In some places the office of kitchener, like many of the others, was endowed with special revenues which had to be administered by the kitchener. At Abingdon, for example, the rents of many of the town tenements were assigned to it. From his separate revenue the abbot in the same place paid into the kitchener’s account more than £100 a year, to meet the expenses of his table, chiefly in the entertainment of guests. Besides money receipts, in most monasteries there were many payments in kind. In the same abbey, to take that place as a sample, at the beginning of Lent various fisheries had to supply so many “sticks of eels.” So, too, on the anniversary of Abbot Watchen, the kitchener had the fish taken from the fish-stew at one of the monastic manors; and during Lent, from every boat which passed up the Thames carrying herrings, except it were a royal barge, the kitchener took toll of a hundred of the fish, which had to be brought to him by the boat’s boy, who for his personal service received five herrings and a jug of beer. The character of the religious kitchener as sketched in one English Custumal is very charming. “He should be humble at heart and not merely in word; he should possess a kindly disposition and be lavish of pity for others; he should have a sparing hand in supplying his own needs and a prodigal one where others are concerned; he must ever be a consoler of those in affliction, a refuge to those who are sick; he should be sober and retiring, and really love the needy, that he may assist them as a father and helper; he should be the hope and aid of all in the monastery, trying to imitate the Lord, who said, ‘He who ministers to Me, let him follow Me.’” The long list of duties for the kitchener to attend to set forth in the monastic Custumals, and the grave admonitions which accompany them, show how very important a place that official occupied in the monastery. He had to attend daily in the larder to receive and check the food. When the eggs were brought, for example, by the “vitelers,” he had to note who brought them, and whence they came, and to settle how they were to be used. He was to see that the paid “larderer” had meat and fish, salt and fresh, and that the fowls and other birds were fed whilst they were under his charge, waiting for the time they would be wanted for the table. After having made his daily inspection of the outer larder, the kitchener was to visit the inner larder, in order to see that all the plates and dishes were properly scoured, that all the food ready for cooking was kept sweet and clean, and that all the fish was well covered with damp reeds to keep it fresh. Moreover, he was to inspect the fuel, to see that the supply was always kept up by the doorkeeper of the kitchen, with the help of the turnbroach.