obvious departure from the Benedictine rule, which forbade the individual disposal of property and made quite different arrangements for the provision of clothing. (2) Another class of payments made to individuals from the convent funds was that of pittances. A pittance was originally an extra allowance of food and it was quite common for a benefactor to leave money to a convent for a pittance on the anniversary of his death. These pittances were, however, sometimes paid in money and most account rolls will provide examples of both. The nuns of Barking receive "Ruscheaw silver" as well as the little pies called "risshowes" in Lent; the nuns of St Mary de Pre (St Albans) had "Maundy silver" as well as ale and wine on Maundy Thursday; the nuns of St Michael's Stamford receive their pittances sometimes in money, sometimes in spices or pancakes, wine or beer. The nuns of Romsey had a pittance of 6_d._ each on the feast of St Martin and another of 6_d._ each "when blood is let"[1007]. (3) The third source from which nuns obtained private possessions lay in the gifts, both in money and in kind bestowed upon them by their friends. It has already been shown, in Chapter I, that there was a growing tendency in the later middle ages for a nun to be supported by means of an annuity, paid by her relatives and often ending with her life. The fact that these annuities were ear-marked for the support of individuals must have increased the temptation to regard them as the property of those individuals, a temptation which was not present in the old days when an aristocratic nun brought with her a grant of land to the house. One is tempted to conjecture that individuals occasionally retained in their own hands the expenditure of part at least of their annuities. Specific information from English sources is unfortunately rare; but in the diocese of Rouen in the middle of the thirteenth century Archbishop Eudes Rigaud sometimes found it necessary to enjoin that certain nuns who possessed rents which were reserved for their own use, should either transfer them to the common funds, or else dispose of them only with the consent of the prioress, a significant modification, which suggests that he was unable to eradicate a deeply rooted custom, although it was strictly against the rule[1008]. It was some twenty years later (c. 1277) that Bishop Thomas of Cantilupe, writing to the nuns of Lymbrook, enjoined: Let none of you keep in her own hand any possession or rent for clothing and shoeing herself, even with the consent of the prioress, albeit such possession or rent may be given to her by parents or friends, because the goods of your community suffice not thereto; but let it be given up wholly to your prioress, that out of it she may minister to those to whom the gift was made, according to their needs; otherwise they may easily fall into the sin of property and a secular craving for gifts, thus rashly violating their vow[1009].