Note 18.1

F M Powicke wrote an article entitled Loretta Countess of Leicester which was published in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait (edited by J G Edwards, V H Galbraith and E F Jacob, Manchester, 1933). This provides a valuable account of the known life of Loretta and her family background, including references to her sister Annora. The life of an achoress is discussed by Sally Thompson in Women Religious: the founding of English nuneries after the Norman Conquest, Chapter 2, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991). Loretta and Annora are not mentioned by Thompson but she does outline the Rule for Anchoresses, several versions of which have survived as adaptations of a source written in the early 13th Century. This rule or the Ancrene Wisse has been the subject of extensive academic research. E J Dobson in The Date and Composition of the Ancrene Wisse, Proceedings of the British Acadamy 52 (1966), 181-208, identified its linguistic origins as the West Midlands. He specifically identified the location as Wigmore and the author as a man from the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris who became a cannon of the Priory of Wigmore, named Brian de Lingen. Others have disagreed with this identification and suggested various locations, including even Aconbury, but the authorship of the Anrene Wisse remains uproven. Nonetheless, Loretta and Annora's origins in the Welsh Marches and specifically Annora's marriage to the lord of Wigmore indicate the possibility that they may have gained access to an early version of the Ancrene Wisse. Their father's burial at the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris suggests that they could have developed contacts there which continued in later life. Only Powicke has touched on the possibility that further research into Loretta and Annora's connections might throw up something of interest regarding the Ancrene Wisse.

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