The Customs of Old England | Page 9

of the Breviary, supposing that they were able to read, or, if they were not able, a certain number of Aves and Paternosters. They were further expected to observe sundry fasts over and above those commanded by the Church, and thus they became qualified for all the benefits accruing to the first two orders, Dominican and Franciscan. With the vowesses it was different. The one condition imposed upon them was that of chastity, as tending to a state of sanctification. They took upon themselves no other obligation whatever, and consequently acquired no title to the blessings and privileges flowing from the strict observance of rules to which they did not subscribe. Even after the Reformation the custom did not absolutely cease. At any rate, Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, who died in 1676, is stated, after the death of her last husband, to have dressed in black serge and to have been very abstemious in the matter of food.
Here and there may be found funeral monuments containing representations of vowesses. Leland remarks, with reference to a member of the Marmion family at West Tanfield, Yorkshire: "There lyeth there alone a lady with the apparill of a vowess"; and in Norfolk there are still in existence two brasses of widows and vowesses. The earlier and smaller, of about the year 1500, adjoins the threshold of the west door of Witton church, near Blofield, and bears the figure of a lady in a gown, mantle, barbe or gorget, and veil, together with the inscription:
ORATE ANIMA DOMINE JULIANE ANGELL VOTRICIS CUJUS ANIME PROPRICIETUR DEUS.
The other example is in the little church of Frenze, near Diss, which contains, among a number of other interesting brasses, that of a lady clothed, like the former, in gown, mantle, barbe, and veil. This figure, however, shows cuffs; the gown is encircled with an ornamental girdle, and depending from the mantle on long cords ending in tassels. Underneath runs the legend:
HIC JACET TUMULATA DOMINA JOHANNA BRAHAM VIRDUA AC DEO DEDICATA. OLIM UXOREM JOHANNIS BRAHAM ARMIGERI QUI OBIT XVIII DIE NOVEMBRIS ANNO DOMINI MILLINO CCCCXIX CU JUS ANIME PROPICIETUR DEUS. AMEN.
Below are three shields, of which the dexter bears the husband's arms, the sinister those of Dame Braham's family, and the middle the coats impaled. In neither of these examples is the ring--the most important symbol--displayed on the vowess's finger. This omission may be explained, perhaps, by the fact that it was not buried with her, being, as we have seen, sometimes bequeathed as an heirloom and sometimes left as a gift to the Church.
Notwithstanding the desire of so many husbands that their widows should live "sole, without marriage," it is well known that second and even third marriages were not uncommon in the Middle Ages, and, provided that they did not involve an infraction of some solemn engagement, do not appear to have incurred social censure any more than at present.

ECCLESIASTICAL
CHAPTER III
THE LADY FAST
It was pointed out as one of the distinctions between vowesses and members of the third orders of the Dominican and Franciscan brotherhoods that the latter were pledged to the observance of fasts from which the former were exempt. Tyndale complains of the "open idolatry" of abstinences undertaken in honour of St. Patrick, St. Brandan, and other holy men of old; and he lays special stress on "Our Lady Fast," which, he explains, was kept "either seven years the same day that her day falleth in March, and then begin, or one year with bread and water." Whatever fasts a vowess might neglect as non-obligatory, it seems probable that she would not willingly forgo any opportunity of showing reverence to the Blessed Virgin, who, in the belief of St. Augustine, had taken vows of chastity before the salutation of the Angel.
It is not a little curious that the Lady Fast, in the forms mentioned by Tyndale, was so far from being enjoined by the Church as to be actually opposed to the decree of the Roman Council of 1078, which indicated Saturday as the day of the week appropriated to the honour of the Blessed Virgin. This usage was as well understood in the British Isles as elsewhere. Thus, in "Piers Plowman":
Lechery said "Alas!" and on Our Lady he cried To make mercy for his misdeeds between God and his soul, With that he should the Saturday seven year thereafter Drink but with the duck, and dine but once.
Bower, the continuator of Fordun's "Scotichronicon," makes it a reproach to lax prelates that they suffer the common people to vary after their own pleasure the days kept as fast days in honour of Mary. In doing so he recalls that on Saturday, the first Easter Eve, she abode unshakenly in the faith, when the apostles doubted. Good reason, therefore, why Saturday should be dedicated to her