You are the lowest status of the Abbey’s sisters - here only for a month or two, you will not even be a Novice until 6 months have passed. You are desperate however, to make this work, for the thought of leaving is a terror.

You are the youngest daughter of a successful lawyer. Your family was large, but mostly much older than you. You were born after most people thought your mother was too old to bear more children. Father made it clear that he resented the unexpected burden you placed on the family, and beat you regularly from an early age. You could never understand why he treated you so differently to your brothers and sisters, save perhaps that you were a bad child, unable to be as good as them. You don’t favour him in looks but were always glad of that. Your sister Phillippa looks very like him and he always treated her well - she is closest to you in age but still much older.

Despite your father’s contempt, he managed to secure you a marriage above your station, to one of the younger sons of minor Bedfordshire gentry. You went to your new life desperately afraid that you would let your husband down in the same way you must have let down your father. From the wedding on, your husband made it clear that he expected from you nothing but obedience and bearing his children. You did your best to live up to that expectation, but nothing you ever did seemed sufficient. Every evening there was harsh ire: complaints about your dress, your manners, your birth, the dinner you had planned. At first, you cried each night for shame, but over time you built friendships with the other wives of your husband’s village, and they seemed to think that it was your husband, not you, who was at fault. You found a voice to talk back, and the relationship became stormier, your husband now turning to drinking strong beer through every day.