Excursions on convent business or for attendance at ecclesiastical ceremonies (other than pilgrimages) were regarded as legitimate, though strict disciplinarians sought to restrict them to occasions of real urgency. But for the most part we hear about journeys undertaken for pleasure and not for business, or at any rate the elastic term business is stretched to cover some very pleasant wandering in the world and much hobnobbing with friends. In spite of the Bull _Periculoso_[1174] bishops were never able to prevent nuns from going to stay with their friends, and sometimes the ladies made very long journeys for this purpose. Bishop Stapeldon, for instance, ordained that when the nuns of Canonsleigh in Devon went to visit their friends "in Somerset, Dorset, Devonshire or in Cornwall" they might not stay for longer than a month; but if they went outside these four counties the Abbess might allow them to stay longer still, having regard to the distance of their destination and to the time which would be spent in travelling[1175]. The bishops indeed were forced to regard such visits as "reasonable occasions" for a breach of enclosure, and their efforts, as has already been shown, were confined to regulating rather than to stopping the practice; for the relatives of the nuns, as well as the ladies themselves, would have been the first to resent any interference with their visits. Whatever might be the theory of the Church on the subject, blood was thicker than holy water; family affections and family interests persisted in the cloister and the nun was welcomed at many a hospitable board for her family's sake as well as for her own. All this seems natural and obvious today and few would think the worse of the nuns for their opposition to the stricter form of enclosure. Nevertheless the authorities of the Church had reason for their distrust of these absences from the convent. Once away from the cloister and staying in a private house there was nothing to keep a nun from joining in the secular revelries of friends, and though her behaviour might be exemplary the convent rule aimed at keeping her unspotted even by temptation. An anecdote related by Erasmus in his dialogue "Ichthyophagia" shows that the danger of allowing nuns to visit their friends might be a real one. Two nuns had gone to stay with their kinsfolk, and at supper they began to grow merry with wine; they laughed and joked and kissed and not over-modestly neither, till you could hardly hear what was said for the noise they made.... After supper there was dancing and singing of lascivious songs and such doings I am ashamed to speak of, inasmuch as I am much afraid the night hardly passed very honestly[1176].