1517 visit and that this was the prioress's revenge. One nun, Juliana Bechamp, who seems to have remained uninvolved in the various troubles, told the bishop that she was "ashamed to [be] here [under] the evil ruele [of] my ladye". The scandals besetting Littlemore Priory were by then very much public knowledge, and both prioress and nuns had their supporters in the City of Oxford. The historian Peter Marshall has described them as "eye-catching", and Spears suggests they provided "the sensationalist media of the day with profitable copy". Confession of the prioress A few months following his visit, Bishop Atwater summoned Katherine Wells to his court in Lincoln. She faced numerous charges including incontinence and deliberate immorality. Bowker says the proceedings lasted several days during which she was interrogated by both the bishop and his officials including Dr Peter Potkyn, the episcopal canonist at counsel. At first Wells denied the accusations, but the weight of Horde's evidence forced a confession. She revealed her daughter had died in 1513, and that she had given Richard Hewes some of the priory's silver plate since then, including a silver goblet worth five marks. She claimed to have maintained the same lifestyle for the previous eight years, but that no one had enquired into Littlemore's affairs in all that time. Rather, she said, the priory had had no contact with officialdom except for one occasion when she had received some ecclesiastical injunctions a few years before. On the final day of the hearing, Atwater gathered the evidence and pronounced his judgment. As punishment, Wells was dismissed from her office, although she was permitted to carry out the day-to-day duties the house required until a replacement had been organised. This was on the strict condition that she would do nothing apart from this without Horde's personal authorisation, especially in regard to matters of internal discipline. The historian J. A. F. Thomson has described the situation, specifically the bishop's dismissal of Wells in the knowledge that she would have to be allowed to continue, as demonstrating the "inadequacy of visitations as a means of enforcing discipline". The medievalist Eileen Power agrees that "it shows how inadequate, in some cases, was the episcopal machinery for control and reform" of such institutions as Littlemore. She places the blame for Littlemore's condition squarely on Wells's shoulders, with her "habitual incontinence [and] persecution of her nuns", whom she describes as