Nor was taxation for public purposes the only demand made upon the religious houses. Abbeys holding of the King in chief had to perform many services appertaining to tenants in chief, which seem oddly incongruous in the case of nunneries. The Abbesses of Shaftesbury, St Mary's Winchester, Wilton and Barking, were baronesses in their own right; the privilege of being summoned to parliament was omitted on account of their sex; but the duty of sending a quota of knights and soldiers to serve the King in his wars was regularly exacted[571]. In 1257 Agnes Ferrar, Abbess of Shaftesbury, was summoned to Chester to attend the expedition against Llewelyn ap Griffith, and her successor, Juliana Bauceyn, was also summoned in 1277 to attack that intrepid prince[572]. The Abbess of Romsey had to find a certain number of men-at-arms with their armour for the custody of the maritime land in the county of Southampton; she resisted when an attempt was made to exact an archer as well and successfully showed the King "that she has only two marks' rent in Pudele Bardolveston in that county"[573]. Less lawful exactions were even more burdensome, and the nunneries suffered with the rest of the nation under the demand for loans and the burden of purveyance[574]. In December 1307 the Abbess of Barking, in common with the heads of ten other religious houses, was requested to lend the King
two carts and horses to be at Westminster early on the day of St Stephen to carry vessels and equipments of the King's household to Dover, the King having sent a great part of his carts and sumpter horses to sea, so that he may find them ready when he arrives[575];
it is true that he engaged to pay out of his wardrobe the costs of the men leading the carts and of the horses going and returning, but meanwhile the Abbey lost their services, and carts and horses were very necessary on a manor; moreover it was common complaint that the tallies given by the King's servants for what they took were sometimes of no more value than the wood whereof they were made:
I had catell, now have I none; They take my beasts and done them slon, And payen but a stick of tree.
Similarly in June 1310 the King sent out a number of letters to the heads of religious houses, requesting the "loan" of various amounts of victuals for his Scottish expedition, and among the houses upon whom this call was made were the nunneries of Catesby, Elstow, St Mary's Winchester, Romsey, Wherwell, Barking, Nuneaton, Shaftesbury and Wilton[576].