“Get thee to a nunnery” Hamlet declares to Desdemona in Shakespeare’s play, but for women in medieval England, being sent to an abbey or convent was not necessarily a penance. Taking orders could be as advantageous as an arranged marriage, providing women with a good education and positions of power and authority. In the medieval era Hampshire’s Romsey Abbey was the church of a Benedictine nunnery and Catherine Capel of the University of Winchester tells the gripping stories of five women of royal blood who were connected in different ways with this great religious building. 

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