Just months before Martin Luther propounded theological ideas that later contributed to the dissolution of monasteries, the Bishop of Winchester, Richard Fox, translated the Benedictine Rule for nuns, Here Begynneth the Rule of Seynt Benet, published by Richard Pynson in January 1517 [see plate 10]. A few months earlier he wrote the ‘Fourme and order of the ceremonies perteinyng to the solempne profession of benediction and consecration of holy virgins’, using the original Latin ordinal (based upon chapter 58 of the Rule), but adding explanations and instructions in English. Fox's expansions and interpolations in these works reveal much about his thinking, and although historians often must conjecture what might or might not be implied by particular words and phrases, his concept of the female monastic vocation is discernible in these two sources. We do not know how the nuns themselves understood their vocation, but four slender points suggest that they agreed with him: he and the nuns knew each other; the four heads of houses themselves asked him to write for them; they would have recognised that what he wrote accurately followed the Rule, and that his English interpolations flowed naturally from the Latin; finally, a Benedictine prioress and other nuns (not at Winchester but at Stamford) annotated their copy of Here Begynneth with approval.

Fox's two works are valuable, first because they reveal individual nuns’ and also community expectations of monastic life in 1517, and therefore how these women defined their monastic vocation. Second, modern studies of English nunneries have tended to separate practical from spiritual and intellectual matters, but these two sources are based directly upon the Rule which covers all aspects of the monastic life: consequently, an analysis of the expectations will provide us with a reasonably balanced view of monastic life. In 1485, Richard Fox was a middle-aged cleric in Paris, a political exile from Richard III. He joined the earl of Richmond's entourage, helped plan the invasion of England, and was present at Bosworth. He became Privy Seal and confidential adviser to Henry, who appointed him successively bishop of Exeter, Bath and Wells, Durham, and finally Winchester, where he remained from 1501 until his death in 1528. In 1516, Fox left government and was replaced by Thomas Wolsey, his own protégé.