In this busy and happy scene, the friendship of Lord Shrewsbury with young Somers took root. Often occasional visiters swelled the number of the inmates; for the old dormitories of the nuns were used by the hospitable father of Lord Somers to supply the deficiency of inns and taverns. Nor is it of slight importance to trace those circumstances which mark the early portion of a great man’s life. In the motley society of the “White Ladies,” the future Chancellor of England probably learned to know himself and others. His prudence, his pliability in matters of little consequence, his firmness in matters of moment, may all have had exercise in the various emergencies and temptations to which a boy is exposed among a large assemblage of older persons, with whose affairs, and in whose family politics, he must necessarily, sometimes involuntarily, participate. So ardent was the friendship contracted in these scenes between Lord Shrewsbury and Somers, that the latter, although intended for the bar, delayed his removal to the university until he was twenty-two years of age, in order that he might not sooner be separated from his friend, and from the society at the “White Ladies.” So strong was the attachment formed by Lord Somers to the old house where these social days were passed, that one of his first cares, in after times of prosperity, was to repair the venerable edifice, together with the Priory of St. Oswald adjoining.[380] Nor did the happy community of the “White Ladies” cease to welcome their favourite member, young Somers, at each college vacation, after his removal to Oxford. The Earl of Shrewsbury and his friend made, upon such occasions, that happy home their place of meeting. The foundation of Somers’s fortunes was laid by the introduction which his friend afforded him to Lord Shaftesbury, Sir William Temple, and other leaders of the opposition, to the court of Charles the Second: but a far greater benefit was achieved for Lord Shrewsbury himself, in his conversion to a pure faith.