This account of the attempts of medieval bishops to prevent the nunneries from burdening themselves with inmates, beyond the number which could be supported by their revenues, leads to a consideration of the other methods employed by them to remedy the financial distress in which the nuns so often found themselves. These methods may be divided into three classes; (1) arrangements to safeguard expenditure by the head of the house and to impose a check upon autocracy, (2) arrangements to prevent rash expenditure or improvident means of raising money, by requiring episcopal consent before certain steps could be taken, and (3) if the incompetence of the nuns were such that even these restrictions were insufficient, the appointment of a male _custos_, master or guardian, to manage the finances of the house. Arrangements for safeguarding expenditure by the head of the house were of four kinds: (1) provision for the consultation of the whole convent in important negotiations, (2) provision for the safe custody of the common seal, (3) provision for the regular presentation of accounts, and (4) the appointment of coadjutresses to the Prioress, or of two or three treasuresses, to be jointly responsible for receipts and expenditure. It was a common injunction that the whole convent, or at least "the more and sounder part of it," should be consulted in all important negotiations, such as the alienation of property, the leasing of land and farms, the cutting down of woods, the incurring of debts and the reception of novices[711]. It has already been shown that Prioresses acted autocratically in performing such business on their own initiative, and the injunction sent by Peckham to the Abbess of Romsey shows the lengths to which this independence might lead them[712]. Flemyng's injunction to Elstow in 1421-2 is typical: That the Abbess deliver not nor demise to farm appropriated churches, pensions, portions, manors or granges belonging to the monastery, nor do any other such weighty business, without the express consent of the greater and sounder part of the convent[713].