The accounts of St Michael's Stamford are full of items such as "in the expenses of the Prioress on divers occasions going to the Bishop, with hire of horses 3_s._" "in the expenses of the Prioress going to Rockingham about our woods 1_s._ 2-1/2_d._," "paid for the hire of two horses for the prioress and her expenses going to Liddington to the Bishop for a certificate 2_s._ 8_d._," "paid for the expenses of the Prioress at Burgh (i.e. Peterborough) for two days 5_s._ 8_d._"; twice the Prioress went very far afield, as usual (it would appear) on legal business, for in 1377-8 there is an entry, "Item for the expenses of the Prioress and her companions at London for a month and more, in all expenses L5. 13_s._ 4_d._" (a large sum, a long distance and a lengthy stay), and in 1409-10 there is another payment "to the Prioress for expenses in London 15_s._"[215] In spite of repeated efforts to enforce stricter enclosure upon nuns, it is evident that the head of the house rode about on the business of the convent and overlooked its husbandry in person, even where (as at St Michael's Stamford) there was a male prior or _custos_ charged with the ordering of its temporal affairs. The general injunction that an abbess was never to leave her house save "for the obvious utility of the monastery or for urgent necessity"[216] was capable of a very wide interpretation, and it is clear from the evidence of visitations and accounts that it was interpreted to include a great deal of temporal business outside the walls. If a house possessed a male _custos_ the Prioress would have less occasion and less excuse for journeys, though for important affairs her presence was probably always necessary; Bishop Drokensford, appointing a _custos_ to Minchin Barrow, warns the Prioress no longer "to intermeddle with rural business (_negociis campestribus_) and other secular affairs" but to leave these to the _custos_ and to devote herself to the service of God and to the stricter enforcement of the rule[217]. But in houses where no such official existed the prioress doubtless undertook a certain amount of general estate management. One of Alnwick's orders to the Prioress of Legbourne in 1440 was "that ye bysylly ouersee your baylly, that your husbandry be sufficyently gouernede to the avayle of your house"[218]; and in the intervals of their long struggle to keep nuns within their cloisters, the Bishops seem to have recognised the necessity for some travel on the part of the heads of houses, and to have facilitated such travel by granting them dispensations to have divine service celebrated wherever they might be. Thus in 1400 the Prioress of Haliwell obtained a licence to hear divine service in her oratory within her mansion of Camberwell, or elsewhere in the diocese, during the next two years[219], and in 1406 the Abbess of Tarrant Keynes was similarly allowed to have the service celebrated for herself and her household