dowry. According to the bishop's records, although the nuns pleaded with Wells to give Hewes up, "she had answered that she would not do so for anybody, for she loved him and would love him". Clandestine sexual relationships were not the sole purview of the prioress; at least one other nun, probably Juliana Wynter, had also had a child by John Wikesley, a married Oxford scholar, two years previously. For their part, the nuns complained to Horde that Wells was a brutal disciplinarian; when they tried to broach the subject with her, she would have them put in the stocks. The historian Valerie G. Spears has suggested Wells was obsessed with discipline; on the one hand this was "self-defeating", and on the other encouraged by the nuns' servility. The nuns also complained that no effort had been put into maintaining the priory or its buildings, and they pointed out damaged and leaking roofs and walls. Essential outbuildings had been leased by Wells to the priory's secular neighbours, and she had kept the rents herself. They also protested their decrepit clothing, poor and insufficient food and bad ale. Horde discovered the bulk of the priory's foundation wealth, including its jewellery, had been pawned or spent on the prioress's "evil life". At the same time, the nuns lacked basic necessities, including food and clothing, and could not purchase anything for themselves as the prioress regularly confiscated their stipends. They said Wells sent these funds outside the priory to be distributed among her relatives. They complained her general behaviour also set a bad example: rather than spend her days in contemplation or the administration of the house, she would roam the surrounding countryside with no companion other than a young child from a nearby village. Horde heard that such a state of affairs was damaging recruitment: women who may have been thinking of taking the veil at Littlemore saw the conditions they would be expected to live under and went elsewhere instead. It was claimed on at least one occasion a potential recruit had not only walked out immediately, but had proceeded to advertise the poor state of the priory throughout Oxford. Potential benefactors were also being deterred. The church historian Philip Hughes suggests that nuns demanded that Horde remedy their complaints. They had requested permission to leave the house for another if he could not, possibly out of fear of Wells's expected