Children in early modern English convents

What is it about?

Exiled English convents provided education for Catholic girls. Children might be placed in monastic schools in the hope that they would eventually become nuns, but many pupils left to marry and raise the next generation of English Catholics. This paper argues that convent education was an important element in the survival strategies of the English Catholic minority. The schools provided spiritual formation and equipped girls with the skills for their future lives as either nuns or wives and mothers of the gentry and aristocracy. While the experience of individual children varied, many retained a connection with their place of education, sending future generations of children to the same school.

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