“By a council near Paris, in the eighth century, it is ordered that the bishop, as well as the abbess, may send a nun misbehaving herself to a penitentiary; that no abbess is to superintend more than one monastery, or to quit the precincts except once a year, when summoned by her sovereign; and that the abbess must do penance in the monastery for her faults by the bishop’s direction. Charlemagne enacted that the bishop must report to the Crown any abbess guilty of misconduct, in order that she might be deposed. Abbesses were forbidden, in the reign of his successor, to walk alone, and thus were placed, in some degree, under the surveillance of the sisterhood. Charlemagne prohibited abbesses from laying hands on any one, or pronouncing the blessing.”[15] On account of the property and lands belonging to convents, abbesses and prioresses were constantly brought into relationship with the outer world, and not always in a very pleasant way. The command which they had over the fiefs of the convent was a frequent source of friction with the laity. In 1292 the Prioress of Mynchin Buckland, in Somersetshire, was a party in a suit, together with a widow and two men, touching the right of common pasture in an appurtenance of the convent. The case went against the religious house, but the prioress and the widow both escaped paying their share of the costs on the plea of poverty.[16] Sometimes troubles arose from the interference of the clergy. In the fourteenth century a diocesan official made himself very disagreeable to the sisters of Mynchin Buckland priory, demanding to see their title to certain churches which they had held from time immemorial. The sisters replied by demanding, in their turn, to see his commission, whereupon he grew indignant, and imposed upon them a heavy fine for contumacy. The case was carried to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who at once stopped the proceedings of the diocesan official, and restored quietude to the convent. In the reign of Edward III. we find a prioress suing a sheriff for recovery of a pension granted to her convent in the reign of Henry III. As the sheriff positively refused to pay, the prioress carried the case to the King’s Court, where the recalcitrant sheriff was thoroughly beaten. Lands granted to a convent without due formalities sometimes created difficulties, as in the reign of Henry IV., when the Prioress of Mynchin Barrow found her claim to a meadow which had been granted without the royal licence was bringing her into conflict with the laity. However, her rights were maintained after full examination.