Soon also the chief teacher of an Inn of Court became its chief feaster and principal entertainer; and in like manner his subordinates in office, such as assistant readers and readers elect, were required to put their hands into their pockets, and feed their pupils with venison and wine as well as with law and equity. It is amusing to observe how little Dugdale has to say about the professional duties of readers--and how much about their hospitable functions and responsibilities. Philip and Mary ordered that no reader of the Middle Temple should give away more than fifteen bucks during his readings; but so greatly did the cost of readers' entertainments increase in the following century, that Dugdale observes--"But the times are altered; there being few summer readers who, in half the time that heretofore a reading was wont to continue, spent so little as threescore bucks, besides red deer; some have spent fourscore, some an hundred." Just as readers were required to spend more in hospitality, they were required to display less learning. Sound lawyers avoided election to the readers' chairs, leaving them to be filled by rich men who could afford to feast the nobility and gentry, or at least by men who were willing to purchase social _eclat_ with a lavish outlay of money. Under Charles II. the 'readings' were too often nothing better than scandalous exhibitions of mental incapacity: and having sunk into disrepute, they died out before the accession of James II. The scandalous and beastly disorder of the Grand Day Feasts at the Middle Temple, during Francis North's tenure of the reader's office, was one of the causes that led to the discontinuance of Reader's Banquets at that house; and the other inns gladly followed the example of the Middle Temple in putting an end to a custom which had ceased to promote the dignity of the law. Of this feast, and his brother's part in it, Roger North says: "He (_i.e._ Francis North) sent out the officers with white staves (for so the way was) and a long list to invite; but he went himself to wait upon the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sheldon; for so also the ceremony required. The archbishop received him very honorably and would not part with him at the stairshead, as usually had been done; but, telling him he was no ordinary reader, went down, and did not part till he saw him past at his outward gate I cannot much commend the extravagance of the feasting used at these readings; and that of his lordship's was so terrible an example, that I think none hath ventured since to read publicly; but the exercise is turned into a revenue, and a composition is paid into the treasury of the society. Therefore one may say, as was said of Cleomenes, that, in this respect, his lordship was _ultimus herorum_, the last of the heroes. And the profusion of the best provisions, and wine, was to the worst of purposes--debauchery, disorder, tumult, and waste. I will give but one instance; upon the