Occasionally the nuns seem to have resented or resisted these attempts to foist the deformed and the half-witted upon them. One of the reasons urged by the obstinate inmates of Stratford against receiving little Isabel Bret was that she was deformed in her person[126]. It was complained against the Prioress of Ankerwyke at Alnwick's visitation in 1441 that she made _ideotas_ and other unfit persons nuns[127]; and in 1514 the Prioress of Thetford was similarly charged with intending shortly to receive illiterate and deformed persons as nuns and especially one Dorothy Sturges, a deaf and deformed gentlewoman. Her designs were frustrated, but the nuns of Blackborough were less particular and in 1532 Dorothy answered among her sisters that nothing was in need of reform in that little house[128]. At the time of the Dissolution the Commissioners found that one of the nuns of Langley was "in regard a fool"[129]; and a certain Jane Gowring (the name of whose convent has not been preserved) sent a petition to Cromwell, demanding whether two girls of twelve and thirteen, the one deaf and dumb and the other an idiot, should depart or not[130]. At Nuncoton in 1440 a nun informed Bishop Alnwick that two old nuns lay in the fermery and took their meals in the convent's cellar "and likewise the infirm, _the weak minded_ (_imbecilles_) and they that are in their seynies do eat in the same cellar"[131]. Complaints of the presence of idiots were fairly frequent. It is easy to understand the exasperation of Thetford over the case of Dorothy Sturges, when one finds Dame Katherine Mitford complaining at the same visitation that Elizabeth Haukeforth is "_aliquando lunatica_"[132]; but a few years later Agnes Hosey, described as "_ideota_," gave testimony with her sisters at Easebourne and excited no adverse comment[133]. In an age when faith and superstition went hand in hand a mad nun might even bring glory to her house; the tale of Catherine, nun of Bungay, illustrates this. In 1319 an inquiry was held into the miracles said to have been performed at the tomb of the saintly Robert of Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose canonisation was ardently desired by the English; among these miracles was the following: Sir Walter Botere, chaplain, having been sworn, says that the miracle happened thus, to wit that he saw a certain Catherine, who had been (so they say) a nun of Bungay, in the diocese of Norwich, mad (_furiosam_) and led to the tomb of the said father; and there she was cured of the said madness and so departed sane; and he says that there is public talk and report of this.