The Customs of Old England | Page 9

be guilty of it.
The question has been raised why widows did not, instead of making
their especial vow, enter the third orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis,
both of them intended for pious persons remaining in the world. The
answer has already, in some degree, been given in what was said
regarding the extinct order of deaconesses. Followers of St. Dominic
and St. Francis were bound to recite daily a shortened form 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,