§ 19.
The order of Prémontré originally made
some provision for houses of nuns side by side with
those of canons. The experiment languished, and
although a body of nuns or canonesses followed the
Premonstratensian rule, they had few houses. Only
two are known in England, and neither of these was
connected with any house of canons. But in the
second quarter of the twelfth century Gilbert, rector
of Sempringham in Lincolnshire, with the advice of
the abbot of Rievaulx, founded a house of seven
nuns following the Cistercian rule. The Cistercian
order refused to take charge of the community, and
Gilbert, possibly following the example of Prémontré,
provided for its spiritual needs by associating with the
nuns a body of canons under the rule of St Augustine.
Gilbertine houses were thus at first regarded as
nunneries in which the Sacraments were administered
by an auxiliary community of at least seven canons.
Minutely composed statutes provided for the seclusion
of the two bodies from each other in two adjacent
cloisters. In such double houses the maximum
number of nuns ordained by statute was generally
double that of canons: thus at Watton in Yorkshire,
the largest house of the order, nominal provision
was made for 140 nuns and 70 canons. The order,
which was exempt from episcopal control, was placed
under a general, known as the master of Sempringham.
Sempringham was the mother house of a number of
priories: new houses were founded on the Cistercian
plan of the migration of twelve canons and a prior
from one of the existing houses.
Conversi and
conversae
formed a part of each establishment. The
total number of Gilbertine houses was some 27, of
which eleven were in Lincolnshire: with the exception
of two houses in Wiltshire, one in Devonshire and
one in Durham, the monasteries of the order were
all within the four eastern dioceses of Lincoln,
York, Ely and Norwich. The order never spread
beyond England.
