The revenues of the nunneries, often scant to begin with and liable to constant diminution from the ravages of nature, were still more heavily burdened by a variety of exactions on the part of the authorities of Church and State. The procurations payable to the Bishop on his visitation fell heavily upon the smaller houses; hence such a notice as that which occurs in Bishop Nykke's Register under the year 1520: "Item the reverend father with his colleagues came down to the house of nuns that afternoon, and having seen the priory he dissolved his visitation there, on account of the poverty of the house"[560]. St Mary Magdalen's, Bristol, was on account of its poverty exempt from the payment of such procurations[561] and the Bishops doubtless often exercised their charity upon such occasions[562]. Papal exactions were even more oppressive; John of Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, pleaded with the papal nuncio in 1285 that he would forbear to exact procurations from the poor nuns of Wintney, whom the Bishop himself excused from all charges in view of their deep poverty[563]; and in 1300 Bishop Swinfield of Hereford made a similar appeal to the commissary of the nuncio, and secured the remission of procurations due from the nuns of Lingbrook and the relaxation of the sentence of excommunication, which they had incurred through non-payment[564]. The obligation to pay tithes also fell heavily upon the poorer houses; it was for this reason that Archbishop John le Romeyn appealed to the Prior of Newburgh in 1286 not to exact tithes from the food of animals in Nether Sutton, belonging to the poor nuns of Arden[565]; and in 1301 the Prior of Worcester desired his commissary to spare the poverty of the nuns of Westwood and not to exact tithes or any other things due to him from them or from their churches[566]. Added to ecclesiastical exactions were the taxes due to the Crown. In 1344 the nuns of Davington addressed a petition to Edward III, representing that, owing to their great poverty, they were unable to satisfy the King's public aids without depriving themselves of their necessary subsistence, a plea which was found to be true[567]. The frequency with which such petitions for exemption from the payment of taxes were made and granted, is in itself a proof that the burden of taxation was a real one, for the Crown would not have excused its dues, unless the need for such an act of charity had been great[568]; and it is obvious that the sheer impossibility of collecting the money from a poverty-stricken house must often have left little alternative. The houses that did contribute were not slow to complain. "The unwonted exactions and tallages with which their house and the whole of the English Church has been burdened" were pleaded by the nuns of Heynings as in part responsible for their poverty in 1401[569]; similarly "the necessary and very costly exactions of tenths and other taxes and