Moreover even if nuns visited their friends for a very short time, staying only one night, or even returning before nightfall to the convent, there was danger that they might join in the various revelries practised among secular folk, and reprobated by the Church as occasions for unseemly and licentious behaviour. Bishop Spofford of Hereford, indeed, found it necessary in 1437 to send a special warning against doing so to the nuns of Lymbrook; the Prioress was to "yife no lycence too noon of hur sustres her after to go to no port townes, no to noon othir townes to comyn wakes or festes, spectacles and othir worldly vanytees, and specially on holy-dayes, nor to be absent lyggying oute by nyght out of thair monastery, but with fader and moder, except causes of necessytee"[1177]. The words which the Good Wife spoke to her daughter come to mind: Go not to şe wrastelings ne schotynge at cok As it were a strumpet or a giggelot, Wone at hom, doughter, and love şi work myche[1178]. Clemence Medforde, Prioress of Ankerwyke, went to a wedding at Bromhale[1179]; yet weddings were of all those "comyn wakes and festes" most condemned by the Church for the unseemly revelries which followed them. _The Christen State of Matrimony_, written in 1543, throws a flood of light upon the subject: When they come home from the Church, then beginneth excesse of eatyng and dryncking--and as much is waisted in one daye, as were sufficient for the two newe maried Folkes halfe a yere to lyve upon.... After the Bancket and Feast, there begynnethe a vayne, madde and unmanerlye fashion, for the Bryde must be brought into an open dauncynge place. Then is there such a rennynge, leapynge, and flyngynge among them, then is there suche a lyftynge up and discoverynge of the Damselles clothes and other Womennes apparell, that a Man might thynke they were sworne to the Devels Daunce. Then muste the poore Bryde kepe foote with al Dauncers and refuse none, how scabbed, foule, droncken, rude and shameles soever he be. Then must she oft tymes heare and se much wyckednesse and many an uncomely word; and that noyse and romblyng endureth even tyll supper[1180]. It may be urged that the Brides of Heaven need not necessarily have attended these merry-makings after the ceremony; but the example of Isabel Benet, nun of Catesby, and the tenour of certain episcopal injunctions, show that nuns by no means despised dancing[1181]. The strict disciplinarian's view of weddings is shown in the fact that members of the Tertiary Order of St Francis were forbidden to attend them; and even the civic authorities of London found it necessary to regulate the disorders which were prevalent on such occasions[1182].