THE READER AND OTHER OFFI CERS OF THE SOCIETY. With this high esteem for learning, the office of Reader was naturally one of dis tinction—the most important, in fact—in the Society. Unfortunately it was also an expensive one. Custom had decreed that a Reader must give a dinner and a supper to the company during his reading and he had to do it handsomely. If the preparation for the dinner was "miserable and miserly the steward of the Reader's dinner might be fined. The result was that members of the Society often declined the office and were heavily fined in consequence. Sir Robert Rich, for instance, in 1621 is fined 100 marks "for not reading in his turne" and the said Sir Robert being impenitent, his chambers are sold towards paying the fine. Besides its Reader the Inn had its Dean of the Chapel—who was paid the same as the Manciple—its Treasurer, its Keeper of the Black Books, its Marshal, its Pensioner, its Butler, its Steward, its Master of the Rev els, its Escheator, who brought the fuel for Christmas and Torches for the Chapel, its Master and Under Cook, its Turnbroche, its Manciple, its Clerk of the Pantry, its Pannierman, its Laundress, its Beadle, its Fool and its Minstrels. It seems rather a superfluity of offices for so small a society, but many of them were honorary and served by members of- the Society. For example, we find Sir Thomas More acting successively as Auditor of the Society, Pen sioner, Butler, Reader, Marshal and Gov ernor. The stewardship was a post of dan ger. If the unfortunate steward spent more than he ought, that is, if his "apparels" or disbursements exceeded his receipts or "emendáis" he got no wages. A YEAR'S EXPENSES. The steward's account of payments for the Inn for the year is interesting as a spec imen of the Society's expenditure :
£ s. d. Bread 33 u i Ale 58 13 4 Beer (25 Barrells) 368 Cheese 736 White Cups 389 Goddards 15 9 Bere pottes 13 Candles 48 ii Rushes io 9 Holline (Holly) 6 Wine 37 2 Wafers . .' 16 Spices for Christmas 17 3 To the Minstrels 16 To the Waytes 4 8 The Singer for his "Carell" at Christmas 3 4 But there was better cheer than beer and bread and cheese. The Steward's chief item was the amount paid to the Manciple "for victuals bought and for fuel and for divers condiments (sanciamentis) and other neces saries in the kitchen as appears in the Kitchen book, £150 55. y/2a. Then, too, members who wanted to be excused keep ing vacations often compounded for the ex emption by such things as a "hoggishead of red Gascon wine" or a "buk and doewe; we know that there was once a swan also in the Society's larder, because three of the young gentlemen—Woodhouse, Fermorand Dysney—were fined ten shillings each "be cause they brake the larder house and took from thens a swan and buk in Lamasse vaceyon last"—on another occasion some quince pies were abstracted from the oven, but a worse occurrence was the win dow of the buttery being broken "whereby certeyn persons of the Cumpaiiie unknowyn interid in to the sed buttery and brake the scier dore and lett out the wynne and spoyled and spylte ytt in the flore. This offence was deemed so serious that the Benchers agreed that "the hoole Com
