In 1308, King Edward II founded a priory of Dominican friars at King’s Langley to fulfill a vow.¹ The house was dependent on the Exchequer, and, after a time, Edward II became dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Because the Dominican friars could not own property, he sought to find a means of endowing the house for the support of one hundred religious.² To this end, Edward II determined that the Dominican friars of Guildford should surrender their house to a foundation of Dominican nuns to be created at Dartford, who would in turn hold endowments for and be subject to the Dominican friars of King’s Langley.³ Edward II sent several papal petitions regarding his desires, but he did not receive papal approval to proceed until November 1321. Before he could complete his intentions, though, he was dethroned. Edward III finally completed the plans set in motion by his father. In November 1349, he applied to the pope for confirmation of the house of nuns at Dartford,⁴ and, the confirmation granted, the house at Dartford became “the complement of Langley priory.”⁵

The Dominican sisters “were subject in spirituals to the Friars Preacher of King’s Langley,” and the prior of King’s Langley appointed the friars who were to reside at Dartford with the nuns.⁶ In December 1356, Edward III granted the prioress and sisters license to acquire property to the value of £300 to sustain their community and that of the friars of King’s Langley.⁷ In the ensuing years, Dartford received numerous endowments, always destined to support not only the sisters but also the friars at King’s Langley.

In spite of its obligation to support King’s Langley, Dartford became, in the course of its history, extraordinarily wealthy. At the dissolution, Dartford had a gross annual income of £488 per annum, which made it the seventh richest nunnery in England.⁸ In the early sixteenth century, the prioress, Elizabeth Cressener, drew up the Rentale giving detailed records of the house’s holdings of land and property together with the rents and services owed to the house.⁹ This document testifies not only to the wealth of the house but also to the nuns’ skill in business practices.

That the Dartford nuns were capable managers is not surprising, since the house was a center of female education, including Latin learning. Extracts from the records of the Masters-General of the Dominican Order include permission given in 1481 for “Sister Jane Fitzh’er” to have “a preceptor in grammar and the Latin tongue.”¹⁰ The house possessed numerous books,¹¹ and not only novices and nuns but also daughters (and even some sons) of the local nobility and gentry were educated at Dartford.¹²

I began with this brief account of Dartford’s foundation and history because it provides a snapshot of the key issues I address in this book. First and foremost, the case of Dartford highlights the involvements of women religious in multiple, mutually informing systems of production and exchange. From the community’s beginning, the Dartford nuns were enmeshed in material, symbolic, textual, political, and spiritual economies in ways which at times harmonized with and at times conflicted with each other. Exploring the relationships among these systems and considering their importance for the construction of religious identities are at the foundation of my methodology in this book. I therefore consider a wide range of sources, from monastic rules to nunneries’ financial accounts, from devotional treatises to works traditionally designated as literary.

Furthermore, the case of Dartford demonstrates the permeability of the convent wall. The Dartford nuns clearly had important connections with King’s Langley as well as frequent interaction with the larger community in their business and educational affairs. I thus seek to breach the cloister wall, which was not an impenetrable boundary in later medieval society but which is so often treated as such in modern scholarship, in my study of female monasticism. My analysis consequently considers the impact of “worldly” forces (for instance, economic trends and political conflicts) on “religious” life in nunneries as well as the “worldly” value of “religious” practices (for instance, politically motivated acts of monastic

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