Monastic hospitality was often grievously abused. No doubt when kings and other great men lodged in the monasteries they usually made some acknowledgment. But the Priory of Stone complained to Bishop Norbury (1322–59) that it was impoverished by the many claims which were made on its hospitality by travellers of every degree in consequence of its being _juxta viam regiam_, and in 1382 Burton made a similar complaint to the Pope. In the early years of Henry VI’s reign Burton was absolutely insolvent and was put into commission for seven years.[12] Many houses had the privilege of holding fairs and markets. Croxden, Dieulacres, Rocester and Burton did a brisk trade with foreign wool merchants in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and their wool was almost unexcelled in England. Edward III once exacted 600 sacks of wool from Staffordshire at a low rate, and the Croxden annalist says he failed to pay even that. Sometimes the business transactions of the monks were questionable: In 1457 the Prior of St. Thomas’s, Stafford, was sued for £10 damages for having sold a horse _sciens equum illum in varias infirmitates collapsum et ad laborandum impotentem_.[13] Sometimes, especially in the case of the friars in the towns, strong opposition was raised. In 1282 the King had to intervene to protect the friars minors at Stafford, as it appeared that certain regrators put hindrances in the way of their purchasing even daily victuals, and at times even snatched out of their hands what they had bought.[14] But the religious rendered real services to the towns. Burton grew up beside the Abbey walls, built very largely under the direction of the abbots through many generations. Abbot Nicholas built the first street in the twelfth century, and the fifteenth abbot, Thomas de Felde, built the great hall in the market place. Later still Abbot Beyne founded the Grammar School. Of these houses the following remained till the sixteenth century: Brewood Nunnery, Burton Abbey, Calwich Priory, Canwell Priory, Croxden Abbey, Dieulacres Abbey, Dudley Priory, Fairwell Nunnery, Hulton Abbey, Rocester Abbey, Ronton Priory, Sandwell Priory, St. Thomas’s Priory at Stafford, St. John’s Priory at Lichfield, Stone Priory, Trentham Priory, and Tutbury Priory; and the friaries at Lichfield, Stafford and Newcastle-under-Lyme. It is with the dissolution of these that we shall be concerned. They were not pre-eminent for size, wealth, vice or virtue; they did not give to the history of the Reformation any famous names or contribute any striking episodes. They represent, rather, the ordinary “rank and file” of the religious houses. For that reason they are, perhaps, the better worth investigation, because they are typical of the average.