The phrase, however, seems to have been used more loosely of those who occupied seats at the President’s table and thus to become capable of a certain ambiguity. It was customary at Westminster for the heads of the various departments to make a present in money or in kind to a monk after his first mass and his first sitting _ad skillam_. If we are to assume the wider meaning of the latter phrase it is impossible to determine what were the qualifications which a monk must possess or the period of probation through which he must pass before his promotion _ad skillam_. Islip was not thus advanced until he became Prior, when he must inevitably so sit; so that the qualification was evidently not that of the holding of monastic office, however important. Moreover a survey of the careers of a large number of monks shews that anything from four to more than thirty years from their profession might elapse before such promotion came. For example Kirton did not sit _ad skillam_ until he became Abbot in 1440, thirty-two years after his first mass; while Thomas Gedney passed to the high table in 1421, within five years of his profession. Kirton indeed had spent some years of his monastic life at Oxford and never occupied the position of Prior, yet it would be expected that on one or other of his visits to Westminster he would be found to have been sitting at the high table at a far earlier date. If, however, the narrower meaning of the phrase, that of actually presiding in the Refectory, may be taken as indicating the occasion upon which _exenia_ or complimentary gifts were made, the difficulty to some extent disappears. Actual seniority of profession would then determine the occasion of the gifts. A relatively young monk such as John Islip might have sat at the high table long before some accident found him as the senior monk present in the Refectory, and the same fate might befall one many years older than himself. Moreover it seems probable from the fact that two tables were reserved for the senior monks in the Refectory in addition to the table of the President that the narrower interpretation of the phrase as used at Westminster is the more correct. This is borne out also by the fact that the phrase itself is found not only in its ambiguous form as _primo sedente ad skyllam_ but also as _primo presidente ad skyllam_ which would seem to admit of no ambiguity at all. It is to be observed that the phrase is undoubtedly used in the narrower sense at Westminster at the close of the thirteenth century.