"Since," he wrote, "lately visiting you by our metropolitan right, we found you in a most desolate state (_multipliciter desolatas_), desiring to avoid such desolation in future, we order, by the counsel of discreet men, that henceforth two provident and discreet nuns be elected by the consent of the prioress and community; into whose hands all the money of the house shall be brought, whether from granges, or from appropriated churches, or coming from any other offerings, to be carefully looked after by their consent. And as well the Prioress as the other nuns shall receive (money for) all necessary expenses from their hands and in no manner otherwise. And we will that these nuns be called Treasuresses, which Treasuresses thrice in the year, to wit in Lent, Whitsuntide and on the Feast of St Michael, shall render account before the Prioress for the time being and before five or six elders of the chapter."
In addition they were to have a priest as _custos_ or administrator of their temporal and spiritual possessions[741].
The appointment of a coadjutress to the head of a house in the administration of its affairs is of the same nature. The appointment of coadjutresses was a favourite device with Archbishop Peckham, to check an extravagant or incapable head. At the great abbey of Romsey three coadjutresses were appointed, without whose testimony and advice the Abbess was to undertake no important business[742]. At Wherwell one coadjutress only, a certain J. de Ver, was appointed in 1284, and the same year the Archbishop wrote to his commissary on the subject of the Priory of the Holy Sepulchre, Canterbury:
Since by the carelessness and neglect of the Prioress the goods of the house are said to be much wasted, we wish you to assign to her two coadjutresses, to wit Dame Sara and another of the more honest and wise ladies; but let neither be Benedicta, who is said to have greatly offended the whole community by her discords.
Here, as at Usk, Peckham appointed in addition a master to look after their affairs[743]. At the disorderly house of Arthington Isabella Couvel was in 1312 associated with the Prioress Isabella de Berghby, but the Prioress seems to have resented the appointment and promptly ran away[744]. In the Exeter diocese Bishop Stapeldon made Joan de Radyngton coadjutress to Petronilla, Abbess of Canonsleigh in 1320[745]; and in the diocese of Bath and Wells Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury in 1335 appointed two coadjutresses to Cecilia de Draycote, Prioress of White Hall, Ilchester, and in 1351, when his visitation had revealed many scandals at Cannington, including the simoniacal admission of nuns and unauthorised sale of corrodies by the Prioress, the Bishop, instead of depriving her "tempered the rigour of the law with clemency" and appointed two coadjutresses without whose consent she was to do nothing[746]. Bishop Alnwick made use of this method of controlling a superior in several cases where serious mismanagement had come to light at his visitation[747], and other instances of this method of controlling the administration of a superior might be multiplied from the episcopal registers.