From the Hospitallers they will take their long and sweeping robes. From the Canons they will take the custom of eating meat three times a week, and if on Fast Days they find themselves without fish, then they are to eat whatever is in the larder. From the Black Monks (the Benedictines) they are to borrow the habit of getting drunk every day. [Illustration: KNIGHTS OF THE HOLY GHOST EMBARKING FOR THE CRUSADES After a miniature from the “Statutes of the Order of the Holy Ghost” at Naples. MS. of the fourteenth century in the Louvre. From Lacroix’ _Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages_.] From the Secular Canons, who willingly serve the ladies, the new Order is to take that point and to be constant companions of the Sisters, both before and after matins, so that the Order may not on that account fall into discredit. In the Order of Silence, each brother shuts himself up in his cell; the new Order shall have the same rule, provided that a sister be locked up with a brother. In the Friars Minor the Brethren are ordered to take whatever hospitality is offered them; but they take care never to rest at the house of a poor man, so in the new Order the Brethren will on no account take up their quarters unless where the owner is a rich man. As for the Black Friars—the Preaching Order,—they may wear sandals if they please and ride if they please. The new Order will always wear sandals and will always ride. “Atant fine nostre Ordre, Q’à touz bonz ordres se acorde, Et c’est l’Ordre del Bel-Eyse, Qe à pluzours tro bien pleyse!” To this we may add Chaucer’s description of a Friar. Now Chaucer was of London town. This Friar was “a wanton and a merry”; he was a “limitour,” that is to say, he had his “beat” in which he exercised his craft. “He had made full many a marriage of young women at his own cost”—that is, whom he had first seduced. He was greatly respected as a Father confessor, on account of the easy terms on which he gave absolution, so long as the services gave to the Order: “For many a man so hard is of his herte, He may not wepe al thogh him sore smerte. Therefore instide of weping and preyeres, Men moot yeve silver to the povre freres.” He carried knives and pins in his tippet, because the Friars had now become pedlars and carried knives, pins, purses, girdles, silk, etc., to sell in the country places. He knew all the taverns and every hostler and barmaid (tapster); he was the best beggar ever known; he could sing and play right well: “And in his harping whan that he had songe His eyen twinkled in his heed aright, As doon the sterres in the frosty night.” Chaucer’s company contained other functionaries, but for our purpose this is enough.