The Abbot's Lodging sometimes formed a portion of one of the monastic courts, as at St. Mary, Bridlington, where it formed the western side of the cloister-court; but more usually it was a detached house, precisely similar to the contemporary unfortified houses of laymen of similar rank and wealth. No particular site relative to the monastic buildings was appropriated to it; it was erected wherever was most convenient within the abbey enclosure. The principal rooms of an abbot's house are the Hall, the Great Chamber, the Kitchen, Buttery, Cellars, &c., the Chambers, and the Chapel. We must remember that the abbots of the greater houses were powerful noblemen; the abbots of the smaller houses were equal in rank and wealth to country gentlemen. They had a very constant succession of noble and gentle guests, whose entertainment was such as their rank and habits required. This involved a suitable habitation and establishment; and all this must be borne in mind when we endeavour to picture to ourselves an abbot's lodging. To give an idea of the magnitude of some of the abbots' houses, we may record that the hall of the Abbot of Fountains was divided by two rows of pillars into a centre and aisles, and that it was 170 feet long by 70 feet wide.[85] Half a dozen noble guests, with their retinues of knights and squires, and men-at-arms and lacqueys, and all the abbot's men to boot, would be lost in such a hall. On the great feast-days it might, perhaps, be comfortably filled. But even such a hall would hardly contain the companies who were sometimes entertained, on such great days for instance as an abbot's installation-day, when it is on record that an abbot of one of the greater houses would give a feast to three or four thousand people. Of the lodgings of the superiors of smaller houses, we may take that of the Prior of St. Mary's, Bridlington, as an example. It is very accurately described by King Henry's commissioners; it formed the west side of the cloister-court; it contained a hall with an undercroft, eighteen paces long from the screen to the dais,[86] and ten paces wide; on its north side a great chamber, twenty paces long and nineteen wide; at the west end of the great chamber the prior's sleeping-chamber, and over that a garret; on the east side of the same chamber a little chamber and a closet; at the south end of the hall the buttery and pantry, and a chamber called the Auditor's Chamber; at the same end of the hall a fair parlour, called the Low Summer Parlour; and over it another fair chamber; and adjoining that three little chambers for servants; at the south end of the hall the Prior's Kitchen, with three houses covered with lead, and adjoining it a chamber called the South Cellarer's Chamber.[87] [Illustration: _A Present of Fish._]