become nuns for ever at fourteen. Probably Eglentyne's father had three
other daughters to marry, each with a dowry, and a gay young spark of a
son, who spent a lot of money on fashionable suits.

Embroidered ... as it were a mede
All ful of fresshe flowers white and rede.

So he thought he had better settle the youngest at once; and he got
together a dowry (it was rarely possible to get into a nunnery without
one, though Church law really forbade anything except voluntary
offerings), and, taking Eglentyne by the hand one summer day, he popped
her into a nunnery a few miles off, which had been founded by his
ancestors. We may even know what it cost him; it was rather a select,
aristocratic house, and he had to pay an entrance fee of £200 in modern
money; and then he had to give Eglentyne her new habit and a bed, and
some other furniture; and he had to make a feast on the day she became a
nun, and invite all the nuns and all his own friends; and he had to tip
the friar, who preached the sermon; and, altogether, it was a great
affair.[2] But the feast would not come at once, because Eglentyne would
have to remain a novice for some years, until she was old enough to take
the vows. So she would stay in the convent and be taught how to sing and
to read, and to talk French of the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe with
the other novices. Perhaps she was the youngest, for girls often did not
enter the convent until they were old enough to decide for themselves
whether they wanted to be nuns; but there were certainly some other
quite tiny novices learning their lessons; and occasionally there would
be a little girl like the one whose sad fate is recorded in a dull
law-book, shut up in a nunnery by a wicked stepfather who wanted her
inheritance (a nun could not inherit land, because she was supposed to
be dead to the world), and told by the nuns that the devil would fly