Among the Lansdowne MSS. of the British Museum is a small fifteenth-century manuscript of the rule of the Carthusians of Sheen. It opens with the form of receiving postulants and novices in English. After a variety of preliminary questions had been put to the postulant in chapter, he retired. Thereupon the prior asked each of the chapter in turn whether they thought the applicant worthy to be admitted. If the replies were in the affirmative, the candidate was recalled, and was thus addressed by the prior:-- “The convent hath deliberated of your humble petition. And now our Statutes doe appoint me breefly to set before your eyes the strictness and austoritie of our order, and the length and prolixitie of the divine office as well of the day office as the night office, which in the wynter is farr longer, beside the office of our Blessed Lady which you are to say daylie in your cell; morover you are to say yearly a hundred dead offices in private, likewise many Psalters (or as we tearme them monachales) which you are yearly to say unless you performe them in masses. For your cloathing and lodging, after you have received the habitt, you can make no further use of lynen except handkerchers towels and the like, but for your body you are to weare a shirte of heare and a cord aboute your loynes and a wolen shirte. You are to lie upon strawe or a bed of chaffe with a blanket betweene. For your diet it is a perpetuall abstinence from flesh, insomuch that in the greatest or most dangerous sickness you can expect no dispensation theirin. Also a good parte of the yeare we abstaine from all Whitmeates, as in Advent, Lent and all the Fridayes of the yeare, besides many other fasts both of the church and of our order in which wee abstain from Whitmeat.