As the king authorized his judges to dispense royal justice, so the pope delegated the exercise of his juridical power to trusted agents. In England, judgments carrying the approval of the highest ecclesiastical power in Christendom could be secured remotely, in the courts of papal judges delegate. Before the thirteenth century, judges delegate to England were routinely Roman emissaries, but by the later Middle Ages these men were just as regularly drawn from the ranks of the English clergy. English judges delegate could be ad hoc or permanent appointees. The nuns of Waterbeach and the London Minoresses had dealings with the former, while the cause of the nuns of Syon was heard by a distinguished permanent legate on two separate occasions.

We have already observed the nuns of Waterbeach in action when their rights were jeopardized, but the final contest in which they were embroiled would test the mettle of a segment of that community even more than had the dispute with the canons of Barnwell. In this instance, the monastery of Waterbeach was threatened not by jealous or rapacious neighbors but by its own patroness and fellow religious. The papal judges assigned to resolve this bitter internecine quarrel would have to undercut the resistance of a group of well-born nuns whose devotion to place had eclipsed their commitment to their rule. The record testifies to the undesirability of such a commission as well as to the fraught times in which it was issued.