the secular women servants of the nuns are wont too often to come into the frater, at times when the nuns are eating there, and into the cloister while the nuns are engaged there in chapter meetings, contemplation, reading or praying, and there do make a noise and behave otherwise ill, in a way which beseems not the honesty of religion. And these secular women often keep up their chattering, carolling (_cantalenas_) and other light behaviour, until the middle of the night, and disturb the aforesaid nuns, so that they cannot properly perform the regular services. Wherefore we ... command you that you henceforth permit not the aforesaid things, nor any other things which befit not the observances of your rule, to be done by the said servants or by others, and that you permit not these servants to serve you henceforth in the frater, and a servant or any other secular person who does the contrary shall be expelled from the monastery. Moreover we forbid on pain of the greater excommunication that any servants defamed for any offence be henceforth admitted to dwell among you, or having been admitted, be retained in your service, for from such grave scandals may arise concerning you and your house[437]. We have spoken hitherto about the regular hired servants of the house; but it must not be forgotten that nuns normally had a larger community dependent in part upon them. From time to time they were wont to hire such additional labour as they required, whether servants in husbandry taken on for the haymaking and harvest season, artificers hired to put up or repair buildings, workers in various branches of the cloth industry to make the liveries of the servants, itinerant candle-makers to prepare the winter dips, or a variety of casual workers hired at one time or another for specific purposes. The nuns of St Radegund's, Cambridge, entered in their accounts a large number of payments besides those to their regular servants. In moments of stress they were wont to fall back upon a paragon named Katherine Rolf. We first meet her in 1449-50 weeding the garden for four days, for the modest sum of 4-1/2_d._; but soon afterwards behold her on the roof, aiding the thatchers to thatch two tenements, at 1-1/2_d._ a day for twelve days. In the next year she is more active still; first of all she is found helping the candle-makers to make up 14 lbs. of tallow candles for the guest-house. Then she combs and cleans a pound of wool for spinning. Then she appears in the granary helping the maltster to thresh and winnow grain. In the midst of these activities she turns an honest penny by selling fat chickens to the convent. The nuns also disburse small sums of money to the man who cleanses the convent privies, to the _slawterman_ for killing beasts for the kitchen, to Richard Gardyner for beating stockfish, to Thomas Osborne for making malt, to Thomas the Smith