“A Vowed Woman in Chaucer’s London: Divorce, Travel, Friendship, Reading”
Mary C. Erler

When she died in 1417 Margery de Nerford left the choice of her books to the anchorite outside London’s Bishopsgate, near her Threadneedle Street dwelling. It is likely that in the year of her death the cell was still held by the anchorite Margery Pensax who had been its occupant three years earlier, in 1414. If so, that unusual gift, a collection of books made by a woman and given to another woman, might suggest possibilities for female book collection and reading hitherto largely unrecognized.

Unlike most vowed women, Margery was not a widow, but had been granted an annullment of her marriage. The circumstances were dramatic, though the contours of her life after the vow assumed a calm domesticity. As the achievement of her vowed vocation was assisted by several highly-placed persons, so her intellectual and spiritual interests were supported by significant wealth. Her life and her will reveal a woman familiar both with court circles and with London’s civic oligarchy, living in London and the country, close friends with the neighboring parish priest, and assisted by staff and servants with whom her ties of affection are clear. Her books and her reading offer more surprises: a personal library of perhaps fifteen or twenty volumes and, it may be, the ability to peruse them in Latin.