Nor were the clergy loath to embrace this opportunity of removing the fruit of a lapse from grace. Hugh de Tunstede, rector of Catton, left ten shillings and a bed to his daughter Joan, a nun of Wilberfoss[119], and at the time of the Dissolution there was a child of Wolsey himself at Shaftesbury[120]. It is significant that it was sometimes necessary to procure the papal dispensation of an abbess- or prioress-elect for illegitimacy, before she could hold office. The dispensation in 1472 of Joan Ward, a nun of Esholt, who afterwards became prioress, is interesting, for the Wards were patrons of the house and her presence illustrates one of the uses to which such patronage could be put[121]. The diocese of York affords other instances (they were common enough in the case of priests) of dispensation "_super defectu natalium_"; in 1474 one was granted to Cecily Conyers, a nun at Ellerton, "born of a married man and a single woman"[122] and in 1432 Alice Etton received one four days before her confirmation as Prioress of Sinningthwaite[123]. At St Mary's Neasham in 1437, the Bishop of Durham appointed Agnes Tudowe prioress and issued a mandate for her dispensation for illegitimacy and her installation on the same day[124]. Less defensible from the point of view of the house was the practice, which certainly existed, of placing in nunneries girls in some way deformed, or suffering from an incurable defect. Now earth to earth in convent walls, To earth in churchyard sod. I was not good enough for man, And so am given to God. It will be remembered that the practice roused the disapprobation of Gargantua, whose abbey of Theleme contained only beautiful and amiable persons. Item, parcequ'en icelluy temps on ne mettoit en religion des femmes, sinon celles qu'estoyent borgnes, boiteuses, bossues, laides, deffaictes, folles, insensees, maleficiees et tarees, ... ("a propos, dist li moyne, une femme qui n'est ny belle, ny bonne, a quoi vault elle?--A mettre en religion, dist Gargantua.--Voyre, dist le moine, et a faire des chemises.") ... feut ordonne que la (i.e. a Theleme) ne seroyent receues, sinon les belles, bien formees et bien naturees, et les beaux, bien formez et bien naturez[125].