<g>Luxury.</g>--With respect to luxuries--which in some monasteries, it was alleged, were earned to a degree quite inconsistent with their professed abstinence--Thomas Pennant, Abbot of Basingwerk, is said to have given twice the treasure of a king in wine, and was profuse of more humble liquors. The apartments for the reception of persons of quality, according to Davies, were furnished in a most expensive and gorgeous manner. But their profuse expenditure in wine, it must be remembered, was in consequence of a too liberal hospitality; for, while the monks themselves were restricted to a meagre diet, their guests, when men of rank and influence, were plentifully regaled with whatever was best in cellar and larder; and the whole country furnished no better cooks or butlers than were to be found in conventual houses. [Illustration: C]<g>ISTERCIAN</g> abbeys, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, avoided all the bad consequences of _cells_, in the irregularities of their inhabitants, by _having none_; and by remedying all defects by visitors and chapters. Yet the Abbey of Kingswood, already noticed, was a cell of Tinterne, and the scene of as many irregularities and abuses, perhaps, as the cells of any other monastic order. The brethren who stayed at cells were to be three in every place, or two at least. “In food, in clothing, and the tonsure, they did not vary from the common institution. They kept silence at table, and did not speak in the church. They sung compline at an early seasonable hour, in summer and winter; and did not run about the village or elsewhere.” It was thought a great grievance to be sent to remote cells, or from cell to cell; and scandalous tales were occasionally told of the licentious lives of some of the monks, whom the abbots had sent thither for penance and reformation.[165]