The obligation to provide corrodies for royal nominees pressed more heavily than the duty of pensioning royal clerks. A corrody was originally a livery of food and drink given to monks and nuns, but the term was extended to denote a daily livery of food given to some person not of the community and frequently accompanied by suitable clothing and a room in which to live. Hence corrodians were often completely kept in board and lodging, having the right to everything that a nun of the house would have (a "nun's corrody") and sometimes allowed to keep a private servant, who had the right to the same provision as the regular domestics of the house (a "servant's corrody"). The King, indeed, looked upon the monastic houses of his realm as a sort of vast Chelsea Hospital, in which his broken-down servants, yeomen and officials and men-at-arms, might end their days. Thus he obtained their grateful prayers without putting his hand into his purse. There must have been hundreds of such old pensioners scattered up and down the country, and judging from the number of cases in which one man is sent to receive the maintenance lately given to another, deceased, some houses had at least one of them permanently on the premises. Many a hoary veteran found his way into the quiet precincts of a nunnery: His helmet now shall make a hive for bees; And, lovers' sonnets turn'd to holy psalms, A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms. In the intervals between feeding on prayers he must have been vastly disturbing and enthralling to the minds of round-eyed novices, with his tales of court and camp, of life in London town or long campaigns in France, or of how John Copeland had the King of Scots prisoner and what profit he got thereby. In the last three months of 1316 Edward II sent seventeen old servants to various religious houses, and among them Henry de Oldyngton of the avenary was sent to Barking, to receive such maintenance as William de Chygwell, deceased, had in that house[626]. In 1328 Roger atte Bedde, the King's yeoman, who served the King and his father, was sent to St Mary's, Winchester, instead of James le Porter, deceased[627]; and in 1329 the Abbess and Convent of Shaftesbury were requested to admit to their house Richard Knight, spigurnel of the King's chancery, who had long served the King and his father in that office, and to administer to him for his life such maintenance in all things as Robert le Poleter, deceased, had in their house[628]. The unlucky convent of Wilton apparently had to support two pensioners, for in 1328 Roger Liseway was sent there in place of Roger Danne and the next year John de Odiham, yeoman of the chamber of Queen Philippa, took the place of John de Asshe[629]. It was doubtless even more common for the widows of the King's dependents to be sent to nunneries, and he must often have received such a petition as was addressed by Agnes de Vylers to Edward III: