Lest it should seem that everyone who had enough money could become a nun, it must, however, be added that the bishops took some pains that the persons who were received as novices should be suitable and pleasing to their sisters. They seldom exercised their right of nomination without some assurance that their nominee was of honest life and station, "Mulierem honestam, ut credimus"[96], "bonae indolis, ut credimus, juvenculam"[97], "jeovene damoisele et de bone condicion, come nous sumez enformez"[98], "competeter ad hujusmodi officii debitum litterate"[99]. They were always ready to hear complaints if unsuitable persons had been admitted by the prioress; and they sometimes made special injunctions upon the matter. Bokyngham at Heynings in 1392 ordered "that they receive no one to the habit, nor even to profession, unless she be first found by diligent inquisition and approbation to be useful, teachable, capable, of legitimate age, discreet and honest"[100]. At Elstow Bishop Gray made a very comprehensive injunction: Furthermore we enjoin and charge you the Abbess ... that henceforward you admit no one to be a nun of the said monastery, unless with the express consent of the greater and sounder part of the same convent; and no one in that case, unless she be taught in song and reading and the other things requisite herein, or probably may be easily instructed within short time, and be such that she shall be able to bear the burdens of the quire (with) the rest that pertain to religion[101]. Nevertheless, for all their precautions, some strange inmates found their way into the medieval nunneries. The novice who entered a nunnery, to live there as a nun for the rest of her natural life, might do so for very various reasons. For those who entered young and of their own will, religion was either a profession or a vocation. They might take the veil because it offered an honourable career for superfluous girls, who were unwilling or unable to marry; or they might take it in a real spirit of devotion, with a real call to the religious life. For other girls the nunnery might be a prison, into which they were thrust, unwilling but often afraid to resist, by elders who wished to be rid of them; and many nunneries contained also another class of inmates, older women, often widows, who had retired thither to end their days in peace. A career, a vocation, a prison, a refuge; to its different inmates the medieval nunnery was all these things.