ABSTRACT
Charity comprised an indispensable religious duty, but was only one of many religious practices which pervaded everyday life. The daily life of a late fifteenth-century vowess of the high nobility is described in the household rules of Cecily, Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV and Richard III. The household constituted an important centre for religious instruction and devotion, but women at all social levels attended public worship in parish and monastic churches, attended sermons and went on pilgrimages, and many belonged to guilds and confraternities. The evidence of catechisms, sermons and collections of exempla makes it likely that lay people had at least a rudimentary grasp of the doctrine and moral teaching of the Church. Many lives were cut short unexpectedly in the later Middle Ages, and the concern to speed the passage of the soul through purgatory was found across Europe. Women also made bequests of clothing and jewellery to particular shrines.
