For as mykelle as we fonde that agayn the entente and the forbedyng of the commune lawe there are in your saide pryorye meo nunnes and susters professed then may be competently susteyned of the revenews of your sayde pryorye, the exilitee of the saide revenews and charitees duly considered, we commaunde, ordeyn, charge and enioyne yowe vnder payne etc. etc. that fro this day forthe ye receyve no mo in to nunnes ne sustres in your saide pryory wyth owte the advyse and assent of hus (and) of our successours bysshope of Lincolne, so that we or thai, wele informed of the yerely valwe of your saide revenews may ordeyn for the nombre competente of nunnes and susters[704]. Nevertheless even at Nuncoton, one of the houses to which a similar injunction was sent, a nun gave evidence "that in her oun time there were in the habit eighteen or twenty nuns and now there are only fourteen," and the Bishop himself remarked that "ther be but fewe in couent in regarde of tymes here to fore"[705]. Everywhere this decline in the number of nuns went steadily on during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries[706]. And from the beginning of the fifteenth century there appear, here and there among visitatorial injunctions, commands of a very different nature; here and there a Bishop is found trying, not to keep down, but to keep up the number of nuns. Instead of the repeated prohibitions addressed to Romsey at the beginning of the fourteenth century, there is an injunction from William of Wykeham in 1387, ordering the Abbess to augment the number of nuns, which had fallen far below the statutory number[707]. Similarly in 1432 Bishop Gray wrote to Elstow, since the accustomed number of nuns of the said monastery has so lessened, that those who are now received scarcely suffice for the chanting of divine service by night and day according to the requirement of the rule, we will and enjoin upon you the abbess, in virtue of obedience and under the penalties written above and beneath, that, with what speed you can, you cause the number of nuns in the said monastery to be increased in proportion to its resources[708]. At Studley in 1531, although the house was badly in debt, the nuns were ordered to live less luxuriously and "to augment your nombre of ladyes within the yere"[709]. In this connection Archbishop Warham's visitation of Sheppey in 1511 is significant. The Prioress, when questioned as to the number of nuns in the house, said that "she had heard there were seventeen; she knew of fourteen; she herself wished to increase the number to fourteen if she could find any who wished to enter into religion"[710]. It is an interesting reflection that Henry VIII may simply have accelerated, by his violent measure, a gradual dissolution of the nunneries through poverty and through change of fashion.