Sometimes the abbeys found it cheaper to compound with the King for a certain sum of money and thus to purchase the right of administering their own temporalities, saving to the King, as a rule, knights' fees, advowsons, escheats and sometimes wards and marriages. Romsey Abbey secured this privilege, after the escheator had already entered, in 1315, for a fine of forty marks; but in 1333, when there was another voidance, the convent had to agree to pay L40 for the first two months and _pro rata_ for such time as the voidance continued, saving to the King knights' fees, advowsons and escheats[582]. In 1340 the royal escheator was ordered to let the Prioress and Convent of Wherwell have the custody of their temporalities, in accordance with a grant made some years previously, by which the house was to render L230 for a year and _pro rata_[583]. In 1344 a similar order was made in the case of Wilton, whose late Abbess (prudent woman) had seized the opportunity to purchase the right for L60 from the King, when he lay at Orwell before crossing the sea[584]. Similarly, the next year, Shaftesbury received the custody of its temporalities in consideration of a fine of L100, made with the King by its Abbess, in the second year of his reign[585]. With four great abbeys falling vacant in little over ten years, the royal exchequer reaped a good harvest; and though the payment of a lump sum was better than falling into the hands of the escheator, and though the nuns would make haste to elect a new abbess as soon as possible, a voidance was always a costly matter.