English and Irish Women Religious at Home and Abroad, c.1530-c.1640

Henry VIII’s legislation of the 1530s dissolving religious houses effectively ended religious life for women in convents in both England and Ireland, with most of the former nuns passing into a secular existence on rather small pensions. A few women stayed together in an attempt to follow a communal religious life in domestic surroundings: others, both English and Irish, moved to the Continent to enter indigenous houses. By the end of the sixteenth century groups of women were forming on the Continent intent on creating new convents specifically for Englishwomen. In addition to the enclosed communities approved by the Council of Trent, such as Benedictines and Augustinians, a new form of religious life for women based on an Ignatian model was established by Mary Ward. The new institutions were successful in attracting members willing to undertake illegal and dangerous journeys to enter religious life. A few Irish women professed in English convents, but the Iberian Peninsula was a more significant destination for them in the seventeenth century, particularly after the opening of the Dominican convent of Bom Sucesso in Lisbon in 1639. These new foundations formed the bedrock of the movement which kept religious life alive for English and Irish women in the exile period: only one of the convents closed before the French Revolution.