With regard to wine, irrespective of the much stricter dieted reformed congregations, the ordinary Benedictine monk or the regular canon but rarely tasted it, and only on special festivals or at times of illness. Gilbert of Sempringham enjoined on his canons never to take wine unless it was well watered. The higher class guests were responsible for the lion’s share in the consumption of wine at the larger monasteries. These houses served, _inter alia_, as inns, _minus_ the bills, for the magnates of the land, including royalty, when on their travels. For such visits they were usually well prepared. Those who study the itineraries of our kings as gained from the date places of public documents know how frequent was the entertainment of royalty within monastic precincts. Even in Northamptonshire, where there were several royal residences, kings sojourned with the Cistercians of Pipewell and the White Canons of Sulby, as well as with the lordly Benedictines of Peterborough. The wine for entertaining guests was in the joint charge of the abbot or prior and the hosteler. In the already cited Durham hosteler’s account for 1333-4 there occurs an expenditure of 35_s._ 10_d._ for sixty-five gallons of wine, bought for the prior’s lodgings, for the solar, and for the guests who attended at the time of audit. The practice of giving wine at the time of drawing up the accounts, when the bailiffs of different manors and other external officials attended, was usual. Even the pittancer of St. Benet’s expended 8_d._ in wine when his accounts were made. At Durham there were occasional large purchases of wine, intended to last for some considerable time, and there always appears to have been a good store. In 1299 nine casks of wine were bought at Hull and seven at Hartlepool and Newcastle at a cost, including carriage, of £36 7_s._ Just a century later the bursar bought fifty-two gallons of red wine for the prior for filling up a cask. When the Justices were entertained by the prior, certain special and more costly wines were generally set upon the guest table; thus in 1528-9, although £9 had been spent that year on ordinary red wine, the bursar bought malmsey and claret in the town, at a cost of 20_s._, on an occasion when the Justices and the Bishop happened to be among the prior’s guests. Wine was also offered to the confraters, or well-to-do lay associates of the house, when they were admitted to the confraternity, or when they visited the house. The _Rites of Durham_ expressly says of the prior that “for ther better intertaynement he had evermore a hogsheade or two of wynes lying in a seller appertayninge to the halle to serve his geists withall.”