ON a hot midsummer Friday on the road from York to Bridlington, probably in 1413, John Kempe finally acceded to his wife Margery's desire to live a life of chastity. Then, Margery's Book continues, ‘went thei forth to- Brydlyngton-ward and also to many other contres and spokyn wyth Goddys servawntys, bothen ankrys and reclusys and many other of owyr Lordys loverys, wyth many worthy clerkys, doctorys of dyvynyte, and bachelers also, in many dyvers placys’ (I.11; 793–7). It was probably on this visit that she first met the anchoress of York (one of several in the city at this date), who on a subsequent occasion would snub her, on account of the reputation she had acquired in the interim (I.50). The male anchorite of the Chapel-in-the-Fields, Norwich, had similarly distanced himself from her as her notoriety increased, but she visited him all the same (I.43). More faithful was her divinely appointed confessor and resolute supporter, the anchorite at the house of Dominican friars in Lynn (I.5). Reynold, a hermit of the same town, accompanied her on journeys to Ipswich, Walsingham and Norwich and, after a chance meeting at Syon Abbey, and a certain amount of persuasion, on the return to Lynn (II.1,10). Of all the encounters with solitaries had by this indefatigable seeker-out of ‘ankrys and reclusys’, however, her visit to Julian of Norwich seems to have made the greatest impression. There she gave an account of her experiences and visions, and received encouragement and counsel, enjoying much ‘holy dalyawns’ during the ‘many days that thei were togedyr’ (I.18; 1379–81).

For all her dealings with solitaries, however, and notwithstanding the early printer Henry Pepwell's description of her as ‘a deuoute ancres’, Margery Kempe never seems to have sought enclosure as an anchorite. But all of the other authors comprising the canon of the ‘Middle English Mystics’ were closely associated with the solitary vocations, either as practitioners themselves or in composing works for an anchoritic or eremitic audience. Julian of Norwich was of course an anchorite although, to judge from the details given in the Short Text of her Revelations, not at the time when she had her visions.