Page:St. Botolph's Priory, Colchester (1917).djvu/13

Rh the dorter, till the bell rang for None, the next service. This ended the third three "hours." After None the brethren went to the frater for a drink, returning to work until Evensong. Then followed supper, the brethren reading in the cloister afterwards, while the servants had their meal, until the bell rang for Collation, which was held in the Chapter-house. It consisted of reading aloud from some book for a short space of time, after which on fast days beer was served in the frater, this taking the place of the drinking after None. The last service of the day, Compline, followed, and then the brethren went in order to the dorter to sleep till they were roused at midnight for Mattins. The latest hour for going to bed, which would naturally be in the summer, must have been nine o'clock or soon after.

The Observances are full of directions and regulations about the precise manner in which everything is to be done, how everyone is to behave in the Church, the Chapter-house, the Dorter, and the Frater; when they may speak and when they must be silent. Great care was taken in the admission of novices, and in their training. Their birth, circumstances, moral and physical qualities, and health were closely enquired into before they were received, and when accepted they remained for a year on probation, to prove whether the novice seemed suitable in the opinion of the convent, and whether for his own part he felt capable of supporting the strictness of conventual life. He would have found out for himself that existence in the cloister was dull, the round of services endless, the long silences irksome, the hours of rest short. Nothing but a real sense that he had chosen the right vocation would decide him to endure such conditions indefinitely. In the meanwhile he had been instructed by the Master of the Novices in all manner of minute details of behaviour; how he should arrange his habit when standing, and how when sitting; how he ought to bow so that his hands when crossed should reach to his knees, and how in bowing he might make the sign of the cross with his habit. For everything throughout the day, whether in Church, Chapter-house, Cloister, Frater, or Dorter, he had to learn the appropriate actions and gestures; the Rule was with him at every turn, however trivial the occasion. At the end of the year of probation, if all was satisfactory, the novice took the monastic vows, making his profession, as it was called, in a prescribed form, which was written on a piece of parchment and laid on the high altar by the novice himself. After profession he still remained under the charge of the Master of the Novices as long as the Prior thought fit, but at the end of this time he became