Sybil Montagu, Prioress of Amesbury

Sybil Montagu was born about 1368.[2] She was the daughter of John de Montagu, 1st Baron Montagu and his wife Margaret de Monthermer.[3] and her uncle, her father's brother, was William Montague, 2nd Earl of Salisbury (died 1389). She was the sister of John Montague, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, and of Thomas Montague, a priest and graduate of Oxford University, who from 1382 was Dean of Salisbury (died in 1404).

At a date now unknown, Sybil became a professed nun of Amesbury Priory, a house of the Order of Fontesvraud. It is recorded that in 1391 her election as prioress was confirmed by the King, then Richard II.[4]

A 1341 letter of the king to Amesbury Priory during the Hundred Years' War disputed some of the rights of the abbess and restricted others, In the light of this, when the prioress died about 1349 the nuns played safe and sought the king's licence to elect. This created a precedent for the future that was followed in 1391, as it had been also in 1379.[5]

How long Sybil had been a nun before she was elected prioress is difficult to calculated. Some women of rank who became nuns had such status that they were elected when the earliest vacancy came about, but that might happen at greatly varying intervals, and only detailed research would show whether at various moments Sybil was the nun of the highest social rank, or the one whose family made the most significant benefactions to the monastery, or could reasonably be expected to do so or to wield influence with some other source of patronage, such as the King. It may be that she was elected simply on the grounds of her personality, piety or abilities.

A curiosity is that Sybil's own sister Katherine was also a nun,[6] though of a rather turbulent kind, and in a different monastic house. Katherine had entered Bungay Priory in Suffolk, but at some point in 1376-1377 she absconded and was said to be "vagabond in secular attire in divers parts of the realm". While not the norm, absconding was not totally unknown for medieval English nuns.[7] In the absence of fuller specific information on her case, it is clear that while the nuns made a personal and public commitment to that life by a supposedly free choice, some of them may have been pressured by the family to enter the monastery, perhaps from dynastic or financial reasons. Others may have run away because they had become bored with the monotony of life, or exasperated by its austerity, or after having experienced personality conflicts, or psychological problems.

Whatever its motive, Katherine's flight become the subject of a denunciation by the local bishop, the Bishop of Norwich, Henry le Despenser and of a consequent order from King Henry II for her capture and forcible return to her monastery.[8] If Katherine Montague had been a nun long enough to desert in 1376-1377, perhaps this should be taken as an indication that Sybil, too, may have been a nun for some time before her election in 1391.

Running a monastery in medieval England was a complicated business, given the administrative and economic responsibilities that were joined to spiritual duties. As a woman, Sybil would not be summoned to parliament as many of the male monastic superiors were.[9] However, as Prioress she was under the authority of at least four powerful figures: the Pope, the King, the diocesan Bishop and the Abbess of Fontevraud. The latter, though resident on the Continent, had an agent resident in England, termed a procurator or proctor general, who at times travelled extensively across the country attending to the affairs of the Order.[10]

Moreover, in theory the houses of the Order of Fontevraud were unlike the average monastic communities in so far as in principle they had side by side a female house and a male house, all under the authority of the local prioress. The historical records regarding Amesbury Priory speak in the 14th century of a male house of 12 priests referred to as ‘canons’ (i.e. canons regular). As to the female house, we learn that in 1317-1318, it contained no less than 117 nuns (perhaps including small numbers of lay sisters), though 36 new nuns were consecrated in 1327. These numbers are much reduced in 1381, with only 28 nuns, besides the prioress.[11] At the time of the Dissolution of the monasteries and the Priory's closure in 1539 there seem only to have been the prioress and 33 nuns.[12]

As the 14th century closed, Dame Sybil became embroiled in some notable events. Firstly, in May 1398, some 7 years after her election as prioress, an inquiry was ordered by the King into the government of the priory with a view to reforming it according to the ordinances and constitutions. Among other indications of indiscipline was the birth of a child in 1398 to a nun of Amesbury, Margaret Greenfield,[13] but in general motives and outcome are unknown. It is known, however, that before January 1399 Dame Sybil showed a decisive temperament by having the elderly Prior Robert Daubeneye thrown out of the monastery. In the uproar of accusations and counter-accusations that followed, Dame Sybil emerges as high-handed and the mixed royal and ecclesiastical enquiries were favorable to the Prior and his reputation as a priest in good standing, though he was not reinstated but was ordered to receive a pension.

However, on 14 March 1400 there was an astounding sequel when ruffians invaded the monastery after nightfall and Sybil and some of the nuns were imprisoned for at least two days, the prioress was manhandled and perhaps the monastery's treasure was carried off. Upon her prompt complaint, Henry IV, crowned king on 13 October 1399, issued orders to officers of the crown to free the nuns and restore order, since “evildoers of the town have taken and imprisoned” them.[14]

The official investigations brought to light an attempt of Dame Sybil to pare down the number of canons from twelve to four, replacing them with secular priests.[15] This was a delicate moment since in 1388 Richard II, to whom Sybil's male relatives were steadfastly loyal, had been deposed by Henry IV. Her brother John had been heavily caught up in resistance to the new king and was imprisoned by a mob at Cirencester and without trial beheaded on 7 January 1400, three months before the irruption at Amesbury.

Those days were but a memory when Sybil's next storm arose, related perhaps to the long political and military struggles between the crowns of England and France. These meant a variety of problems for the so-called alien priories, that is, those monastic houses, usually small, that were dependencies of foreign, usually French, mother houses.[16] Only one of the difficulties was that communication with the mother house was often impossible and impolitick and as a result, discipline at the English dependencies suffered. In 1378, all the monks in alien priories had been expelled from England and finally in 1414, under Henry V, those that remained were suppressed.

The situation at Amesbury was not so drastic, partly because the house fell into a distinct subcategory of its kind since for a long time the head of the house, the prioress, had been elected by the nuns, by the king's leave and with his confirmation, rather than being appointed by the abbess of Fontevraud, their nominal monastic superior. It would seem, however, that Amesbury suffered the same systemic disciplinary problems as elsewhere.

Over a decade after the earlier storm, the prioress launched an appeal to the King, claiming she had been evicted from the house and was afraid to enter it again. On 7 February 1415 King Henry V, in the presence of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, ordered that she receive "suitable sustenance for herself and her servants from the spiritual and temporal possessions belonging to the said priory of Amesbury" until a visitation of the house could be conducted by the Archbishop and the ills remedied.[17] Again, the doughty Sybil survived and maintained her position as prioress.

Though information on the outcome of various phases of these repeated investigations have not survived, she was to continue in as prioress for many years, dying only in 1420.[18] At her death, it was Henry V who licensed the subprioress and nuns to proceed to the election of her successor.[19]

• Fontevraud Abbey
• Amesbury Priory
• John Montagu, 3rd Earl of Salisbury