When the monasteries were dissolved, Henry VIII. decreed that the Treasurer and Fellows of this same Society should receive yearly from the King's Highness, during the King's pleasure, the sum of £6 13s. 4d., to be paid in even portions, namely, at the "Feasts of The Natyvytie of Our Lord God, of the Annunciation of Our Blessed Ladye, the Vyrgyne, of the Natyvytie of Seynt John Baptist, and of Seynt Michaell, the Archaungell." But in 1651, during the time of the Commonwealth, this payment ceased, and has never been revived, though during the reign of Elizabeth the officiating minister received a salary of £4 a year. By an order of Pension, 15th November, 1598, it was ordered that the "Reader in Divinity" to be chosen, shall be a man unmarried, having no ecclesiastical living other than a Prebend, that he be without the care of souls, and that he shall keep the same place while he continues unmarried. This order corresponds with an usage formerly existing with regard to the vergers of St. Paul's Cathedral, who, by one of the Cathedral statutes, were to be in a state of celibacy. They had either to relinquish their wives or their office. According to Dean Milman, this statute declares: "That because having a wife is a troublesome and disturbing affair, and because husbands are apt to study the washes of their wives, or their mistresses, and no man can serve two masters, the vergers are to be either bachelors, or to give up their wives." Since these times either wives have improved and become less troublesome, or else the vergers have become less subservient to them, for at St. Paul's this rule has been abolished. As regards the Reader of Gray's Inn, it still remains in force. Unfortunately the chapel is, architecturally speaking, of no importance. It is low and insignificant, and quite unworthy externally of the venerable Inn to which it belongs. Strype, in his edition of "Stowe," much praises the Hall of Gray's Inn, but laments that the chapel is so small, and wishes the Society would build a new one raised on arches, so that there would be a good dry walk underneath them in rainy weather. The same writer mentions also a new entrance made into Holborn, where had been erected, he says: "A fayre Gate and Gatehouse that were great improvements, making a more convenient and honourable passage, whereof this house stood in much neede, as the other entrances were rather posterns than gates." To the shop beneath this gateway a certain interest is attached from its having been the place of business of Jacob Tonson, the celebrated bookseller, who removed here from Chancery Lane in 1697. Several of the most ancient buildings were destroyed by fire in 1604, and unhappily also nearly all the earliest records of the Society perished in the same flames.