ABSTRACT
On 8 April 1623 Dame Agnes Lenthall, the novice mistress at the English Benedictine abbey in Brussels, wrote to the archbishop of Mechelen, the cloister’s ecclesiastical superior, detailing a number of disorders within her house. Underpinning several of her concerns was the complaint that ‘ther is such continuallye examininge & talkinge of one anothers accions & proceedings, one to another, & of the gostlye fathers makinge our selves ther judges, that it maketh a busnis in the house of nothinge, & a motive of breach of charitie’.1 Lenthall was writing at the outset of what would become a major dispute which factionalised the community for thirty years, and severely damaged the convent’s reputation. Although the issues behind the disunity were varied and complex, at the root of the Benedictine nuns’ difficulties was a breakdown of authority, centred principally on conflicting views about the convent’s spiritual direction, but also involving personal clashes between the abbess, Mary Percy, and senior nuns. At its height, the rebellious nuns blockaded part of their cloister against the abbess and her supporters, which led to the expulsion of the ringleaders, while other rebels left to found a new monastery. The departure of a controversial confessor in 1637 partially healed the rift in the house, but even the death of Abbess Mary Percy in 1642 did not restore complete harmony. Peace eventually returned in 1652 after the nuns united against the archbishop when he imposed his own candidate as abbess.
