We may wade through hundreds of visitation reports and injunctions and everywhere the grey eyes of his prioress will twinkle at us out of their pages, and in the end we must always go to Chaucer for her picture, to sum up everything that historical records have taught us.

As the bishop found her, so he saw her, aristocratic, tender-hearted, worldly, taking pains to 'countrefete there of court'; liking pretty clothes and little dogs; a lady of importance, attended by a nun and three priests; spoken to with respect by the none too mealy-mouthed host--no 'by Corpus Dominus' or 'cokkes bones' or 'tel on a devel wey' for her, but 'cometh neer, my lady prioress,' and My lady Prioresse, by your leve If that I wiste I sholde yow nat greve, I wolde demen that ye tellen sholde A tale next, if so were that ye wolde.
Now wol ye vouche-sauf, my lady dere?
He talks to no one else like that, save perhaps to the knight.

Was she religious?
Perhaps; but save for her singing the divine service and for her lovely address to the Virgin, at the beginning of her tale, Chaucer can find but little to say on the point; But for speken of hir conscience (he says) She was so charitable and so pitous, and then, as we are waiting to hear of her almsgiving to the poor--that she would weep over a mouse in a trap, or a beaten puppy, says Chaucer.
A good ruler of her house?
again, doubtless.

But when Chaucer met her the house was ruling itself somewhere at the 'shire's ende'.

The world was full of fish out of water in the fourteenth century, and, by seynt Loy, said Madame Eglentyne, swearing her greatest oath, like Chaucer's monk, she held that famous text not worth an oyster.