This comprehensive catalogue gives some indication of the losses which a house would suffer from reckless grants. The sale of timber and the alienation or pawning of plate were other expedients to which the nuns constantly resorted and which were as constantly prohibited by the bishops[679]. The Prioress of Nunmonkton in 1397, "alienated timber in large quantities to the value of a hundred marks"[680]; the cutting down of woods was charged against the Prioresses of Heynings, Harrold, Langley, Gracedieu, Catesby and Ankerwyke at Alnwick's visitations; at Langley it was moreover found that the woods were not properly fenced in after the trees were felled and so the tree-stumps were damaged[681]; the necessity for raising the money was sometimes specifically pleaded, as at Markyate, where a small wood had been sold "to satisfy the creditors of the house"[682]. These sales of timber were a favourite means of obtaining ready money; but too often the loss to the house by the destruction of its woods far outweighed the temporary gain and the Abbeys of St Mary's Winchester and Romsey made special mention of this cause of impoverishment in the middle of the fourteenth century[683]. The alienation or pawning of plate and _jocalia_ was often resorted to in an extremity. At Gracedieu in 1441 the jewels of the house had been pawned without the knowledge of the convent, so that the nuns (as one of them complained) had not one bowl from which to drink[684]; the next year it was asserted that the Prioress of Catesby "pawned the jewels of the house for ten years, to wit one cup for the sacrament, which still remained in pawn, and also other pieces of silver"[685]. When Bishop Longland visited Nuncoton in 1531 he found that the Prioress had in times past sold various goods belonging to her house, "viz. a bolle ungilte playn with a couer, oon nutt gilte with a couer, ij bolles white without couers, oon Agnus of gold, oon bocle of gold, oon chalice, oon maser and many other things"[686]; and in 1436 it was ordered that the chalices, jewels and ornaments of St Mary's Neasham, which were then in the hands of sundry creditors, were to be redeemed[687]. In the case of Sinningthwaite in 1534 the convent was in such a reduced state that Archbishop Lee was actually obliged to give the nuns licence to pledge jewels to the value of L15[688]. The charge of pawning or selling jewels for their own purposes was often made against prioresses whose conduct in other ways was bad; for instance against Eleanor of Arden in 1396[689], Juliana of Bromhale in 1404[690], Agnes Tawke of Easebourne in 1478[691] and Katherine Wells of Littlemore in 1517[692].