This House of Benedictine Nuns pursued its uneventful course for more than three hundred years. Now and then the nuns stopped a lane across their property, or they let their land at long leases, or they inherited new lands, or they mismanaged and wasted their property, or they buried a Prioress and had to elect another. Very little else can be recorded of them. It was on this land that Crosby House was built on a ninety-nine years’ lease. Meantime, the church of St. Helen’s did duty both for the nuns and for the parish. In the year 1534 the value of the House was estimated at £376: 6s. a year. The property of the nuns shows that this House was always exclusively a London Foundation. They had houses in the City, in Middlesex, Kent, Essex, Hertford, and Buckingham—but these were all home counties. In the country they held little, if any, property. [Illustration: _W. Capon del._ _Wise sculp._ THE CRYPT OF THE NUNNERY OF ST. HELEN IN BISHOPSGATE STREET From the north, showing the situation of the two Chapels at the south end. The upper part of the plate exhibits the ceiling, etc., of a fine apartment over the crypt, which was used as the dining hall of the Leathersellers’ Company, by whom the Nunnery had been purchased after the Reformation, and which was pulled down by their order in 1799. The site is occupied by the buildings now forming St. Helen’s Place. _Londina Illustrata_, vol. i.] The collection of facts concerning the last years of the nunnery, made by the late Rev. Thomas Hugo, throws considerable light on the position of the House. In the first place, the names of the successive Prioresses and those of the Sisters seem to be chiefly of London origin; secondly, the bequests recorded in the _Calendar of Wills_, twenty-seven in number, are all made by London citizens. They are, moreover, situated in various wards, showing that the House was regarded as belonging to the whole of the City, and not to any part of it. Some of the bequests are made without any specified purpose; some have conditions and duties attached; thus, one is for providing communion wine, while others are to be accompanied by permission of burial in the church.