This brings us to the consideration of what the religious drank. It is scarcely necessary to say that the solace of tea, coffee, or cocoa was utterly unknown to the monks and nuns of Old England. Water as a regular beverage was almost equally unknown; home-brewed beer was the usual drink that accompanied every meal. Most of the religious formed no exception in this respect to the general rule. Beer-drinking was accepted in England as a matter of course, and when we learn occasionally of the limit allowed, it does not seem to err on the side of niggardliness. Number 40 of the old Benedictine rule laid down that an _emina_ of wine was to suffice for the day, save when extra labour or the heat of summer made more desirable, in which case it was left to the judgment of the Superior. Much discussion used to arise on the continent as to the true interpretation of an _emina_, and it was generally agreed that it meant about two-thirds of a pint of our liquid measure. But so rarely was wine used in England that this rule was but seldom required. Among the mitigations of the rule sanctioned by the Pope for the English province, as cited in the customary of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, was the permission to drink “beer, which, as the rule mentions no particular measure, may be had daily as commons without any precise limit (_in communi sine taxacione aliqua_).” This does not, of course, mean unlimited beer, but that it was left to each house to regulate the quantity. The brewhouse was a general adjunct of the outer conventual buildings; in the larger houses beer was brewed in two qualities. The ordinary beer was very light. Pious Gilbert of Sempringham, in his minute regulations, could scarcely imagine a grosser or more awkward piece of carelessness on the part of the canons who supplied the temporal needs of the nuns than a failure in beer. In that portion of the Gilbertine rule that concerns itself with the provision of beer it is laid down that: “For the avoiding of scandal, if the nuns, having no beer, are obliged to drink water, it is only just that the masters of the house who provide the supplies shall share in their deprivation. Whenever the nuns, through the negligence or carelessness of the proctors, have to drink water, the four proctors are to associate themselves with them in their water-drinking, even if on a journey or absent from the house, unless across the seas.” [Illustration: BUILDWAS ABBEY (Cistercian)]