[1517] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 119. 126-7.
[1518] Sometimes the bishop’s clerk summarises the information given as to the financial state of the house, which would seem to indicate that the prioress gave and the bishop accepted merely a verbal account. See Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 38. In Linc. Epis. Reg. Atwater, f. 42, is a brief account of a visitation of Ankerwyke in 1519, to which is added the status domus as submitted by the nuns, comprising an inventory.
[1519] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 49-50.
[1520] See e.g. the case of Denise Loweliche at Markyate in 1433, Linc. Visit. I, pp. 83-5.
[1521] Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, II, pp. 706-8 (injunctions), 708-9 (mandate to commissary). Compare the proceedings at Ankerwyke six months after Alnwick’s visitation. Linc. Visit. II, p. 7.
[1522] Linc. Visit. I, pp. 82-3.
[1523] G. G. Coulton in Eng. Hist. Review (1914), p. 37. “The locus classicus here is the Evesham Chronicle, in which one of the most admirable abbots of the thirteenth century tells us how solemnly he and his brethren had promised to conceal all their former abbot’s blackest crimes from the visiting bishop; and how they would never have complained even to the legate (whose jurisdiction they did recognize) if only the sinner had kept his pact with them in money matters.”
[1524] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 47, 48, 49, 52. At Heynings (where nothing seriously amiss transpired) one nun said that “the prioress reproaches her sisters, saying that if they say aught to the bishop, she will lay on them such penalties that they shall not easily bear them.” Ib. p. 133. The wicked Prioress of Littlemore was found in 1517 to have ordered her nuns on virtue of their obedience to reveal nothing to the commissioners and in 1518 it was stated that she had punished them for speaking the truth at the visitation. V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 75. At Flixton in 1514 it was said: “The sisters scarce dare to depose the truth on account of the fierceness of the prioress.” Visit. of the Dioc. of Norwich, ed. Jessopp (Camden Soc.), p. 143. For episcopal injunctions against revealing or quarrelling over detecta made at the visitation, see Linc. Visit. II, pp. 51, 124, etc., Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 442, Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham, II, p. 661.
[1525] Linc. Visit. II, pp. 184-5.