SOURCE: Allen, Hope Emily. “The Origin of the Ancren Riwle.” PMLA 33, no. 3 (September 1918): 474-546.

In the following excerpt, Allen presents and discusses evidence that Ancrene Wisse was written not long after 1134 in the hermitage of Kilburn.

The following paper will give a preliminary statement of a new conjecture as to the origin of the Ancren Riwle.¹ It is proposed to identify the three maidens for whom the treatise was composed with the “tribus puellis, Emmae, videlicet, et Gunildae et Cristinae,” to whom, according to the charter printed by Dugdale,² the hermitage of Kilburn, with its appurtenances, was granted by the Abbot and convent of Westminster sometime between the years 1127 and 1135.³ The hermitage was endowed permanently with money, land and beneficia, in return for which the inmates were to be the beadsmen of the abbey and of its confederate, the Abbey of Fécamp. The house at Kilburn was...