“Poverty, chastity, and obedience: to expect but bread and water and a coarse garment. The clerks to serve in white surplices at the altar. The priests, in their surplices, to convey the Host to the sick, with a deacon or clerk preceding them, bearing a lantern and the sponge filled with holy water. The brethren to go abroad by appointment of the master, but never singly, and to avoid giving offence. No females to be employed for or about their persons; when soliciting alms, to visit churches or people of reputation, and ask their food for charity; if they received none, to buy enough for subsistence; to account for all their receipts to the master, and he to give them to the poor, retaining only one-third part of provisions, the overplus to the poor. The brethren to go soliciting only by permission; to carry candles with them; to wear no skins of wild beasts, or clothes degrading the Order. To eat but twice a day on Wednesday and Saturday; and no flesh from Septuagesima till Easter, except when aged or indisposed. To sleep covered. If incontinent in private, to repent in privacy, and do penance; if the brother was discovered, he was to be deprived of his robe in the church of the town after mass, to be severely whipped, and expelled from the Order; but, if truly penitent, he might be again received; but not without penance and a year’s expulsion, etc.” [Illustration: CRYPT OF ST. JOHN’S CHURCH, CLERKENWELL] If we follow the fortunes of the House after the accession of Elizabeth, we find that the south gate was granted by King James in 1604 to Sir Roger Wilbraham for life. In 1607 the site of the House, containing five acres, was granted to Ralph Freeman and his heirs. The choir, which had been restored or rebuilt by Cardinal Pole, became the property of Sir William Cecil; the Earl of Elgin got it by his marriage with Diana, daughter of the Earl of Exeter; his son, being created Earl of Aylesbury, called it Aylesbury Chapel. In the reign of James the Second a Roman Catholic convent of Benedictine monks was set up in the Precinct of St. John’s. An account of the attempt is given in T. Cromwell’s _History of Clerkenwell_:—