It was also a common practice for the Visitor to demand that the current balance sheet and inventory (the _status domus_) of a monastic house should be produced, together with its foundation charter and various other documents, before he took the evidence of the inmates at a visitation. The register of Bishop Alnwick's visitations shows the procedure very clearly; usually there is simply a note to the effect that the Prioress handed in the _status domus_, but at some houses the Bishop encountered difficulties. At St Michael's Stamford, in 1440, the old Prioress (who, it will be remembered, had rendered no account at all during her twelve years of office) was unable to produce a balance sheet, or one of the required certificates, and Alnwick was obliged to proceed with her examination "hiis exhibendis non exhibitis." He made shift however to extract some verbal information from her; she said that the house was in debt £20 at her installation and now only 20 marks, that it could expend £40, besides 10 marks appropriated to the office of pittancer and besides "the perquisites of the stewardship"; she said also "that they plough with two teams and they have eight oxen, seven horses, a bailiff, four serving-folk, a carter for the teams, and a man who is their baker and brewer, whose wife makes the malt"[732]. At Legbourne also the Prioress
showed the state of the house, as it now stands, as they say, but not annual charges, etc.... She says that the house owed £43 at the time of her confirmation and installation and now only £14; nevertheless because the state of the house is not fully shown, she has the next day at Louth to show it more fully[733].
At Ankerwyke also Clemence Medforde gave in an incomplete balance sheet:
she shewed a roll containing the rents of the house, which, after deducting rent-charges, reach the total of £22. 6. 7. Touching the stewardship of the temporalities and touching the other receipts, as from alms and other like sources, she shews nothing, and says that at the time of her preferment the house was 300 marks in debt, and now is in debt only £40, and she declares some of the names of the creditors of this sum[734].
A special demand for a complete statement of accounts was sometimes made in cases where gross maladministration was charged against a prioress. Thus in 1310 Archbishop Greenfield ordered an investigation of certain charges (unspecified, but clearly of this nature) made against the Prioress of Rosedale; her accounts,