BRUSSELS
217
fatherly & earnestly we commend the foresaide most religious monestery in spirituall and temporall afaires, to yr extraordenery care, zeale, and redy watchfullness, to the efect yt you incesantly promote its regular observance by fitt helps, best counsells and commands, that yD procure, and aplye, through your delagated power, remedyes to what so ever dificulties may now and then ocur, and that according as yQ varietie of times and buisenes presenting them selves, shall require you there, either by your presence or letters, perform, ordaine, dispose, and put in execution, whatsoever either our Vicar Generall of England, or we our selves, if either of us wear present, would doe, not diminishing the ordenerie subjection and respeckt of the sayd monestery towards our said Vicar Generall. As heretofore, and to yt end, we give you out of the plenitude of our office, all necessary faculty & power. And there fore, as most experienct in warr, for God and religion, Buckell on your sword for this charge, being mindfull how sacred & noble a tresure we committ to yr experienct prudenc and integrity. They are our daughters, and chosen spouses of Jesus Christ. They are strangers in yr country; and banisht from theyr own true soyle, for their loyallty to there Spouse, under the hard beginings of a new c1oyster, they stand in need of extraordenery holy care and comfort. It shall be yr dutye, soe in our place to atend to them, that for theire virtue, peace, and noble contempt of the world, we may all wayes acknowlige for angelicall whom for their country we call English. In the Name of the Father and of the Sonn and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Leonardus Hanson. To the present & future Satisfaction of All whom it may concern. Our most Reverend Father Master General Augustinus Pipia desiring to be inform'd about the legacy which our late Lord Cardinal of Norfolk, of pious memory, left for the maintenance of the confessour & his companion at the Monastery of the English Dominican nuns in Brussels, the Fathers of our province requir'd from me, who was (then) their confessour, and Vicar of the Province of England, to give an exact account of this affair. To satisfie the General, & them, I writ in Latine to Father Master Williams, Rector of Lovain, what I now write in English for the 8a.tisfaction of the nuns. The substance whereof was as follows. That the Cardinal, to ease the nuns of the yearly charges they were at, of one hundred & fifty gilders for the maintence of their confessour, in the convent of the Dutch Dominicans, in this city of Brussells, was pleased in his last will & testament to leave two thousand Roman crowns, the equiValent of six thousand gilders, or six hundred pound sterling, to maintain a confessour & his companion for ever, for the service of the said nuns. As soon as this, and other legacies, began to be paid, the Procurator of the great Convent came to me, demanding the monies; saying he had need of it to pay the Convent's debts and to buy provisions.