At this period Philip Thane was prior of the Hospital; and he appears to have exerted himself to impart to the celebration of divine service in the Temple Church, the dignity and the splendour it possessed in the time of the Templars. He, with the unanimous consent and approbation of the whole chapter of the Hospital, granted to Brother Hugh de Lichefeld, priest, and to his successors, guardians of the Temple Church, towards the improvement of the lights and the celebration of divine service therein, all the land called Ficketzfeld, and the garden called Cotterell Garden;[562] and two years afterwards he made a further grant, to the said Hugh and his successors, of a thousand fagots a year to be cut of the wood of Lilleston, and carried to the New Temple to keep up the fire in the said church.[563] King Edward the Third, in the thirty-fifth year of his reign, A. D. 1362, notwithstanding the grant of the Temple to the Hospitallers, exercised the right of appointing to the porter's office and by his letters patent he promoted Roger Small to that post for the term of his life, in return for the good service rendered him by the said Roger Small.[564] It is at this period that the first distinct mention of a society of lawyers in the Temple occurs. The poet Chaucer, who was born at the close of the reign of Edward the Second, A. D. 1327, and was in high favour at court in the reign of Edward the Third, thus speaks of the MANCIPLE, or the purveyor of provisions of the lawyers in the Temple: "A gentil Manciple was there of the TEMPLE, Of whom achatours mighten take ensemple, For to ben wise in bying of vitaille. For whether that he paid or toke by taille, Algate he waited so in his achate, That he was aye before in good estate. Now is not that of God a full fayre grace, That swiche a lewed mannes wit shal pace, The wisdome of an hepe of lerned men?" "Of maisters had he mo than thries ten, THAT WERE OF LAWE EXPERT AND CURIOUS: Of which there was a dosein in that hous Worthy to ben stewardes of rent and lond Of any lord that is in Englelond, To maken him live by his propre good, In honour detteles, but if he were wood, Or live as scarsly, as him list desire; And able for to helpen all a shire, In any cas that mighte fallen or happe; And yet this manciple sette hir aller cappe."[565] It appears, therefore, that the lawyers in the Temple, in the reign of Edward the Third, had their purveyor of provisions as at this day, and were consequently then keeping commons, or dining together in hall. In the fourth year of the reign of Richard the Second, A. D. 1381, a still more distinct notice occurs of the Temple, as the residence of the _learners_ and the _learned_ in the law.