That there were certain conditions to be observed by this Society, appears from the latter epistle, which commences with an answer to a letter of remonstrance the "Court" has received from Henry Somer, against some undue extravagance, and a breach of their rules.[3] This Society of four centuries and a half since was evidently a jovial company. Still, we do not yet find the term "Club." Mr. Carlyle, in his _History of Frederick the Great_, assumes that the vow of the Chivalry Orders--_Gelübde_--in vogue about A.D. 1190, "passed to us in a singularly dwindled condition: Club we now call it." To this it is objected that the mere resemblance in sound of _Gelübde_ and _Club_ is inconclusive, for the Orders of Templars, Hospitallers, and Prussian Knights, were never called clubs in England; and the origin of the noun need not be sought for beyond its verb to _club_, when persons joined in paying the cost of the mutual entertainment. Moreover, _Klubb_ in German means the social _club_; and that word is borrowed from the English, the native word being _Zeche_, which, from its root and compound, conveys the idea generally of joint expenditure, and specially in drinking.[4] About the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was established the famous Club at the Mermaid Tavern, in Bread-street, of which Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Raleigh, Selden, Donne, &c., were members. Ben Jonson had a Club, of which he appears to have been the founder, that met at the Devil Tavern, between Middle-Temple gate and Temple Bar. Not until shortly after this date do we find the word Club. Aubrey says: "We now use the word _clubbe_ for a sodality in a taverne." In 1659, Aubrey became a member of the Rota, a political Club, which met at the Turk's Head, in New Palace Yard: "here we had," says Aubrey, "(very formally) a _balloting box_, and balloted how things should be carried, by way of Tentamens. The room was every evening as full as it could be crammed."[5] Of this Rota political Club we shall presently say more. It is worthy of notice that politics were thus early introduced into English Club-life. Dryden, some twenty years after the above date, asks: "What right has any man to meet in factious Clubs to vilify the Government?"