It may be mentioned that Dame Petronilla and her assistant Dame Katherine made up their accounts from Sunday to Sunday, as far as expenses are concerned, so that in running through the pages it is possible to form some idea of how these good mediæval nuns lived. I do not think that the most captious critic could charge them with feasting on the “fat of the land,” or with much indulgence in the luxuries even of those primitive days. There is one peculiarity, however, in these otherwise excellent accounts, which rather interferes with a full knowledge of the commissariat at Grace Dieu. The sisters did not think it necessary to enter among the payments the value of the farm and garden produce they consumed, beyond the cost of sowing and gathering into their barns. However, we know that they must have eaten bread and made use of the exceedingly few vegetables and pot-herbs that were then grown in the gardens of England, so we may take these as additional to the “food stuffs” shown in the accounts as paid for. A few examples will be sufficient to give the reader an insight into the general catering at Grace Dieu early in the fifteenth century. These are the first entries among the expenses written by Dame Petronilla when she commenced her duties as “Treasurer,” as she calls herself in one place, after the Feast of the Purification, 1414. “For two Sundays after the Purification purchased two small pigs price 6_d._ For house food during the time of Lent, £3 6_s._ 8_d._ For seventy hard dried fish for the same time, 11_s._ 6_d._ A calf bought for the convent for Quinquagesima Sunday (Shrovetide), 9_d._ Four small pigs for the same day, 9_d._ Beef bought for the same day, 20_d._ Mustard bought at Ashby, 1_d._ Cheese bought on Friday in Sexagesima week, 5_d._ Thomas Fene for 2 quarters of red-herrings for Lent, 12_d._ Nicholas Swon (the swineherd, as the reader may remember), 2_d._ for catching two small pike at the sluice.”