The most important branch of the Regular Canons is the PREMONSTRATENSIAN, founded by St. Norbert, a German nobleman, who died in 1134 A.D.; his first house, in a barren spot in the valley of Coucy, in Picardy, called Pré-montre, gave its name to the order. The rule was that of Augustine, with a severe discipline superadded; the habit was a coarse black cassock, with a white woollen cloak and a white four-square cap. Their abbots were not to use any episcopal insignia. The Premonstratensian nuns were not to sing in choir or church, and to pray in silence. They had only thirty-six houses in England, of which Welbeck was the chief; but the order was very popular on the Continent, and at length numbered one thousand abbeys and five hundred nunneries. Under this rule are also included the GILBERTINES, who were founded by a Lincolnshire priest, Gilbert of Sempringham, in the year 1139 A.D. There were twenty-six houses of the order, most of them in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire; they were all priories dependent upon the house of Sempringham, whose head, as prior-general, appointed the priors of the other houses, and ruled absolutely the whole order. All the houses of this order were double houses, that is, monks and nuns lived in the same enclosure, though with a rigid separation between their two divisions. The monks followed the Augustinian rule; the nuns followed the rule of the Cistercian nuns. The habit was a black cassock, a white cloak, and hood lined with lambskin. The "Monasticon" gives very effective representations (after Hollar) of the Gilbertine monk and nun. The NUNS OF FONTEVRAUD was another female order of Augustinians, of which little is known. It was founded at Fontevraud in France, and three houses of the order were established in England in the time of Henry II.; they had monks and nuns within the same enclosure, and all subject to the rule of an abbess. The BONHOMMES were another small order of the Augustinian rule, of little repute in England; they had only two houses here, which, however, were reckoned among the greater abbeys, viz., Esserug in Bucks, and Edindon in Wilts. The female ORDER OF OUR SAVIOUR, or, as they are usually called, the BRIGITTINES, were founded by St. Bridget of Sweden, in 1363 A.D. They were introduced into England by Henry V., who built for them the once glorious nunnery of Sion House. At the dissolution, the nuns fled to Lisbon, where their successors still exist. Some of the relics and vestments which they carried from Sion House have been carefully preserved ever since, and are now in the possession of the Earl of Shrewsbury.[8] Their habit was like that of the Benedictine nuns--a black tunic, white wimple and veil, but is distinguished by a black band on the veil across the forehead.