Through the account-books and the household ordinances of the period, we can trace four grades of household servants--squires or gentlemen, valets or yeomen, grooms, and pages. The last grade had been recently introduced into the royal household in Edward IV.'s time, and they did not eat in hall. "A page etyth in his office or with his next fellow, not in the halle at noe place, taking dayly one lofe, one messe of great meate, half a gallon of ale; one reward quarterly in the counting-house, twenty pence of clothing when the household hathe at every one of the four feasts, one napron of one elle and part of the King's great rewards given yearly amongst them in household."[49] The last quotation illustrates also the method of remuneration. The money received was a very minor and unimportant factor. The servants were paid mostly in kind, and the share of each in food, fuel, and clothing is very fully and carefully stated. The chief porter of the Abbey of Gloucester, for instance, had a chamber next to the abbey gate. His weekly allowance was three white loaves, called myches, and two called holyers, with seven loaves of squire bread; for ale every quarter 3s. 4d. On every flesh or fish day he had a mess of flesh or fish of the first course, as much as was set before two monks. He had a gown every year of the suit of the gentlemen of the Lord Abbot, and in addition 13s. 4d. per annum. These fixed rations of food clothing &c., are called livery, a term now restricted to clothing alone. It is noticeable that these servants are almost all men. Washerwomen (lotrices) are women, and there are occasionally notices of young girls in attendance on the lady of the house. But so far as our information goes, cooking and cleaning and serving are carried on by men, though mention is made of women pastry-cooks who in monasteries, to avoid scandal, had to be accommodated in a separate kitchen, called the pudding-house.[50] But in the Middle Ages domestic service was not, as it is now, regarded as a menial occupation to be left, save in some of its higher branches, exclusively to women.