The rules were particularly rigorous in lazar-houses. Among the lepers of Reading, if a brother committed an offence, he was obliged to sit during meals in the middle of the hall, fasting on bread and water, while his portion of meat and ale was distributed before his eyes. The penalties to which Exeter lazars were liable were fasting and the stocks. Punishment lasted one day for transgressing the bounds, picking or stealing; three days for absence from chapel, malice, or abusing a brother; twelve days for reviling the master; thirty days for violence. At Sherburn the prior did not spare the rod. “After the manner of schoolboys” chastisement was to be meted out to transgressors, and the lazy and negligent awakened. “But if any shall be found to be disobedient and refractory, and is unwilling to be corrected with the rod, let him be deprived of food, as far as bread and water only.” Equally severe was the punishment at Harbledown for careless omission of appointed prayers. Delinquents made public confession the following Friday, and received castigation. “Let them undergo sound discipline, the brethren at the hands of the prior, and the sisters from the prioress.” The following day the omitted devotions were to be repeated twice. [p140] In the case of almsmen of a later period corporal punishment was never practised. If a poor pensioner at Heytesbury, after instruction, could not repeat his prayers properly, he must be put to “a certayne bodely payne, that is to say of fastyng or a like payne.” In most fifteenth-century almshouses, however, the inmates were no longer boarded, but received pocket-money, which was liable to forfeiture. An elaborate system of fines was worked out in the statutes of Ewelme. The master himself was fined for any fault “after the quality and quantitye of his crime.” The fines were inflicted not only upon those who were rebellious, or neglected to clean up the courtyard and weed their gardens, but also upon those who arrived in church without their tabards, or were unpunctual:— “And if it so be that any of theym be so negligent and slewthfull that the fyrst psalme of matyns be begon or he come into his stall that than he lese i_d._, and yf any of thayme be absent to the begynnyng of the fyrst lesson that thanne he lese ii_d._; And for absence fro prime, terce, sext and neynth, for ich of thayme i_d._ Also if any . . . be absent from the masse to the begynnyng of the pistyll . . . i_d._, and yf absent to the gospell . . . ii_d._” etc. Industry, punctuality and regularity became necessary virtues, since the usual allowance was but 14_d._ weekly.