Priscilla Royal - Tyrant of the Mind

Despite his reluctance to lose a much loved sister to such an austere life, he granted both pleas, and, when his sister was given approval to enter the priory from both Eleanor and the bishop, Sir George sent her off with tears and a generous dowry. Included with his gifts was a letter in which he sent most courteous and quite brotherly affection to Juliana’s new prioress, although Eleanor detected just a hint of wistfulness in his words.

Of the Lady Isabelle, little more is recorded, although the bishop’s register does show that she, shortly after Juliana left for Tyndal, formally took the mantle and ring of a vowess, never to marry again.

There was kept amongst the miscellaneous papers of Tyndal, however, a letter from Sir George of Lavenham to the Prioress Eleanor which was written many years after Isabelle took that vow. In it, he told the prioress that Isabelle did indeed still live. After the young widow had taken her vow of chastity, she locked herself into self-imposed imprisonment in a tower room in Sir George’s castle. She had since aged much, he wrote with apparent sadness, and was seen only rarely except by the woman who served her. On those occasions when she allowed him to visit her, he noted how bent her back had grown and how her eyes had dulled to a milky blue. She said little when he came, refusing to sit or allow him to do so, and silently gazed out the only window in her room, a window that faced toward Tyndal Priory.