When, in the year 1448, in his will, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, addressed the religious community at ‘my Charterhouse at Hulle’, he was expressing a sentiment which he shared with some of the most influential and powerful aristocrats in the country. With these few words, de la Pole testified to the continuation of a tradition that dated back as far as the great wave of monastic foundations by the laity in England and Wales during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Throughout those centuries, monastic patronage had become an increasingly clearly-defined concept, recognised and protected by canon law, and based on the mutual respect and dependency of both parties: the patron and his family on the one hand, and the religious community on the other. By the fourteenth century the meaning and nature of monastic patronage had in many cases changed, but while undeniably less prominent, monastic patronage did nevertheless continue to matter and was clearly still an important issue to at least some of the late medieval nobility in this country right up to the Dissolution. The significance of this should not be underrated. Considering the issues surrounding monastic patronage in the wider context of late medieval lay religiosity helps to illustrate, even emphasise, its importance. The continuity, and in some cases indeed the revival, of a tradition which was so intimately linked to issues of dynastic tradition, piety and, not least, power at a time when expressions of devotion and also the priorities of the laity were so clearly shifting is a remarkable phenomenon.