Nuns

Although most nuns had a genuine religious vocation, convents in the Middle Ages were a dumping ground for the younger, unmarried daughters of middling and gentry families and unwanted daughters of the lower classes. Whether by choice or not, convents and priories were their homes and a core part of their belief system; they provided status, self-identity, friendship, and security. So when the Dissolution of the Monasteries happened between 1536 and 1540, many nuns faced a very uncertain future. Around two thousand nuns were cast out into the world, with a meagre pension but no guardian and unable to provide for themselves. Many families did not welcome the return of their unwanted daughters, and they were seen and made to feel like burdens. Others in less fortunate circumstances were turned away by their families. Having taken vows, they were forbidden to marry, even after being cast out of the cloister, although some did have to resort to this to survive. There are accounts of homeless nuns starving in the streets, dying of grief and falling prey to unscrupulous villains.

Some of the luckier nuns managed to stay together and face their hardships as one. Denny Abbey's last abbess Dame Elizabeth Throckmorton, returned to her family seat at Coughton Court, where she gathered some of her fellow nuns around her. She took over the top floor of her family's home formed a clandestine 'convent" of her own. Here the nuns wore their habits and ‘prescribed to themselves the Rule of the Order as far as it was possible in their present situation’.

Sources:

www.historic-uk.com

www.english-heritage.org.uk/