The Archbishop had his way however; for eleven years later the will of Robert le Bret was enrolled in the Court of Husting and contained a legacy of rents on Cornhill "to Isabella his daughter, a nun of Stratford"[603]. Peckham also wrote in a tone of strained patience to the nuns of Castle Hedingham, who had refused to receive Agnes de Beauchamp, warning them that besides incurring severe punishment at his own hands, further obstinacy would offend the Queen of England, at whose instance he had undertaken the promotion of the said Agnes[604]. The Prioress of Catesby was equally troublesome and as late as 1284 the Archbishop wrote reprimanding her for her inconstancy and feigned excuses, because, after promising to receive the daughter of Sir Robert de Caynes and after repeated requests on his part that they should admit the girl, she and her nuns had written asking to be allowed to admit another person in her stead[605].
Real poverty often nerved the nuns to such bold resistance. In the Register of Bishop Grandisson of Exeter there is a letter from Polsloe Priory, written in 1329 and addressed to Queen Philippa, on the subject of a certain Johanete de Tourbevyle[606], whom she had requested the nuns to receive as a lay sister. Written in the French of their daily speech, with no attempt at formal phraseology, their naive plea still rings with the agitation of the "poor and humble maids," torn between anxiety not to burden their impecunious house, and fear of offending the new-made Queen of England:
To their very honourable and very powerful and redoubtable lady, my lady Dame Philippa, by the grace of God queen of England, etc., her poor and humble maids, the nuns of Polsloe, in all that they may of reverence and honour; beseeching your sweet pity to have mercy on our great poverty. Our very noble dame, we have received your letters, by the which we understand that it is your will that we receive Johanete de Tourbevyle among us as sister of the house, to take the dress of a nun in secular habit. Concerning the which matter, most debonair lady, take pity upon us, if it please you, for the love of God and of His mother. For certainly never did any queen demand such a thing before from our little house; though mayhap they be accustomed to do so from other houses, founded by the kings and holding of them in chief; but this do not we, wherefore it falls heavily upon us. And if it please your debonair highness to know our simple estate, we are so poor (God knows it and all the country) that what we have suffices not to our small sustenance, who must by day and night do the service of God, were it not for the aid of friends; nor can we be charged with seculars without reducing the number of us religious women, to the diminution of God's service and the perpetual prejudice of our poor house. And we have firm hope in God and in your great bounty that you will not take it ill that this thing be not done to the peril of our souls; for to entertain and to begin such a new charge in such a small place, a charge which would endure and would be demanded for ever afterwards, would be too great a danger to your soul, my Lady, in the sight of God, wherefrom God by His grace defend you! Our most blessed Lady, may God give you a long and happy life, to His pleasure and to the aid and solace of ourselves and of other poor servants of God on earth; and we should have great joy to do your behests, if God had given us the power[607].