Eglentyne was rather an autocrat, in a good-natured sort of way, and
besides she hated bother. So she did not always consult the nuns; and I
fear too (after many researches into that past of hers which Chaucer
forgot to mention) that she often tried to evade rendering an account of
income and expenditure to them every year, as she was supposed to do.

The nuns, of course, objected to this; and the first time the bishop
came on his rounds they complained about it to him. They said, too, that
she was a bad business woman and got into debt; and that when she was
short of money she used to sell woods belonging to the convent, and
promise annual pensions to various people in return for lump sums down,
and lease out farms for a long time at low rates, and do various other
things by which the convent would lose in the long run. And besides,
she had let the roof of the church get into such ill repair that rain
came through the holes on to their heads when they were singing; and
would my lord bishop please to look at the holes in their clothes and
tell her to provide them with new ones? Other wicked prioresses used
sometimes even to pawn the plate and jewels of the convent, to get money
for their own private purposes. But Eglentyne was not at all wicked or
dishonest, though she was a bad manager; the fact was that she had no
head for figures. I am _sure_ that she had no head for figures; you have
only got to read Chaucer's description of her to know that she was not a
mathematician. Besides the nuns were exaggerating: their clothes were
not in holes, only just a little threadbare. Madame Eglentyne was far
too fastidious to allow ragged clothes about her; and as to the roof of
the church, she had meant to save enough money to have some tiles put on
to it, but it really _was_ very hard to make two ends meet in a medieval
nunnery, especially if (as I repeat) you had no head for figures.
Probably the bishop saw how the land lay, so he ordered her never to do
anything without consulting the convent, and he shut up the common seal