The nuns evidently asked the support of the Bishop (which accounts for the presence of their letter in his Register) for about the same time Grandisson also wrote an informal letter in French to the King, begging him to give up his design to place his cousin Johanete de Tourbevyle at Polsloe, on the ground that the nuns held all that they possessed in frank almoign and were so poor that it would be unpardonable to entail upon them a charge, which would become a precedent for ever: "Wherefore, dear Sire," he continued, "If it please you, hold us excused of this thing and put this thought from you. And for love of you, to whom we are much beholden aforetime, and to show you that we make no feigned pretence, ordain, if it please you, elsewhere for her estate, and we will very willingly give somewhat reasonable out of our own goods towards it; for this we may safely do[608]." It is not impossible that the disinclination of the nunneries to receive royal and episcopal nominees was in part due to dislike of taking an entirely unknown person into the close life of the community, in which so much depended upon the character and disposition of the individual. The right seems nearly always to have been exercised in favour of well-born girls, but though the bishops endeavoured to send only suitable novices, their knowledge of the character of their protegees would sometimes appear to have rested upon hearsay rather than upon personal acquaintance--"_ut credimus_," "_come nous sumez enformez_." On at least one occasion the nuns who resisted a bishop's nominee were to our knowledge justified by later events. In 1329 Ralph of Shrewsbury, the new Bishop of Bath and Wells, wrote to the Prioress and Convent of Cannington, desiring them to receive Alice, daughter of John de Northlode, to whom he had granted the right, "par resoun de nostre premiere creacion," on the request of Sir John Mautravers; four years later he was obliged to repeat the order, because the convent "had not yet been willing to receive the said Alice." The end of the story is to be found in the visitation report of 1351[609]. It is impossible to say whether the convent corrupted Alice or Alice the convent; but it is unfortunate that the Bishop's nominee should have been implicated.