JOHANNIS BRAHAM ARMIGERI QUI OBIT XVIII DIE
NOVEMBRIS ANNO DOMINI MILLINO CCCCXIX CU
JUS ANIME PROPICIETUR DEUS. AMEN.

Below are three shields, of which the dexter bears the husband's arms,
the sinister those of Dame Braham's family, and the middle the coats
impaled. In neither of these examples is the ring--the most important
symbol--displayed on the vowess's finger. This omission may be
explained, perhaps, by the fact that it was not buried with her, being,
as we have seen, sometimes bequeathed as an heirloom and sometimes left
as a gift to the Church.

Notwithstanding the desire of so many husbands that their widows should
live "sole, without marriage," it is well known that second and even
third marriages were not uncommon in the Middle Ages, and, provided that
they did not involve an infraction of some solemn engagement, do not
appear to have incurred social censure any more than at present.

ECCLESIASTICAL

CHAPTER III

THE LADY FAST

It was pointed out as one of the distinctions between vowesses and
members of the third orders of the Dominican and Franciscan brotherhoods
that the latter were pledged to the observance of fasts from which the
former were exempt. Tyndale complains of the "open idolatry" of
abstinences undertaken in honour of St. Patrick, St. Brandan, and other
holy men of old; and he lays special stress on "Our Lady Fast," which,
he explains, was kept "either seven years the same day that her day
falleth in March, and then begin, or one year with bread and water."
Whatever fasts a vowess might neglect as non-obligatory, it seems
probable that she would not willingly forgo any opportunity of showing
reverence to the Blessed Virgin, who, in the belief of St. Augustine,
had taken vows of chastity before the salutation of the Angel.

It is not a little curious that the Lady Fast, in the forms mentioned by
Tyndale, was so far from being enjoined by the Church as to be actually
opposed to the decree of the Roman Council of 1078, which indicated
Saturday as the day of the week appropriated to the honour of the
Blessed Virgin. This usage was as well understood in the British Isles
as elsewhere. Thus, in "Piers Plowman":

Lechery said "Alas!" and on Our Lady he cried
To make mercy for his misdeeds between God and his soul,
With that he should the Saturday seven year thereafter
Drink but with the duck, and dine but once.

Bower, the continuator of Fordun's "Scotichronicon," m