the cracked voices of their elders could rise.

But the monotony of convent life sometimes did more than make the nuns
unconscious contributors to Tittivillus's sack. It sometimes played
havoc with their tempers. The nuns were not chosen for convent life
because they were saints. They were no more immune from tantrums than
was the Wife of Bath, who was out of all charity when other village
wives went into church before her; and sometimes they got terribly on
each others' nerves. Readers of _Piers Plowman_ will remember that when
the seven deadly sins come in, Wrath tells how he was cook to the
prioress of a convent and, says he,

Of wycked wordes I, Wrath ... here wordes imade,
Til 'thow lixte' and 'thow lixte' ... lopen oute at ones,
And eyther hitte other ... vnder the cheke;
Hadde thei had knyves, by Cryst ... her eyther had killed other.

To be sure, it is not often that we hear of anything so bad as that
fifteenth-century prioress, who used to drag her nuns round the choir by
their veils in the middle of the service, screaming 'Liar!' and
'Harlot!' at them;[12] or that other sixteenth-century lady who used to
kick them and hit them on the head with her fists and put them in the
stocks.[13] All prioresses were not 'ful plesaunt and amiable of port',
or stately in their manner. The records of monastic visitations show
that bad temper and petty bickering sometimes broke the peace of
convent life.

But we must be back at Eglentyne. She went on living for ten or twelve
years as a simple nun, and she sang the services very nicely and had a
sweet temper and pretty manners and was very popular. Moreover, she was