Every reader has heard of the cellarer, who managed the commissariat, and whose emoluments and powers were very great, not only within the convent, but even outside its precincts. At St. Edmundsbury he held a court, and had a prison in which he confined wrong-doers. Yet these officials were often guilty of great excesses. In 1197 the cellarer at St. Edmundsbury was displaced for drunkenness, and the following year his successor, Jocell, committed an offence for which the abbot forbade him to drink anything but water; and he still remaining contumacious, his superior forbade him both meat and drink until he repented.[235] About the same time another official (not the cellarer) had been sent to look after some of the estates of the convent, when it came to the abbot’s ears that he was “deporting himself in somewhat too secular a manner,” as the chronicle mildly puts it; but as he was serviceable to the community, the abbot winked at his irregularities. Eventually, however, they became so gross that the abbot could “wink” no longer, and his effects were ordered to be seized. To the astonishment of the brotherhood, they were found to comprise “a mighty deal of gold and silver, to the value of two hundred marks.”[236] Nor were the opportunities for over-indulgence in drink very rare. Besides the sacred feasts, Christmas, Easter, &c., when the monks were not so closely restricted, and were allowed to take a little more wine than usual “in excess of joy,” we presume, there were other occasions which were made the excuse for “a drop extra.” On the admission of an abbot it was customary to allow every man a gallon of wine, a whole loaf, and three handsome dishes of fish.[237] As already stated, the abbots themselves fared very sumptuously. At one period they lived apart from the monks, but in the ninth century the Council of Aix (and others afterwards) ordered them to dine in the common refectory, to put bounds upon their indulgence. After that, wine was brought to them in their chamber when dinner was over. The prior, too, was allowed more wine than the monks; he might send his cup to the cellarer to be filled once or twice, and that officer had no power to refuse him. Much more has been written concerning the drinking habits of the monks, but, as we shall have to revert to them at a period when the whole system had become much more corrupt, we must stop here, and will close the present chapter with a brief mention of the kinds of intoxicating drinks which were consumed in Anglo-Saxon and Norman times.