Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535

The work reconstructs daily life and institutions of English convents in the centuries before the Dissolution, using pre-Reformation records to trace who entered convents (nobility, gentry, urban families), the dowry system and motives for profession, governance by prioresses and abbesses including elections, resignations, and abuses, and the convents' economic foundations — rents, manors, spiritual revenues — and household organization of obedientiaries, servants, and farms. It examines recurring poverty, debt, building repairs, and causes such as disasters, ecclesiastical and royal exactions, and feudal obligations, while balancing factual evidence with cautious inference from surviving accounts and visitations.