By the fourteenth century a number of religious orders had been established for many years in both Scotland and England. Their houses were very much part of the local scene, and their activities, both internally and where they touched the secular world, were well known. Bishops visited monasteries which were not exempt from their jurisdiction, and confirmed or at least received professions of canonical obedience from newly elected abbots and priors. The fourteenth century was not one of great change for religious communities, and in consequence contacts between the Papacy and the regulars were fewer and arguably much less significant than in the great period of foundation and expansion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Such contacts as there were bear considerable similarity to those involving the secular clergy, but with one important distinction. Those who were professed in a religious order lived under regimes which dictated that much of their contact with the Papacy was via the head of their convent, and this in turn meant that the Holy See tended to deal with institutions rather than individuals and received relatively few supplications asking for favours to be granted to single monks, canons or friars. The religious orders were, moreover, international bodies; and especially in the case of the friars and the younger reformed orders, in which an elaborate system of visitation and control had been employed from the outset, they transcended political boundaries in a way which was becoming increasingly uncommon among the secular clergy.