Besides their wages, these retainers of the Augustinian dames had their cottages and clothes looked to for them by the convent bursar. Thus before the autumn work of cleaning the land and sowing the winter corn commences, we find a record of “twenty-four pairs of shoes” given out, which are charged to the convent account at 2_s._ 8½_d._--not the pair, but the two dozen. This sum would appear, perhaps, ridiculously small, even for those days, had we not some reason to think that the leather for making them was provided to the local cobbler from the convent store; for on one occasion Dame Petronilla notes that she paid 8_d._ for tanning (_pro albacione_) the skin of a horse, bought of Robert Harston. Another present from the nuns to their workpeople in view of these autumn works, the cost of which appears in these accounts, was a pair of gloves to each of the thirty men and women about to be engaged in the weeding and ditching and hedging; as for their clothes, these were all made on the premises from the raw material. Thus in one year we read:-- “Paid for the spinning of six score (bundles) of linen flax, 5_s._; paid for weaving the three score ells of linen cloth from the same, 3_s._ 4_d._; paid for woofing and warping three-and-twenty ells of woollen cloth, 6_s._ 2_d._; paid for spinning twenty lbs. of wool at 1¼_d._ the pound, 2_s._ 6_d._; paid for dyeing twenty-seven ells of cloth blood red, at 4_d._ the ell, 7_s._ 8_d._; paid for spinning woollen cloth for ordinary livery, 11_d._”; and so on. All this evidently was for the clothes of the entire establishment, including the men and women who worked on the farm, and in the laundry, the kitchen, and the bakehouse, etc. Curiously, as it seems to us perhaps now, each of the nuns had a maximum allowance of 6_s._ 8_d._ a year for clothes. It taught them, no doubt, to look after the articles of their dress with care and thrift, better than if the white woollen tunic, scapular and veil, woven from the produce of their own flock of sheep, and the still whiter linen wimple spun from the flax and made into good sound cloth by their own hands, or at least under their own direction, were to appear to drop from the hand of Providence without reference to cost. One or two curious entries seem to show that friends sometimes gave the annual sum allowed for the clothing of some of the nuns. Thus one year William Roby paid “for the clothes of his relation, Dame Agnes Roby”; and at another time Margaret Roby brought the 6_s._ 8_d._ for the same purpose when she came on a visit. One interesting item of knowledge about the work of the nuns is conveyed in a brief entry of receipt. It is clear that these ladies were good needlewomen, and their work must have been exceptionally excellent, seeing that a cope was purchased from them by a neighbouring rector for £10.