The obligation to receive a nun on the nomination of the king or the bishop was not the only burden upon the finances of the nunneries. Abbeys in the patronage of the Crown were upon occasion obliged also to find maintenance for other persons, men as well as women, who never became members of their community. The right to demand a pension for one of the royal clerks was sometimes exercised on the occasion of a voidance, and the money had in most cases to be paid until such time as the young man was provided with a suitable benefice by the Abbey. The Abbess of Romsey was ordered to give a pension to William de Dereham in 1315 by reason of her new election[610]; John de St Paul was sent to the same house in 1333[611], William de Tydeswell in 1349[612]. The right is also found in exercise at Wherwell[613], St Mary's, Winchester[614], Shaftesbury[615], Wilton[616], Delapre (Northampton)[617], Barking[618] and Elstow[619]. In certain cases the Bishop possessed a similar right on the occasion of his own consecration; for instance John of Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, wrote to the Abbess of St Mary's, Winchester, in 1283, complaining that whereas his predecessors had by a laudable custom presented their own clerks to the first benefice in the patronage of a religious house vacant after their establishment in the bishopric, they (the nuns) had recently presented a nominee of their own to a benefice then vacant. Two years later the Abbess and Convent of Wherwell wrote to him, voluntarily offering him the next vacant benefice in their patronage for one of his clerks; and in 1293 he reminded the nuns of Romsey that they were bound by agreement to do likewise[620]. Similarly Simon of Ghent, Bishop of Salisbury, directed the Abbess of Shaftesbury to provide for Humphrey Wace in 1297[621]. The demand to pension a clerk, like the demand to receive a nun, was sometimes resisted by the convents. In the early part of his reign Edward II ordered the Sheriff of Bedford to distrain the Abbess of Elstow by all her lands and chattels in his bailiwick and to answer to the King for the issues and to have her body before the King at the octaves of Hilary next, to answer why, whereas she and her convent, by reason of the new creation of an Abbess, were bound to give a pension to a clerk, to be named by the King and he had transferred the option to his sister Elizabeth Countess of Hereford and had asked the Abbess to give it to her nominee they had neglected to do so[622]. The end of the story is contained in a petition printed in the _Rolls of Parliament_, wherein the Abbess and Convent of "Dunestowe" (Elstow) informed the King in 1320