canon in the 1350s. The canons ran a small hospital, the chapel of which was dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. This still stands, and is the pretty Norman building on the Newmarket Road.

Throughout the fourteenth century, records indicate that the small Benedictine convent of St Radegund’s had something of a reputation for licentious behaviour. One Mabel Martyn was Prioress in the 1320s and 1330s, while Eve Wasteneys is recorded as Prioress in 1359. The nuns were poor, and had lost a great deal in a devastating fire in 1313, but this does not excuse some of their behaviour. In 1373, 1389 and several times in the 1400s, the convent was visited by various officials, and the nuns were warned about their ‘extravagant and dissolute lifestyles’. According to the officials’ reports, nuns were allowed to leave the priory when they pleased, and men visited them at ‘inappropriate hours’. By 1496, only two nuns remained (one of whom was said to have been of ‘ill fame’), and Bishop Alcock of Ely expelled them and used the estates and buildings to found the College of St Mary the Virgin, St John the Evangelist and St Radegund the Virgin, which, almost since its inception, was known as Jesus College. So, although the nuns in this tale might appear flagrant in their intentions, this part of the story may not be as far-fetched as it may seem.

Susanna Gregory is a pseudonym. Before she earned her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and became a research Fellow at one of the colleges, she was a police officer in Yorkshire. She has written a number of non-fiction books, including ones on castles, cathedrals, historic houses and world travel.

She and her husband live in a village near Cambridge.